As Big Votes Loom, Bill De Blasio Bolts To Iowa

NEW YORK, NY — With his trip to Iowa on Tuesday, Mayor Bill de Blasio is stepping away from New York and onto the national stage the same day as big votes are held in the city on landmark local and federal legislation.

De Blasio flew to Des Moines Tuesday morning, where he'll give the keynote address at a holiday party for Progress Iowa, a progressive Democratic political group in that state.

That means he won't be at home when the City Council votes on the Right to Know Act, a landmark package of police accountability legislation that may finally move forward after three years. The U.S. House of Representatives is also scheduled to vote Tuesday on a Republican federal tax overhaul that de Blasio has criticized as a giveaway to the rich that would gut working-class New Yorkers.

The Des Moines trip has stirred speculation about de Blasio's ambitions for higher office, as Iowa, home of the first presidential caucuses, is a typical first stop for White House candidates.

But the mayor has said it's part of his job to help progressives across the nation take control of the federal government, which he thinks would be good news for New York. To start, he wants to help Democrats win two Iowa congressional seats currently held by Republicans, he told NY1's Errol Louis Monday night.

"This is exactly the kind of place where big changes are going to happen that'll have a big impact on New York City and the whole country," de Blasio said Monday on "Road to City Hall."

If de Blasio is harboring any presidential hopes, New Yorkers think he should tamp them down. Some 57 percent of voters in a NY1 poll published Monday said they don't think the mayor should run for president, while just 23 percent said he should.

The mayor said those who think he should stay off the presidential campaign trail have nothing to worry about, since he was just re-elected to a second term last month.

"I'm mayor for the next four years, and this is the thing I'm doing, and I've made that clear," he said on NY1.

Half of voters said they approve of the job de Blasio's doing at home, while 27 percent disapprove, the poll found.

De Blasio will get back to local business when he returns to the city on Wednesday — he's scheduled to host a town hall meeting in Brooklyn that night with City Councilwoman Laurie Cumbo.

But New York isn't leaving him alone on the trip. The NYPD Patrolmen's Benevolent Association, the city's largest police union, is sending a group of cops to protest what they call unfair treatment by City Hall in labor contract negotiations, The New York Times reported Tuesday. The local chapter of the Transport Workers Union is also giving him grief with a full-page ad in the Des Moines Register, according to a tweet from NY1's Grace Rauh.

(Lead image: Mayor Bill de Blasio addresses reporters outside Trump Tower in November 2016. Photo by Drew Angerer/Getty Images)