A records lesson for candidate de Blasio: Why John Lindsay’s presidential marketing campaign, like that of such a lot of different mayors, flamed out
Mayor de Blasio spent the weekend campaigning for the 2020 Democratic presidential nomination. With extra than 20 candidates, calling it a crowded discipline looks like an understatement. Few countrywide Democrats appear to have been impressed with the mayor’s statement, and 3-quarters of city residents assume the presidential run is a terrible concept. Term-limited and increasingly more unpopular in New York, de Blasio squaddies on.
Historically, being mayor of New York has essentially been a political useless-quit. No New York mayor because the 1870s has moved directly to higher office. Mike Bloomberg has toyed with jogging some instances, but to date has no longer devoted. Rudy Giuliani ran for the Republican nomination in 2008, but his marketing campaign never took off, and he dropped out early.
The maximum famous case of a New York mayor jogging for president, in reality, the only current issue of a mayor flying while he kept the City Hall activity, is John Lindsay in 1972 — and the consequences of that race do no longer bode nicely for de Blasio.
Unlike de Blasio, Lindsay had been thought to be a future presidential candidate for years. Tall, handsome, and charismatic, he started his career as a liberal Republican from the antique Silk Stocking district on the East Side of Manhattan. He became elected mayor in 1965 on a promise to reinvigorate town management, take at the so-referred to as “energy agents,” and halt the towns with the aid of then obtrusive decline. In the technology of suburbanization and white flight, Lindsay made city problems matter.
After a tumultuous and controversial first period, Lindsay misplaced the Republican mayoral number one in 1969 however squeaked out re-election via running as an unbiased. A 12 months later, knowing that his increasingly more liberal politics aligned extra closely with the Democratic Party of that generation, he switched events.
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After a decent displaying within the Arizona primary, Lindsay headed to Florida, in which he in no way gained any traction and finished in fifth place.
Why did it cross so poorly? A mixture of political miscalculation and naivete. He desired to carry city problems to the countrywide stage, however even within the Democratic primary, those thoughts never received much interest in 1972.
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After the defeat, Brooklyn Democratic boss Meade Esposito put the final nail in Lindsay’s marketing campaign by way of announcing: “Little Sheba better come home.” The humbled mayor did return domestic to complete out the the rest of his mayoralty, but his political profession changed into over.