Mayor De Blasio Fighting Bad Ol’ Days Perception

New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio is having a really bad summer. He has been unable to shake a media-driven perception that the Big Apple’s crime-and-homelessness-filled days are returning.

Homicide and homelessness numbers are up only modestly but that hasn’t stopped almost daily tabloid pictures of bedraggled men urinating in the streets or bathing in public fountains. One tab has adopted the standing headline “Rotting Apple” and launched a website — deblasio.fail — that counts down the hours until his term ends at the end of 2017.

All of that comes amid a series of political setbacks, including a dispute with Uber that made him the target of millions of dollars in attack ads and an about-face on hiring new police officers that seemed like a cave to his police commissioner and City Council. And most notably, there was de Blasio’s diatribe against the governor, which only heightened the tension between the two men that has now spilled into a turf war amid a deadly Legionnaires’ outbreak in the Bronx.

While the mayor’s allies have steadfastly defended his record, de Blasio’s sudden losing streak has taken a toll, sending his poll numbers plunging.

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6 Comments

  • DeClasse' Intellectual

    Speaking words of wisdom: “The more things change–the more things remain the same!”

  • He's having a bad summer?

    How about the terrible crime he’s encouraging, by not cracking down on quality of life crimes? Nothing done about what he called knock-out GAME! Nothing done about the horrid increase in muggings and attacks in Crown Heights.
    deblasio.fail — We should all be counting down the hours until his term ends at the end of 2017.
    Remember to vote out all his cronies in the primary in September.

  • Disaster

    DeBlasio has been an utter disaster, he will go down in history as another Dinkens or Carter.

  • Milhouse

    The perception is not media-driven, it’s reality-driven.

    Homicide and homelessness numbers are up only modestly but that hasn’t stopped almost daily tabloid pictures of bedraggled men urinating in the streets or bathing in public fountains.

    Here the reporter’s dishonesty is on display. Let’s suppose that both homicide and homelessness have not significantly increased; how does that imply that the incidence of “bedraggled men urinating in the streets or bathing in public fountains” has also not dramatically increased? Why does he present these two alleged facts as incongruous, when in fact they’re perfectly consistent?

  • true

    we rarely hear of him in the news. what is he doing? The city really seems to have issues which aren’t being resolved, there is so much to do and he is……too Liberal to get it done.

  • DeClasse' Intellectual

    #2/3 Unless a major disaster would occur, they will vote him back into office and the liberal Jews will be amongst his supporters