Bernie Sanders Touts De Blasio As National Progressive Fighter

HELL'S KITCHEN, NY — U.S. Sen. Bernie Sanders rallied with Mayor Bill de Blasio on Monday night, propping him up as a nationwide progressive leader and encouraging voters to re-elect him by a "huge" margin. The Independent from Vermont cast de Blasio as a progressive warrior against President Donald Trump's right-wing agenda, never mentioning the mayor's opponent, Republican state Assemblywoman Nicole Malliotakis.

"This mayor is leading the city in a way that brings us together to create a better life for all of us," Sanders told a crowd of a few hundred supporters at the music venue Terminal 5.

The senator, who ran unsuccessfully for last year's Democratic presidential nomination, railed against Trump and called on New Yorkers to aid a national effort to keep the U.S. from becoming an oligarchy.

To Sanders, de Blasio is the mayor to do just that. He touted the Democrat's universal preschool program, the paid sick leave he offered to municipal employees and some of his affordable housing initiatives. He thanked de Blasio for instituting two rent freezes, recalling his childhood in a rent-controlled apartment in "a foreign country called Brooklyn."

"We have got to revitalize American democracy," Sanders said. "We have got to take on the billionaire class and tell them that they’re not going to control the future of this country, but we will."

De Blasio embraced Sanders' left-wing populism, saying he "taught us to throw away the rule book and do politics a different way, and to reach people in the grass roots and to make change like never before." Introductory speakers drew parallels between de Blasio's underdog 2013 campaign and Sanders' upstart 2016 bid against Hillary Clinton, who later lost to Trump.

Voting de Blasio into a second term, the mayor argued, is a chance for regular people to reshape the city, wrest it from the control of the "millionaires and billionaires" and create a national model for big social programs that help the least fortunate.

The city "does not belong to landlords. It doesn’t belong to real estate developers. It doesn’t belong to the titans of Wall Street. And lord knows it doesn’t belong to Donald Trump," de Blasio said. "It’s your city. It’s always been your city. Even though you were told it wasn’t, it’s always been your city."

Monday's rally capped a day in which de Blasio seemed like he was trying to put the final nail in the coffin of a race he's already heavily favored to win a week before the Nov. 7 election. An Oct. 5 Qunnipiac University poll had him ahead of Malliotakis by 44 percentage points.

Earlier Monday, Sanders took a subway ride with the mayor before endorsing his so-called millionaire's tax, a proposal to fund the MTA by increasing the income tax rate for New Yorkers earning $500,000 or more a year. Democratic Sen. Chuck Schumer of New York had endorsed the mayor a few hours before.

The rally contained some contradictions. De Blasio did not get fully behind Sanders' "political revolution" last year; the mayor endorsed Clinton, though he later admitted Sanders' message could have beaten Trump.

And while he said the city doesn't belong to the wealthy, de Blasio has been embroiled in a scandal involving one man who gave more than $200,000 to his political efforts. The donor, Jona Rechnitz, reportedly testified in a corruption trial last week that a 2013 de Blasio campaign aide promised him access to City Hall in exchange for big checks.

The mayor has forcefully denied any impropriety, and was campaigning undeterred Monday night. He expressed optimism that the progressive activism that's burgeoned since the 2016 election would create further progress locally and nationally.

“I don’t have a doubt in my mind, I really don’t, that bigger change is coming," he said.

(Lead image: Mayor Bill de Blasio and U.S. Sen. Bernie Sanders wait for an A train in Penn Station on Monday. Photo by Noah Manskar)