There have been tall presidents, there have been left-wing New York mayors, and there have been publicly awkward people in both roles - but there has never, ever, been a mainstream presidential candidate like Bill de Blasio.

For a start, it isn't even his real name. Bill de Blasio was born Warren Wilhelm Jr., later became Warren de Blasio-Wilhelm, and in 2001 - just as he ran for elected office - adopted his current identity.

It is hardly the only thing which makes the 6' 5", two-term mayor an unlikely White House contender.

He is personally unpopular in his own back yard, he alienated Hillary Clinton in the 2016 election, and even his wife Chirlane McCray said it was not the time for a run when she was asked in January, then spent months walking back her comment.

His record in the city has attracted opprobrium from all sides: homelessness has soared; the federal government has taken control of much of the city's public housing stock; a schools initiative was ended after $1 billion was spent with nothing to show; rank-and-file police protested him; and his wife's mental health initiative has become a fiasco.

But de Blasio is now on the national stage, one which he has been publicly clamoring for since the day he became New York mayor.

That stage is likely to bring fresh scrutiny to his rise.

Family: New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio, his wife, Chirlane McCray, and his children, Dante de Blasio and Chiara de Blasio at the city's Pride march in 2015. He is unlikely to have been pleased by the 'thank you Governor Cuomo' sign; the two feud frequently

De Blasio with wife Chirlane McCray and children Dante and Chiara during his time as a New York city council member. He later lost the beard

And this is how I fight climate change: Bill de Blasio has faced accusations of hypocrisy for traveling by SUV and telling others to cut their carbon emissions

SUV trip: De Blasio returns to his native Brooklyn to work out at the YMCA near the properties he owns there - an 11-mile trip by SUV

He was born in New York under the name Warren Wilhelm Jr. His German-American father was a war hero, and also an alcoholic who would eventually kill himself. De Blasio at 21 became Warren de Blasio-Wilhelm, then solely used the family name of his Italian-American mother, and finally changed to using his family nickname of Bill, making that official in 2001.

Born in New York, he was brought up largely in Massachusetts, and as a result is a lifelong fan of the Boston Red Sox - probably the team most hated by New York baseball fans.

He went to work for New York City Council after his undergraduate degree, then became a professional political organizer and even traveled to Nicaragua in support of the left-wing Sandinista government - although would later claim he was not supportive of all their policies.

That flipped into a political campaigning career, working to elect New York's first black mayor, David Dinkins, for whom he became a City Hall aide, and to re-elect Harlem's Charles Rangel to Congress.

Then he worked for the Clinton administration and in 2000 managed Hillary's successful run for the New York Senate seat, something which seemed to put him into the family's inner circle.

His time with Dinkins led to his unlikely marriage to Chirlane McCray, who served as a speech-writer for prominent New York officials as well as a part-time poet.

De Blasio ran Hillary Clinton's Senate campaign in New York and seemed to be a fixture in the family's inner circle - but managed to turn that relationship toxic when she ran for the White House

And what happened next: Bernie Sanders swore in de Blasio for his second term in 2018 after the mayor's fall out with the Clintons

She penned a 1979 essay, 'I Am a Lesbian,' about her sexuality and coming out as a gay black woman at a time when many Americans kept it from the public sphere.

McCray, six and and a half years de Blasio's senior, would later tell Essence magazine that she made her her relationship with her husband possible 'by putting aside the assumptions I had about the form and package my love would come in.'

McCray does not use the label bisexual.

During his political rise she became a top confidante. The couple have two children, Chiara and Dante.

WHO'S BACKING DE BLASIO? NOT THESE PEOPLE... MEET THE MAYOR'S ENEMIES Hillary Clinton Fell out with his former boss in 2015 by failing to speedily endorse her presidential campaign Andrew Cuomo New York governor has feuded non-stop with the city mayor Bernie Sanders Swore in de Blasio in 2018; now gets rewarded by the mayor running against him for 2020 Central Park horse and carriage drivers De Blasio vowed to ban them during his 2013 campaign, claiming it was cruel to animals, then failed but has managed a long-running low-level feud with them Groundhog fans Anti-animal cruelty mayor De Blasio dropped Charlotte the Staten Island Zoo groundhog on the borough's groundhog day 2014. The animal died a week later. De Blasio watched 2015's groundhog from six feet away NYPD rank-and-file Turned their backs on him at funeral of two cops gunned down in the city Anna Wintour De Blasio turned down an invite to the Met Gala, run by the Vogue editor-in-chief, this year saying: 'It's an elite gathering; I’m not an elite guy.' Whoopi Goldberg Roasted him on The View after he announced his presidency Anyone called Trump Donald, Don Jr. and Eric have all hit the mayor this week after he held a stunt press conference in the lobby of Trump Tower Advertisement

In 2001, he struck out on his own electoral career, running for New York City Council representing the area around his home in Park Slope.

