2017 NYC Mayoral Election Results: De Blasio Wins 2nd Term

PROSPECT HEIGHTS, BROOKLYN — Mayor Bill de Blasio sauntered past his little-known challengers to a second term Tuesday, capping a sleepy campaign season with a low-turnout win. The Democratic mayor had 67.1 percent of the votes to Republican Nicole Malliotakis' 27.6 percent with about 98 percent of the votes counted.

NY1 declared victory for de Blasio at 9:26 p.m., less than a half hour after the polls closed on a cold and rainy Tuesday night.

On the ballot, de Blasio faced Malliotakis, the state assemblywoman from Staten Island, and several third-party hopefuls including Bo Dietl, a retired NYPD detective running as an independent, and the Reform Party candidate Sal Albanese.

De Blasio maintained big leads in the polls throughout his campaign. He argued the city needed to build on his first-term accomplishments — such as universal preschool, low crime, high test scores and progress on affordable housing — but laid out few brand-new policy plans.

The mayor will tailor his next four years in City Hall to a single goal, he said: making New York "the fairest big city in America."

"Our job is to make sure this city we love keeps its wonderful, open, inclusive character," de Blasio told a few hundred supporters at the Brooklyn Museum. "Our job is to make sure that New York is always New York."

De Blasio is the first Democratic mayor to win re-election since Ed Koch, whose tenure ended in 1989. His victory came the same night big wins for Democrats in the New Jersey and Virginia governor's races that, unlike the mayor's race, weren't considered foregone conclusions.

The mayor was relatively unknown when his underdog 2013 campaign propelled him into City Hall. But his opponents' low profiles this year left de Blasio poised to win re-election while claiming the mantle of a progressive fight against President Donald Trump.

"You can’t take on New York values and win, Mr. President," de Blasio said, rhetorically addressing the Republican from Queens. "You turn against the values of your hometown, your hometown will fight back."

Malliotakis — who voted for Trump last year — conceded the race in a speech to supporters at the William Vale Hotel in Williamsburg, Brooklyn.

"Today New Yorkers sent a loud and clear message to City Hall," Malliotakis said, according to a Staten Island Advance reporter.

Dietl finished in sixth place behind Albanese, whom de Blasio thumped in September's Democratic primary, and two other third-party candidates, Akeem Browder and Michael Tolkin.

"All rigged but this is what our city is... sad," Dietl tweeted early Wednesday morning.

Lower on the ticket Tuesday, Comptroller Scott Stringer and Public Advocate Letitia James, both Democrats, won second terms over Republicans Michel Faulkner and J.C. Polanco, respectively.

James, a former city councilwoman, had 72.7 percent of the votes with about 79 percent of precincts reporting. Polanco, a lawyer from the Bronx who served on the city Board of Elections under Mayor Michael Bloomberg, had about 16.3 percent.

Stringer, the former Manhattan borough president, had 75.7 percent of the votes over Faulkner, a former New York Jets player who got about 20.3 percent of the votes.

Turnout was anemic. With 98.4 percent of the votes counted, close to 1.1 million — just 23.6 percent — of New York City's nearly 4.6 million active registered voters had cast ballots for mayor.

Despite their races attracting far less attention, James and Stringer both collected more votes than de Blasio. James was outpacing the mayor by about 49,000 votes and Stringer by nearly 75,000.

The mayor's first term has had its blemishes. He's struggled to staunch the growth of the city's homeless population despite building or protecting more than 77,000 affordable homes. And he narrowly avoided criminal charges in parallel state and federal investigations into his fundraising practices — a fact on which Malliotakis and others sought to capitalize.

But de Blasio has kept his popularity, especially with voters of color, and used his platform at the helm of America's biggest city to declare war on Trump's agenda. Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders, a national progressive figure in his own right, headlined the mayor's final campaign rally last week.

In the pursuit of fairness, the mayor pledged to expand his universal preschool program to 3-year-olds, put a body camera on every NYPD cop in the next two years and eliminate the gender-based pay gap (though he didn't specify how he'd achieve that last goal). New York will fight GOP tax cuts for the middle class and make millionaires pay their "fair share," he said.

Malliotakis had cast de Blasio as a detached, smug mayor who's neglected quality-of-life issues such as "transit, traffic and trash," as her campaign put it. Dietl often used more blunt terms, calling the mayor "Big Bird" and insinuating that he should be in prison.

De Blasio's opponents had an opening in the campaign's final weeks after Jona Rechnitz, a major donor to the mayor's 2013 campaign, gave sordid testimony in a separate federal corruption trial of the access to the mayor that his money bought him.

But the mayor brushed off the controversy, dismissing reporters' questions and insisting previous investigations had settled the matter.

The election came a week after a terrorist attack on the Hudson River Greenway killed eight people and wounded 12. De Blasio encouraged the city to stay resolute as a tragedy put him into the national spotlight.

Watch Now: de Blasio Wins Second Term In Landslide Victory

(Lead image: Mayor Bill de Blasio votes Tuesday morning at his polling place in Park Slope, Brooklyn. Photo by Spencer Platt/Getty Images)