New York Mayor Bill de Blasio arrives at an event in Des Moines, Iowa, last month, a visit possibly tied to a potential 2020 presidential campaign. One self-described friend of the mayor called the idea “idiotic.” | Stephen Maturen/Getty Images 2020 Elections 'F---ing insane’: De Blasio allies warn against 2020 run The New York mayor has been flirting with a presidential bid, but has few backers.

NEW YORK — New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio may be thinking of running for president, but many of those closest to him aren’t on board.

As de Blasio touted his liberal record in Iowa and South Carolina in recent weeks, nearly three dozen former and current aides, consultants and allies who spoke to POLITICO panned the idea or doubted that the mayor would run for the Democratic nomination. Aside from the few people working on the nascent effort, only two said de Blasio should run.


Their reasoning: Some say the 2020 field, a dozen-strong and growing, leaves no room for de Blasio, who’s long struggled to fashion a national persona comparable with past leaders of the country’s largest city, like Rudy Giuliani or Michael Bloomberg. Many note that he has too many glaring, unresolved problems at home. Others say the never-truly-popular de Blasio, whom a top Hillary Clinton backer once called “insufferable,” lacks charisma.

A few skeptics in de Blasio’s orbit have gone public. "I believe Bill de Blasio has 100 percent the right message; I’m just not so sure he's the right messenger," the mayor’s former campaign and City Hall adviser Rebecca Katz said recently on a local politics podcast.

Behind the scenes, others are more blunt.

COUNTDOWN TO 2020 The race for 2020 starts now. Stay in the know. Follow our presidential election coverage. Email Sign Up By signing up you agree to receive email newsletters or alerts from POLITICO. You can unsubscribe at any time. This site is protected by reCAPTCHA and the Google Privacy Policy and Terms of Service apply.

The idea of a de Blasio candidacy is “f---ing insane,” said one former aide, laughing out loud.

Another self-described friend of the mayor called the idea “idiotic.”

It’s a stark contrast to the typical dynamics of a presidential exploration in which aides and allies tend to egg on the potential candidate. Indeed, the strongest advocate for a de Blasio candidacy seems to be de Blasio himself. Gone is the stable of trusted consultants whose advice he once relied on so heavily that he designated them de facto city employees during his first term. In their place are two City Hall aides volunteering their spare time to work on his explorations, and his wife, Chirlane McCray.

“I really appreciate everyone’s views, but I don’t know they can see things the way Chirlane and I see them, in terms of what we need to do with our lives, what we feel is the right thing to do, but also how we analyze the political circumstance — because it’s been kind of a life’s work for both of us,” de Blasio told POLITICO in a recent Gracie Mansion interview.

“I assure you I had a lot of folks who were friends and allies warmly put their arm around my shoulder and tell me what a crazy idea it was to run for Public Advocate, what a crazy idea it was to run for mayor,” he said.

The only adviser whose approval de Blasio said he needs is his wife, who recently traveled with him to South Carolina to meet with local Democratic party officials.

But even she seems to have doubts.

In a recent interview for POLITICO’s Women Rule podcast, she said that while she thinks her husband would “be a great president,” she added “the timing is not exactly right.”

McCray elaborated on her comments in a follow-up interview, saying “This is a very big undertaking. He has a big demanding job and I see closer than anyone the time and the work it takes to run this city.”

Still, de Blasio has been making moves.

He tapped City Hall communications director Mike Casca, a 2016 Bernie Sanders alum, and Jon Paul Lupo, a top government aide with experience on national Senate races, to work on the effort in their spare time. Last month, he traveled to the battleground state of Iowa, trekking through a snowstorm to tout his successes in New York City to a small groups of voters.

He also donated $25,000 through his Fairness Political Action Committee to Democratic Party organizations in two key primary states, Iowa and South Carolina.

Longtime friends Peter Ragone, a former City Hall adviser, and Jim Crounse, who has consulted for de Blasio since his 2001 City Council campaign, have been informally advising him.

“The only reason why he wouldn’t be mentioned with [Los Angeles Mayor Eric] Garcetti or [South Bend Mayor Pete] Buttigieg … is because the opinion-makers, the Gang of 500, have never seen a good story written about him,” Ragone said, referencing de Blasio’s poor relationship with the New York City press corps.

When asked whether the mayor should be considered a contender, Ragone replied, “If you have a record of accomplishment, why not? The party needs this competition of ideas.”

De Blasio has a few rationales for a hypothetical candidacy: He’s implemented policies that are now sacrosanct to the left wing of the Democratic Party, such as universal pre-kindergarten and paid sick days for private employers. He also believes he personally embodied the economic populism that coursed through the 2016 election and tried to alert Clinton to it, even if no one was listening.



“My election is clearly an indicator of that gathering storm that then came forth nationally, I think, in the form of Bernie’s campaign,” de Blasio said.



Besides, he said, he has the distinction of running a city of 8.6 million people.

“That old truism, second-toughest job in America, there’s some truth to that,” de Blasio said, quoting former New York City mayor John Lindsay, who also tried and failed at a bid for president while in office.

