New York’s liberal turn

Liberal populist Bill de Blasio claimed victory in this week’s Democratic mayoral primary in New York with barely 40 percent of the vote—enough to prevent an automatic runoff against second-place Bill Thompson, but not enough to avoid a recount. De Blasio ran a “Tale of Two Cities” campaign, promising to raise taxes on the wealthy and to end the police’s stop-and-frisk tactics. His win was a rebuke to outgoing Mayor Michael Bloomberg. “The mayor has been increasingly unwilling to address inequality in this city,” de Blasio said, “and this is the central issue of our times.”

Former front-runner Christine Quinn, whose campaign never caught fire, came in third, and Anthony Weiner, torpedoed by a renewed sexting scandal, finished fifth. Joe Lhota, a former top aide to Mayor Rudy Giuliani, won the Republican primary and will face the Democratic winner in November. In the city comptroller race, Scott Stringer defeated Eliot Spitzer, who resigned as New York governor in 2008 after a prostitution scandal.

“Economic liberalism in America is not dead yet,” said Eric Alterman in TheNation.com. De Blasio’s proudly progressive platform, including a promise to tax the rich to fund universal pre-K education, found broad appeal across the city. Liberalism isn’t just reviving in New York, either: “In Los Angeles, Eric Garcetti recently won a mayoral campaign fought on similar lines.” Could a change be in the air?

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Let’s hope not, said the NationalReview.com in an editorial. The last time someone of “Bill de Blasio’s bent” became New York mayor, there were 2,000 murders a year, economic stagnation, “and a general sense of ungovernability.” Now, he’s proposing a multibillion-dollar “mugging” of New York taxpayers that’s sure to drive off investors and send New York back to the dark days of the 1970s.

Blame Bloomberg, said Reid Wilson in WashingtonPost.com. Though his name wasn’t on the ballot, middle-class and low-income voters had grown tired of the billionaire businessman’s arrogant ways. The city’s voters have also become fed up with a local economy in which the rich keep getting much richer while everyone else is struggling, said theNew York Daily News. If Lhota hopes to have any chance of winning in a heavily Democratic city, he has to figure out a way to address the voters’ “economic primal scream.”