A Mayoral Hopeful Now, de Blasio Was Once a Young Leftist - NEW YORK TIMES

[flamingdem]

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/09/23/nyregion/a-mayoral-hopeful-now-de-blasio-was-once-a-young-leftist.html?pagewanted=all&_r=0

** This front page NYT article didn't hurt de Blasio at all!

The scruffy young man who arrived in Nicaragua in 1988 stood out.



He was tall and sometimes goofy, known for his ability to mimic a goose’s honk. He spoke in long, meandering paragraphs, musing on Franklin D. Roosevelt, Karl Marx and Bob Marley. He took painstaking notes on encounters with farmers, doctors and revolutionary fighters.

Bill de Blasio, then 26, went to Nicaragua to help distribute food and medicine in the middle of a war between left and right. But he returned with something else entirely: a vision of the possibilities of an unfettered leftist government.

As he seeks to become the next mayor of New York City, Mr. de Blasio, the city’s public advocate, has spoken only occasionally about his time as a fresh-faced idealist who opposed foreign wars, missile defense systems and apartheid in the late 1980s and early 1990s. References to his early activism have been omitted from his campaign Web site.

But a review of hundreds of pages of records and more than two dozen interviews suggest his time as a young activist was more influential in shaping his ideology than previously known, and far more political than typical humanitarian work.

[flamingdem]

1. No comments?

I thought the left activists on DU would be interested in this information.

To me it's amazing that someone with this background is going to be the Mayor of NYC.

[dionysus]

2. positive comments on Dems = sink like a stone on the new DU.

[flamingdem]

7. I agree. Note that this article and this information about de Blasio

has NOT been celebrated here by some of the usual suspects.

Maybe they don't care about NYC but seems to me he's still going to be labeled as a politician and not pure enough for their admiration.

[JHB]

4. After 40 minutes on a Friday night about a 2-week-old profile?

Maybe they're just not following your schedule.

[flamingdem]

6. I didn't see this article posted on DU previously but maybe

that's because I was in NY at the home of someone I did Central America policy work with and we were both amazed to read that on the front page of the Times. Mostly because it was full of insinuations. Regardless it seemed to help him.

Wonder if you don't realize just what a change that is in NY.

[JHB]

8. After Il-Duce-ani and "term limits are for little people" Bloomberg?

Sure that's a change, but De Blasio also held an NYC-area HUD post under Clinton, was Hillary's campaign manager for her Senate election, been a city councilman and Public Advocate.

So yes, his activities in the 80s are different, but don't discount the fact that another difference is that he's not coming in from outside NYC government, unlike the post-Dinkins mayors. He has a local track record.

[alcibiades_mystery]

10. Too busy copycatting "Gimme all your info" Obamacare sarcasm posts

One thing at a time for our lefty friends, please.

It's easier to spread love than hate.

[JaneyVee]

3. It's NYC, that NYT article most likely helped him.

[flamingdem]

5. That's what I thought too but not when I read it at first

I thought it slimed him, but then I remembered that the NY audience is more sophisticated than most, and it would probably help and it did!

[socialist_n_TN]

9. So were a lot of us......

Some of us even turned into old leftists. I personally think it's encouraging that a Sandinista supporter is the leading candidate for the Mayor of NYC, but the Sandinista's, like Chavez, didn't go far enough.