The mayor ticked off a long list of accomplishments that any Democratic presidential candidate would be proud of — record-high employment, increased graduation rates, low crime.

“I’m certainly worthy of critique like everyone. There’s things I did better and things I did worse,” he said. “But if you say, ‘OK, have I proven the ability to run an extraordinarily complex organization and get real results? Yes.’ And that should mean something.”

But de Blasio’s signature achievements came early in his first term, and City Hall’s activity and ambition have been lackluster in recent years. Crime was already dropping when he took office, and turning around the city’s lowest-performing schools and curbing homelessness have proven major challenges for the mayor. Six years after he campaigned on a promise of combating income inequality, public housing is falling apart blocks away from multimillion-dollar condos. Income inequality in New York City has actually increased.

And he weathered a series of unpleasant setbacks — investigations into his fundraising practices, which yielded no charges but sullied his reputation, ongoing fights with Gov. Andrew Cuomo and, more recently, backlash to his deal to lure Amazon to open a headquarters in Long Island City, Queens. The company ended up canceling its plans because of the opposition.

“I know he’s on this national kick, but I think there are quite a few growing things he still needs to take care of at home that will detract from him going across the country on a victory lap,” Fordham University political science professor Christina Greer told POLITICO.

During a recent debate for New York City Public Advocate, all seven Democratic candidates onstage scoffed at the idea of de Blasio running, even though the Advocate position is next in line to the mayoralty if the mayor’s seat is vacated. Queens Assemblyman Ron Kim called him “delusional.”

The mayor has heard this criticism before. He contends it is the 24-7 task of running the country’s biggest city that gives him the necessary experience, should he take on this endeavor.

But there’s another problem: Many observers say he’d struggle in the popularity contest aspect of a presidential race.

“The empirical measurements of the city are good, but he can’t get off the ground because nobody likes the guy,” one former City Hall aide said. “He is stubborn about doing things that he feels entitled to do, but don’t do him any favors politically and don’t make a lot of sense.”

Democratic political consultant Phil Singer said his “personality is not endearing.”

“There's a little bit of self-righteousness about him that thus far hasn't translated into a groundswell of support for a federal candidacy,” Singer said.

De Blasio has a tendency to speak in the stilted language of a college humanities professor. He gets driven 12 miles from his home on the Upper East Side to a gym in his old Brooklyn neighborhood every day. He parses the wording of questions from reporters and his own constituents before answering. One word many former staffers use to describe him: “arrogant.”

In a recent Quinnipiac Poll that asked New Yorkers which local politicians they’d like to see run in 2020, de Blasio came in last, behind former Mayor Michael Bloomberg, Cuomo, U.S. Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand and even 29-year-old freshman Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, who won’t be old enough to run in two years. Only 5 percent said he should run.

In a recent Des Moines Register/CNN/Mediacom Iowa Poll of likely Democratic caucus-goers, de Blasio was not mentioned by a single respondent as their first or second choice in a field of 20 Democrats eyeing a run.

He also has a reputation for being condescending toward his own staff, he publicly feuds with the local press corps and has a history of systematically (if unintentionally) alienating people in his own party — the very people who could help him elevate his national profile.

De Blasio damaged his long-standing relationship with Clinton, whose first U.S. Senate campaign he managed, when he declined to endorse her run for president in 2015, drawing out the endorsement process in a failed game of cat and mouse that turned into a high-profile political embarrassment.

Clinton ally Neera Tanden described de Blasio as “a bit insufferable” in private emails during the 2016 campaign, and Clinton's campaign manager mocked the mayor as a “terrorist” for his public statements of support for Sanders during their primary battle. A Clinton surrogate heckled him in Iowa while he was conducting a press conference. And he landed an undesirable midafternoon speaking slot at the Democratic National Convention.

Presented with substantial skepticism, de Blasio said he trusts his own instincts, having won three races for citywide office when the odds were against him.

“I feel like the things that I’ve been a part of have worked. So I wouldn’t say I keep my own counsel in the narrow sense ‘cause I really do listen to people,” he said. “But perhaps it’s fair to say that I put the pieces together in a way that may not be the traditional.”

De Blasio dismissed criticism from former consultants. “There’s a lot of really talented people,” he said of his past consultants. “Not a single one of them can replace the candidate.” He accused them of “fighting yesterday’s war” and being “caught up in the old politics when we are in an entirely new world that we are still trying to make sense of.”

But even an underdog needs a campaign team. And the consultants who built his mayoral campaigns — Bill Hyers, Nick Baldick, Jonathan Rosen and Anna Greenberg — aren’t working on his possible bid, POLITICO confirmed. Greenberg is already working for former Colorado Gov. John Hickenlooper and Hyers said he is in talks to work on a different campaign.

He doesn’t have a self-imposed deadline for when he would decide, he wouldn’t commit to refusing corporate donations like some declared candidates and he wouldn’t outline a litmus test for the candidates who’ve already declared that would compel him to drop his flirtation with a run and back someone else.

“He should not run,” a former ally said in a text message. “NYC is at an inflection point and the chief executive should focus on his responsibility to guide the city through what are likely to be difficult times. Running for president is his choice, but the voters choose him to run NYC and he should do just that.”