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AP

Bill De Blasio Sworn In as 109th Mayor of NYC

Bill de Blasio took the oath of office administered by former President Bill Clinton on Wednesday, formally becoming the 109th mayor of New York City while pledging to pursue a sweeping liberal agenda.

The moment was the pinnacle of de Blasio’s unlikely political rise as a symbol of restoration for the city’s Democrats, who outnumber Republicans 6-to-1 in one of the nation’s most liberal cites yet have not controlled City Hall since 1993.

De Blasio, 52, was first sworn in 12 hours earlier at a brief modest ceremony outside his home in Brooklyn’s Park Slope neighborhood. Flanked only by his wife, Chirlane McCray, and their two teenage children, he was administered the oath by state Attorney General Eric Schneiderman, signed the official paperwork and, with a broad smile, paid the requisite $9 fee to the city clerk.

The events at City Hall were conducted on a far grander scale.

Clinton was joined by his wife, ex-Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, who is a presumptive White House front-runner in 2016. Another presidential candidate, Gov. Andrew Cuomo, also sat nearby, as did former Mayor Michael Bloomberg, just hours into his first day as a private citizen after spending 12 years in office.

Thousands of people braved cold New Year’s Day temperatures to salute the new mayor, who is slated to hold a receiving line in City Hall after the ceremony.

Two other Democrats were also sworn in to hold citywide offices: Letitia James as public advocate and Scott Stringer as comptroller.

The celebrities in attendance were not just confined to the political world: Singer Harry Belafonte opened the event, while actresses Cynthia Nixon and Patina Miller had starring roles. Scores of “everyday New Yorkers” took part, including 11-year-old Dasani, who was featured in The New York Times’ multipart series on homelessness from which de Blasio has repeatedly said he has drawn inspiration.

His first test in office will likely be delivered by Mother Nature: A significant snowstorm is expected to hit the five boroughs Thursday and Friday.

De Blasio, an unabashed liberal who touts his Brooklyn roots, takes office at a crucial juncture for the city of 8.4 million people.

As New York sets record lows for crime and highs for tourism, and as the nearly completed One World Trade Center rises above the Manhattan skyline, symbolizing the city’s comeback from the Sept. 11, 2001, terror attacks, many New Yorkers have felt left behind during the city’s renaissance.

De Blasio reached out to those he contended were lost during the often Manhattan-centric Bloomberg administration, and he called for a tax increase on the wealthy to pay for universal pre-kindergarten.

He also pledged to improve economic opportunities in minority and working-class neighborhoods and decried allegations of abuse under the police department’s stop-and-frisk policy. He and his new police commissioner, William Bratton, have pledged to moderate the use of the tactic, which supporters say drives down crime but which critics claim unfairly singles out blacks and Hispanics.

His tenure will be closely watched by liberals throughout the country eager to see how the nation’s largest city may be reshaped.

De Blasio’s inauguration culminates a remarkable political journey. For more than a decade, he was a political insider, working not just for the Clintons but also for Cuomo and former Mayor David Dinkins. He was then elected to the City Council, representing his home neighborhood for two terms.

He served as public advocate, the city’s official watchdog, and used the obscure and underfunded post to launch his mayoral bid. He was mired in fourth for much of the primary before the candidacies of several better-known opponents — including Christine Quinn and Anthony Weiner — imploded. He then coasted to a general election rout over his Republican opponent, Joe Lhota, a former deputy mayor under Rudolph Giuliani.

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17 Comments

  • declasse' intelectual

    what is going to be key is how he deals with crime in heavily mixed ethnic regions such as crown heights and so forth and how much will he interfere in personnel lives and decisions. He announced already his support for the attack on Bris Milah

  • to#1

    You said the same thing about O, yet look up the stock market and its RECORD HIGHS for 2013.

    Get your facts straight.

  • wow

    i mean the guy has two kids.

    one an admitted drug addict, the other a drop out.

    so where is his greatness, if he cant deal with two kids?

    in addition if his daughter was taking and dealing drugs why wasn’t she arrested?

    he is a very poor example of what it takes to be a parent.

    • wow

      Where is the greatness of all the choshuve chasidim, mashpiim, shluchim etc. that have children who go off, use drugs etc?

      COME ON!

  • dl

    I hope that he can represent all of us in this city….as the Rebbe said something similar once.

  • The Right Scoop

    Mayor DiBlasio promises to tackle NYC’s ‘INEQUALITY CRISIS’

    If you read this blog (therightscoop.com) and you live in New York City, do yourself a favor like Rush Limbaugh did and get out. All this solving of the so-called inequality crisis will come at a price: your money. You think you pay high taxes now? Just wait. It’s all these totalitarians know how to do is to keep spending more of your money:

    CNS NEWS – President Bill Clinton administered the oath of office to Democrat Bill de Blasio on Wednesday, at the formal swearing-in ceremony for New York City’s 109th mayor.

    De Blasio thanked his own family, then promised “our larger New York family” that he would end what he called the city’s “inequality crisis.”

    He said his mission reaches “deeper” than keeping neighborhoods safe and streets clean: “We are called to put an end to economic and social inequalities that threaten to unravel the city we love. And so today, we commit to a new progressive direction in New York.”

    …

    De Blasio said he will:

    – expand paid sick leave to an additional 300,000 New Yorkers;

    – require “big developers” to build more affordable housing;

    – reduce the number of hospital closures and expand community health centers into poor neighborhoods;

    – “reform” the city’s stop-and-frisk policy;

    – impose a five-year tax hike on the “very wealthy” to fund full-day universal pre-k and after-school programs for every middle school student.

    De Blasio said people earning between $500,000 and one million dollars a year would see their taxes increase by an average of $973 a year. “[W]e do not ask more of the wealthy to punish success. We do it to create more success stories,” he said.

  • The deblasios in America artificially keep minorities

    Iow class, they lowlife politicians thrive on poverty low information voters.

  • Boruch Hashem

    Finally an ehrliche Democrat to represent this city, which has a deep Liberal Yiddishe tradition going all the way back to 1890, when my elter Zeide stepped off the boat after fleeing the CONSERVATIVE Czar Yemach Shemoy vezichro.

    The yidden have had enough of conservatism. We don’t want to conserve the traditions of the blood libels and pogroms. We came to America because we believed in equality and religious freedom, not the government imposed “conservative values” from the galochim in Rome.

    Shehechiyonu vekiyimonu vehigiyonu lazman haze.