Bill de Blasio seems to badly want to leave New York

Bill de Blasio has never pretended to love New York City.

Since he arrived in City Hall, the mayor and 2020 candidate has avoided both highbrow Manhattan cultural events and everyday traditions, and constantly looked for ways to get out of the city. That's probably why de Blasio is "lame-ducking himself two and a half years before his time with a vanity candidacy he couldn’t resist," The New York Times reports in a profile published Tuesday.

De Blasio grew up in Massachusetts, so he wasn't born with — and never gained — "an unbelievable love for everything that is New York City," Alicia Glen, a former deputy mayor under de Blasio, tells the Times. Instead of popping up at events and restaurants around the city, he and his wife Chirlaine McCray prefer to "watch reruns of The Wire," he said once.

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But as the Times puts it, aides "have long observed that [de Blasio] seems to grow happier with each mile of distance from the city he leads." He almost addressed a Democratic dinner in Ohio just six days after his first term began in 2013, and has privately lamented that "a United States senator has got the best job on the face of the Earth. All they do is pontificate and travel." And unlike presidential candidates who try to build a fan base at home before they hit the national stage, de Blasio has had consultants building his national image from the time he took office — something that hasn't quite paid off as he fails to gain traction in the 2020 race.

Read more at The New York Times.