He and McCray own two brownstone townhouses in the famously liberal area of Brooklyn, a wealthy enclave which has a food co-operative known for its infighting over whether or not to boycott Israel and a Whole Foods where actress Maggie Gyllenhaal complained about the electric car charger being broken.

From the city council he ran for Public Advocate, an unusual office which is second in the city's pecking order and has little executive function but gives the holder a high media profile if they want it.

Winning that race in 2009, he then threw himself into a packed Democratic primary field for the mayoral election to succeed billionaire Mike Bloomberg.

The other runners included Anthony Weiner, who self-destructed in his second sexting scandal during the race, and de Blasio won.

He campaigned for mayor on a 'Tale of Two Cities,' promising to tackle inequality in a New York where Manhattan and his area of Brooklyn had boomed thanks to financial services and plunging crime, but where the outer boroughs were, he said, seeing little benefit.

Successfully elected in 2013 on the back of the lowest turnout in recorded city history, he set about delivering his progressive vision - which had included tackling homelessness.

But in fact homelessness in the city kept going up, and rough sleepers, who had all but vanished in Rudy Giuliani and Mike Bloomberg's tough-on-crime era, returned in droves to the streets and the subways.

De Blasio first tried to claim numbers were down, and was accused of rigging the counts to minimize the problem, then eventually in 2015 admitted there was a crisis but called it a 'perception problem and a reality problem.'

If anyone had a perception problem, the city's tabloids pointed out, it was de Blasio, who rarely took the subway, unlike Bloomberg, and in any case was notoriously late for meetings.

He was even late for the memorial to the 265 victims of the November 2001 Belle Harbor air crash - prompting the New York Post to give him an alarm clock.

Lateness was one charge, but charges of hypocrisy were a constant attack from his critics.

Pro-Trump protesters crashed his Green New Deal rally At Trump Tower in New York City this week - and management blasted Sinatra at high volume

Take education: his 'tale of two cities' included an attack on the way the city's elite high schools select their students and a long-running reform promise which has still not happened, long after his son Dante graduated from one of the schools and won a place at Yale.

He has called for an increase in rent controls, but when it comes to his own tenants - he rents out his Park Slope properties while living in Gracie Mansion, the mayor's official residence - he hiked up their rents.

Most notoriously of all, he has preached for years about the need to change lifestyles because of the challenge of climate change.

But virtually every weekday, he is driven 11 miles in a convoy of three gas-guzzling police SUVs so he can work out in the YMCA near his Brooklyn properties, instead of using a gym near his Upper East Side residence.

The gym is, incidentally, close to a subway station, and the mayor's 9am workouts suggest he doesn't get to his City Hall desk until much later in the morning.

The police SUVs have spawned another minor hypocrisy soap opera in recent weeks, with the revelation he was involved in a crash in Harlem in 2015 where his car was on the wrong side of the street with siren and lights on to get him to an event.

The crash was covered up, internal police text messages revealed, and the mayor spoke out against delivery drivers on bicycles using the wrong side of the street, undeterred by having done it himself.

As a bonus for those looking for double standards, reducing casualties on city streets has been one of his causes, under the slogan Vision Zero.

His other high-profile initiatives have also come consistently unstuck.

When he took office he forswore contributions from lobbyists, then set up a vehicle to take them anyway.

The fund, called the Campaign for One New York, landed him in the crosshairs of a corruption probe, as federal prosecutor Preet Bharara - an Obama appointee - looked into whether de Blasio gave favors to dubious donors to the slush fund.

Handily, the Supreme Court raised the bar on political corruption prosecutions before Bharara decided on charges, but the U.S. Attorney slammed the mayor's administration anyway, saying de Blasio 'made or directed inquiries to relevant city agencies' for donors.

Bharara was hardly the only Democrat de Blasio has managed to offend: spectacularly, he has even alienated the Clintons.

Despite having run Hillary's 2000 Senate campaign, he declined to publicly endorse her in 2015 fast enough for her inner circle's liking. WikiLeaks revealed the cold shoulder he got afterwards despite a stream of emails he sent to John Podesta, Clinton's campaign manager.

Then he decided to burn the bridges completely, getting Bernie Sanders to swear him in in January 2018 - rewarding that gesture now by running against the veteran democratic socialist.

If there is one Democrat he loves to hate, and who loves to hate him, it is the pugnacious New York governor Andrew Cuomo, who has made big footing de Blasio a hobby.

When aides whispered that de Blasio had siestas built into his schedule, Cuomo mocked: 'I'm not a napper really, I never have been.'

Former friends turned enemies, no slight is too small to be remembered, and Cuomo blamed de Blasio for Cynthia Nixon's high-profile, but failed, primary run against him in 2017.

The governor even broke decades of precedent to station state troopers in the city in a move said to be done simply to irritate the mayor, who controls the NYPD.

Not that the NYPD and de Blasio have been fast friends anyway. De Blasio campaigned in his 2013 election on ending'stop-and-frisk' and highlighting racial disparities in policing.

