Mayor DeBlasio strode into office like a progressive torch-bearer of change and transparency, but he has become a befogged and limping leader with a lousy approval rating, mid-term polls show.
The mayor’s fans have faded, according to a new Marist poll, and his disapprovers have vaulted to the highest point since he took office in January 2014, reports a Quinniapiac University survey. That poll also found only about one-third of those queried said their quality of life was “good” or “very good,” — a record low since it first began asking the question nearly 20 years ago.
Job performance matters, and DeBlasio’s failed policies, imaginary triumphs, and vapid wanderlust — 33 taxpayer-funded days in 22 months spent away on unofficial business — have precipitated his free fall. Let’s count some of the ways:
• The mayor’s futile crusade against stop-and-frisk encounters emboldened criminals, discouraged cops, and increased murders and shootings in the city.
• He buoyed police haters by musing publicly if his biracial son was safe from cops, causing law officers to turn their backs on him and their union chief to accuse him of “running a f—— revolution.”
• He congratulated himself for “changing the status quo of education,” while more than 90 percent of all students failed math and English in 293 city schools this year.
• Albany sent him to Coventry after he accused Gov. Cuomo of holding a “vendetta” against the city.
• Named and anonymous sources lambasted him as “lazy,” a “micro-manager,” “sanctimonious,” and “racist” in an unflattering Vanity Fair article.
DeBlasio once stood for no Bill-oney. As a Bloomberg-era public advocate he railed against municipal misconduct and handed derelict city agencies failing grades on “transparency report cards.” But these days he shuns reporters unless his flacks have pre-approved their questions, his shadiness unseemly for a politician who campaigned vigorously for clarity.
Bill DeBlasio has morphed into the Mayor of Murk, but he can still turn back the clock and demand the same standards of himself as he did of his predecessor. How about it, Bill?
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