Despite hostile media and unfavorable polls, New York Mayor Bill de Blasio threw himself into the 2020 US presidential race on Thursday, becoming the 23rd Democratic candidate to oust Donald Trump from the White House.
“We are going to give priority to Americans who work,” said the mayor far to the left at his first candidate’s press conference in Manhattan. “I know it’s possible because I made it, here in the biggest, toughest city in America.”
“A lot of Americans find it hard to believe in the American dream right now, we have to restore it,” he added, alongside his wife Chirlane McCray, author and black political figure, against the backdrop of the Statue of Freedom, which has become an anti-Trump symbol.
He prided himself on knowing “all the tricks” of Donald Trump, the American president having spent all his life in New York before being elected president.
“I’m going to keep calling him + Don the crook. + All New Yorkers know how to recognize a crook,” he said. “I know how to take it, I’ve watched it for decades.”
Donald Trump, expected Thursday evening in his hometown for the first time in months, reacted to the announcement with an insulting tweet.
Bill de Blasio “is considered the worst mayor in America,” he tweeted, “it’s a joke, but if you like high taxes and crime, he’s for you. NEW YORK DETESTS HIM! “.
Discouraging polls
A welcome presidential attack for Mr. De Blasio, who could help increase his notoriety and raise funds, some commentators pointed out on Thursday.
Because for now, his presidential ambitions have been greeted with contempt, especially as the mayor arrives late in an already busy Democratic arena.
Although he has traveled in recent months to test the waters before showing up – notably in the state of Iowa where he was to make his first campaign stopover on Friday – the polls, so far dominated by the former Vice President Joe Biden, and Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders, have been disheartening to him.
A study published in early April by Quinnipiac University indicated that 76% of New Yorkers did not want him to go into battle.
But “the poll that counts is the election,” said M. de Blasio on Thursday. “It’s not where you start, it’s where you end.”
Married since 1994 to Chirlane McCray, with whom he had two children, he remains popular in the African-American community. But Hispanics are divided and whites are mostly critical of his tenure, even though he was easily re-elected for four years in 2017, for lack of big names to compete with him.
Close to Bernie Sanders
Elected for in November 2013 to succeed billionaire Michael Bloomberg, on the promise of reducing inequalities in a city where they are often blatant, this ex-supporter of the Sandinistas of Nicaragua defended before others positions very to the left, close to those of Bernie Sanders, now in vogue among Democrats.
Chaining the interventions for his first day of campaigning, he spelled out the measures intended to reduce the inequalities adopted under his mandate in the American financial capital: free kindergarten for all, free health coverage for those who do not have it, salary increase minimum of 15 dollars an hour, pioneering laws to fight against climate change and building emissions.
And faced with the numerous arrests of illegal immigrants by the Trump administration, he has stepped up pro-migrant measures, claiming the image of New York’s city-world.
In addition to the 22 other candidates already in the running, the mayor will have to face New York media fierce towards him: they denounce pell-mell his lack of tangible results in the face of poverty, his lack of charisma, his daily back and forth in his ex-fiefdom of Brooklyn to do his gym, or his bickering with the Democratic governor of the state, Andrew Cuomo.
The cover of the New York Post, tabloid that has always hated him, on Thursday showed people laughing at the announcement of his candidacy.
But Bill de Blasio recalls that no one believed in his chances of winning the town hall in 2013.
Then little-known city councilor, he created a surprise by garnering 73% of the vote against Republican Joe Lhota, becoming the first Democratic mayor of New York since 1993.
16/05/2019 20:15:41 – New York (AFP) – © 2019 AFP
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