The sound and the fury of Bill de Blasio

The populist New Yorker is riding a wave of liberal anger straight to the mayor's office

Bill de Blasio
(Image credit: (Dennis Van Tine /Retna Ltd./Corbis))

In an outcome that few but Twitter persona Real Kaplan would have predicted a few months ago, Public Advocate Bill de Blasio has run away with the Democratic primary in the New York City mayor's race, crossing the 40 percent threshold needed to avoid a runoff.

With 97 percent of precincts reporting, initial results show De Blasio garnering just over 40 percent of the primary vote, compared with 26 percent for former Comptroller Bill Thompson and a measly 15 percent for City Council Speaker Christine Quinn, who was once considered the front-runner due to her long and fruitful relationship with outgoing Mayor Michael Bloomberg. (N.B.: Final results could knock de Blasio below the 40 percent cut-off, which would lead to a runoff with Thompson.)

Subscribe to The Week

Escape your echo chamber. Get the facts behind the news, plus analysis from multiple perspectives.

SUBSCRIBE & SAVE
https://cdn.mos.cms.futurecdn.net/flexiimages/jacafc5zvs1692883516.jpg

Sign up for The Week's Free Newsletters

From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.

From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.

Sign up
Ryu Spaeth

Ryu Spaeth is deputy editor at TheWeek.com. Follow him on Twitter.