City Council Member Bill de Blasio made it official on Sunday: He is running for Brooklyn Borough President. Mr. de Blasio was widely expected to run. He joins Council Member Charles Barron in the race. Others, including Council Member Dominic Recchia are also expected to enter the race to replace Marty Markowitz. Mr. Markowitz, in turn, is expected to seek another office. Mr. de Blasio is barred from seeking another Council term because of term limits and Mr. Markowitz is barred from another term as Borough President. Mr. de Blasio was elected to the City Council in 2001. He was Hillary Clinton’s campaign manager in 2000 and served in the Dinkins Administration.
de Blasio has been raising his profile in the borough this year. He made the work of architect Robert Scarano an issue in the context of the 360 Smith Street development, calling on the state to strip Mr. Scarano of his certification and has organized “town hall” meetings in Carroll Gardens. He has also sponsored an electronics recycling measure that would be a model nationally. Mr. de Blasio has held a series of meetings with Brooklyn bloggers and online journalists to discuss his position on issues.
During a meeting last month at the Tea Lounge in Park Slope, Mr. de Blasio answered questions ranging from rezoning Carroll Gardens to his support of Atlantic Yards. At the time, he said he was still “looking” into a run for Borough President. “A lot could be done with that position to try to bring an approach to development that would mediate these issues,” he said of the Borough presidency and quality of life issues related to construction and development.
“I think the world has changed a lot since the day Marty came into office,” he said. “It feels like it was decades ago. The next borough presidents is going to deal with increasing challenges.”
2 responses so far ↓
1 Anonymous // Oct 29, 2007 at 4:25 pm
Has anyones seen the blogs DeBlasio is trying to cleverly woo with his rhetoric? The “larger-than-life” Brooklyn blog world does not seem too (cough cough) thrilled that Mr. DeBlasio aspires to an even higher political disaster than the one he occupies as City Councilman. There is a lot of anti-De Blasio sentiment out there, and Carroll Gardens is one of several darn good places to start looking for it. It seems he has this habit of saying one thing (the thing the constituents most want to hear) then never, ever, ever, ever doing it but promising he will forever and ever. He used to be known as “pro-development” in his “Atlantic Yards Years” but now in Carroll Gardens and other Downtown Brooklyn communities he is quickly morphing into what people are referring to simply as “anti-small/real people”.
2 Anonymous // Nov 3, 2007 at 11:12 am
The majority of de Blasio’s constituents oppose the size and scale of the Atlantic Yards project but the “Pol” de Blasio has always supported this ill concieved idea.
I would call on all voters -Dems and independents -to toss out de Blasio and Markowitz on their duffs. THANK GOD FOR TERM LIMITS!
Oh yeah,. if you run into de Blasio ask him why he couldn’t get a mailbox put on Ocean Parkway for some elderly residents. Or why it took the State Assembly member Brennan to have a townhall meeting about the horrendous Kenningston Post Office. And good ‘ol Bill de Blasio showed up 45 minutes late to the meeting and all he could say was that it was a Federal problem, sorry.
Well it took a State Assembly member to take some action. de Blasio I’m afraid is just a slimy politician. Go listen to him and see for yourselves.
I plan on supporting Barron or anyone else that has a chance of beating de Blasio. It will be a disaster for this borough if he gets elected. Believe me, I’ve been one of his constituents for his whole time on the council