Then democratic presidential candidate Bernie Sanders speaks during a rally on Capitol Hill in Washington in July 2015 to push for a raise to the minimum wage to $15 an hour. | AP Photo/Andrew Harnik De Blasio: Sanders' message 'would have won the election'

If Hillary Clinton had focused on Bernie Sanders’ message of income inequality, she maybe would have won last month's presidential election, New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio said in an interview on ABC.

“I think Bernie would have had some real strengths but also some real weaknesses,” if he’d been the Democratic presidential nominee, de Blasio told ABC’s Bill Ritter when asked Sunday if Sanders could have won against President-elect Donald Trump by running on a message of addressing income inequality.


“I think the message would have won the election. The message would have won the election,” de Blasio said.

Addressing income inequality was “a message that Hillary Clinton had in her platform and I honestly believe downplayed in the last few months of the election, including the debates when she should have been pumping it up,” de Blasio said.

“And I say it with tremendous respect for her — I believe if she had had a message of economic change, it would have overwhelmed a lot of what Trump was putting forward and I think it would have helped her to keep some of those states,” he said, referring to the crucial rust-belt states Clinton lost, like Wisconsin and Michigan, where voters appeared to embrace Trump’s version of economic populism.

“Trump wisely ran as an outsider from both parties,” de Blasio said, describing the president-elect’s strategy as “a very brilliant move on his part.”

De Blasio, who was Clinton’s campaign manager during her 2000 run for U.S. Senate, was a late endorser of Clinton’s candidacy. He spent months working publicly and privately to push her further to the left on multiple issues, including pressing her to support a $15 minimum wage and to oppose the Trans-Pacific Partnership.

After endorsing her in October 2015, de Blasio became a public surrogate for Clinton's campaign. But he also found himself in an awkward position at times as he sought to show his support for her candidacy. In emails released by Wikileaks, de Blasio described Clinton’s paid speeches to Wall Street as “hard to defend,” after standing up for her in television interviews on the issue.