Mayor Bill de Blasio is up for re-election in 2017, and his first term has certainly been a doozy. From eating pizza with a knife and fork to police officers turning their backs on him to chastising the press to scandal after scandal, one would think–especially amid all the controversies, staffers leaving, etc.–de Blasio will be a one-term mayor. But a recent Marist poll shows that the mayor actually has a fairly decent approval rating: “Four in ten registered voters in New York City, 40%, approve of how Mayor Bill de Blasio is doing his job. This includes 9% who give the mayor an excellent rating and 31% who give him a good one. 56% of voters citywide report de Blasio is doing either a fair, 34%, or poor job, 22%, in office. Three percent are unsure.”
About a year ago, de Blasio’s approval rating fell below 30 percent and not that long ago rumors were circulating the Democratic party would put up a challenger to de Blasio in 2017 primaries. Now, some political pundits are saying it’s likely he will win re-election.
It’s important not to underscore the number of scandals haunting New York City’s mayor. His political action group, Campaign for One New York, is being investigated for shady campaign financing–there are about five different pending investigations, which branch in all sorts of directions. There was the Lower East side nursing home scandal, where a facility for the elderly was sold for luxury condos after city officials removed a deed restriction on the property to do so. The real scandal was that de Blasio staffers tried covering their tracks and didn’t cooperate with a Department of Investigations inquiry.
It seems that it’s the age of political scandal for New York politics. Granted, Chris Christie is New Jersey’s Governor, but Bridgegate affected New Yorkers. Governor Andrew Cuomo, who recently was implicated in Bridgegate, is being investigated by federal prosecutors for reasons related to his shutting down of the Moreland Commission, an ethics board created by Cuomo that ended up turning on its creator. Donald Trump is being Donald Trump. And former New York state senator, former secretary of state and now presidential candidate Hillary Clinton is having emails leaked left and right, revealing bits of information alarming to voters.
Is it that there are just so many scandals, so many questions about political leaders that voters just tune it all out?
For this podcast, I’d like to ask three to four voters, particularly Millennial voters, how they felt at various points of de Blasio’s administration, taking into account the good and the bad. Has there been a trajectory in how they feel about Bill de Blasio? Do these scandals really impact how voters feel about their elected officials?
These are some points in de Blasio’s administration I’d like to highlight:
- Inauguration
- Institution & expansion of Universal Pre-K
- Police officers turn their backs in protest (law enforcement issues)
- Campaign for One New York Investigations
- Response to 23rd street bombing
- Present day
The structure of the podcast will be similar to this Freakonomics podcast with Ben Bernanke. Essentially, podcast producers ask Bernanke to look back at his time as chairman of the Federal Reserve Bank and give himself a grade. Sound bites from public addresses are interwoven with Bernanke being interviewed in order to drive a compelling narrative for the podcast. For my piece, I want to use a similar format: take sound bites from public addresses from or given by de Blasio on the outlined subjects and interweave reactions from voters.
Ideally, I will source voters from across the political spectrum so as to ascertain a variety of answers and insights.
Would they re-elect Bill de Blasio for a second term?