De Blasio with Bratton, his police commissioner and one-time Giuliani’s
Mayor Bill De Blasio is reading the wrong polls and if he doesn’t change his course he will indeed be a one-term mayor.
If he’s hoping to veer right now and then pivot back towards the constituency that put him in office — African American and Latino New Yorkers– he’s badly mistaken.
Within the next two years another serious challenger from the Democratic Party will emerge. It could be: Public Advocate Letitia James; Comptroller Scott Stringer, or; some other candidate.
De Blasio did the right thing and asserted the rights of demonstrators who protested police brutality, including the arm-lynching of Eric Garner and the non-indictment of the officer who killed him. He was right to stand up to PBA president Pat Lynch’s thuggery when he claimed the blood of two officers slain was in the mayor’s hands.
But now De Blasio seems desperate to reassure White voters that he is a “tough on crime” mayor. That he’s a supporter of the “broken windows” policing which encourages aggressive policing against low-income New Yorkers; primarily African Americans, a community that suffers from double-digit unemployment and also lacks accumulated wealth.
It’s broken windows that led to Garner’s broken neck — at the hands of an over aggressive maniacal NYPD officer Daniel Pantaleo who strangled him from behind. And what was Garner’s “crime”? Allegedly selling loose cigarettes to earn a few extra dollars to support his family. Not even cocaine dealers get strangled like that.
When the “tough on crime” label was used by Rudolph Giuliani everyone knew what it meant. That he would keep the “natives” in their place. Under Giuliani’s watch New York saw the brutal killings of several unarmed Black men including: Amadou Diallo and Patrick Dorismond.
Aggressive and discriminatory policing, including stop-and-frisk almost exclusively of Blacks and Latinos, continued through the Michael Bloomberg three-terms regime.
De Blasio was elected because New Yorkers, particularly African Americans and Latinos rejected apartheid policing — even though polling shows that White voters support stop-and-frisk. De Blasio promised to stop the abuse of the tactic; that’s why he became mayor.
Aggressive policing should never be a substitute for failure to address economic and social inequities in society.
Nationally African American unemployment stands at more than double the rate of the White population. This disparity has been consistent at least for the last 50 mores and more.
When White unemployment was at 5% in 1964 it was 10% in the Black community. Recent figures show that when White unemployment was at 4.7% in the Black community it was at 11%. And mind you these are official figures. Among young Black males of a certain age range it has been estimated at over 30%.
So it’s disingenuous for mayor De Blasio to tout plans along with police commissioner Bill Bratton to flood certain neighborhoods with police over the summer without addressing job creation and how to combat unemployment in African American communities.
Mayor De Blasio can cement his legacy by shattering the structural barriers that continues to condemn African Americans in conditions of high unemployment. He can start by ensuring that African American -owned businesses (and Latino-owned ones too) get their fair share of the $18 billion that the city spends with vendors each year.
In October a report by Comptroller Stringer showed that Minority Women Business Enterprises (MWBEs) got less than 4% of that spending; which means African American owned businesses could be getting 1% or less. This in a city that’s over 25% African American.
De Blasio should borrow a page from what the late mayor Maynard Jackson did in Atlanta. When he got into office Black owned businesses were getting 1% of city contracts. He immediately mandated that they get 25%; five years later they were getting 40%.
Tens of thousands of jobs were created for African Americans, spending power increased dramatically and a powerful Black middle class was created.
So it’s not just about reassuring White New Yorkers that a mayor will be “tough” on the natives.
And much has been written about in recent weeks over the mayor’s decline in support from White voters as polling shows.
But many of those stories have been burying the lead.
Recent polls show that White voters support for De Blasio has declined to 32% from 50%, an 18-points drop.
The same polling shows that support for the mayor from Latino voters dropped to 49% from 85% a decline of 36 points.
And among Black voters the collapse was 37 points; from 96% to 59%.
New York’s ethnic voters continue to increase and will contribute an even larger share of the vote going forward.
Those are the buried leads. Those are the polls De Blasio and anyone else who hopes to be mayor of New York City must be most concerned about.