In the aftermath of 2014's violence in Ferguson and the 'I can't breathe' death in Staten Island of Eric Garner during an NYPD arrest, de Blasio said he had to talk to his biracial son 'about the dangers he may face' and 'how to take special care in any encounter he has with the police officers who are there to protect him.'

The tensions erupted into the open that December when NYPD Officers Wenjian Liu and Rafael Ramos were gunned down in Queens by a career criminal who said before the death: 'I'm putting wings on pigs today.'

When he went to pay respects to the dead officers, rank-and-file cops turned their backs on the mayor, and repeated the gesture at the funerals.

Gesture of contempt: Cops turned their backs on de Blasio at the funeral of murdered NYPD officer Wenjian Liu over his rhetoric on race and policing

De Blasio's fortunes as mayor, however, have not been hit by New York descending into its crime-scarred past, and his record on keeping crime low has seen the murder rate fall to its lowest-ever recorded level.

That has helped the city boom economically, and the de Blasio years have seen real estate values spiral and a building boom in Manhattan, Brooklyn and Queens.

But the boom has brought its own issues, with de Blasio complaining about private enterprise and its effect of the city.

'If I had my druthers, the city government would determine every single plot of land, how development would proceed. And there would be very stringent requirements around income levels and rents,' he told New York Magazine as he campaigned for a second term - red meat for Republicans if he wins the nomination.

But when he got involved in one very high-profile development plan, it hardly went to script: the city's notorious falling-out with Amazon over its HQ2.

First he was part of wooing Jeff Bezos' company's massive investment, with incentives which included city tax abatements as part of a state-and-city subsidy package worth more than $3 billion.

When the newly-ascendant Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, among others, objected to the scale of subsidies for the promised 25,000 new jobs, de Blasio pleaded with Bezos to stick to the plan.

When that failed, he said Amazon 'threw away' the opportunity - and suggested the billionaire's affair might have had something to do with the decision to snub New York.

Tangling with the rich and powerful could, of course, be a good career move for a man wanting to be a progressive champion.

There are, however, more serious questions closer to home about his administration's competence when it came to the city's most vulnerable which are likely to be a focus for rival Democrats' opposition researchers.

One of his promises during his first campaign was to make sure the Administration of Children's Services did its job properly - but on his watch a series of children under its care died from abuse.

The city's vast stock of public housing is now under the supervision of a federal watchdog, with a repair backlogs running into the decades, and rotten and damp houses, lead paint and broken elevators part of everyday life for tens of thousands of the city's poorest.

Ironically for a man who has spoke of his objection to private development, part of his city's plan for the housing agency's salvation includes selling public housing land for private home building.

A $1 billion education initiative improvement crashed and burned with no discernible improvement; meanwhile de Blasio was accused of trying to freeze out successful charter schools.

And his wife, who became the first New York First Lady to get her own staff, became a lightning rod for controversy for her $850 million 'Thrive NYC' mental health plan, which her husband called 'revolutionary' but for which officials were unable to identify quantifiable results.

Big Bird, meet Big Bird: The 6'5" mayor high-fived the Sesame Street star earlier this month as he named a street for the show

What de Blasio says is that he can take on Donald Trump, and follow in his footsteps as a New Yorker-turned-president.

But he managed to turn a high-profile challenge to the president and his family firm this week - a warm-up for his campaign - into a laughing stock when he held a 'New York Green New Deal' press conference in the lobby of Trump Tower.

He arrived for the climate change event, of course, by SUV, but that was only the start of his woes.

Behind him Trump supporters held up 'worst mayor ever' placards and management blared out Sinatra music at high volume.

Shouting over the din, de Blasio took questions from reporters - already one of his least favorite activities - only to be asked if he had talked to Ocasio-Cortez about using her Green New Deal idea.

Then he got into a Twitter spat with both the president's sons over using their building.

Later in the week he was back on the national stage, dodging protesters to launch his campaign with his wife on Good Morning America Thursday, and apparently forgoing his 9 a.m. daily gym trip to head first to the Statue of Liberty, and then to Iowa.

Inevitably, he still managed an SUV row, however, with questions over whether he had improperly used his official one for his campaign video.

And he couldn't dodge Trump, his least favorite former city resident, who tweeted: 'He is a JOKE, but if you like high taxes & crime, he’s your man. NYC HATES HIM!'

Polls suggest that even if they don't hate him, New Yorkers don't exactly love their mayor - and three-quarters said he shouldn't run for president.

He brings some unusual abilities to the race for the presidency; he speaks Italian,and sometimes mangles Spanish at city press conferences; can apparently mimic a goose's honk, and is surely the only presidential candidate to recently pose with Big Bird - after whom he is frequently nicknamed - and virtually look him in the eye.

Now de Blasio has to see if he can transcend his unusual personal background, elite city status and the dislike of his own New Yorkers to beat 23 other Democrats, among them Joe Biden and Bernie Sanders, then take on his city's most brutal political campaigner so he can kick him out of the White House.

It is an unlikely, and apparently quixotic mission for de Blasio; can someone who seems so good at making enemies finally make millions and millions of friends?