Bill de Blasio links agenda to New York’s liberal icons
Pledging on Friday to oversee an activist government that will touch the lives of everyday New Yorkers, Mayor Bill de Blasio linked his administration’s work in fighting inequality to the accomplishments of a trio of liberal titans from the city’s past: Al Smith, Franklin Delano Roosevelt and Fiorello LaGuardia.
De Blasio, a Democrat who took office in January, compared the city’s current economic plight in the aftermath of the Great Recession to some of its more dire crises of the past century, believing it calls for a sweeping liberal agenda.
“Against that backdrop, we come into office with the notion that our forbearers are exemplars,” de Blasio said in a major speech. “They did things boldly, did things audaciously, they did things quickly, because there was no other choice. They didn’t wait.”