The teen boy in the burgundy shirt, basketball shorts and voluminous Afro could be your average hip Park Slope high schooler. But as Dante de Blasio polishes off his grilled cheese and stands up to amble out of the Purity Diner, he’s stopped by an older white gentleman seated nearby.
“I saw your ad! It was compelling. Very well done,” 66-year-old Ben Eichler congratulates him. “They’ve been running it an awful lot on the local channels.”
The TV spot in question, called simply “Dante,” premiered earlier this month and features Public Advocate Bill de Blasio’s 15-year-old son detailing the candidate’s credentials as the most left-leaning mayoral contender. Wearing a casual T-shirt and looking generally un-primped, he speaks enthusiastically — yet a little awkwardly — to the camera about de Blasio’s accomplishments. He closes with: “Bill de Blasio will be a mayor for every New Yorker — and I’d say that even if he weren’t my dad.”
In his second ad, Dante shares breakfast with parents Chirlane McCray and Bill de Blasio.
Dante de Blasio has become a secret weapon in his father’s mayoral campaign. (Anne Wermiel/NY Post)
In his second ad, Dante shares breakfast with parents Chirlane McCray and Bill de Blasio. (
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Initial buzz showed a fair amount of viewer surprise at the ad’s reveal: The candidate has a biracial son. Currently at over 120,000 views on YouTube, the spot got New Yorkers talking — sometimes about the mayoral candidate’s qualifications, frequently about his multiracial family, but most often about how Dante was “rocking the best Afro ever,” as the Huffington Post put it.
It’s a highly savvy move: De Blasio’s half-black son is a pointed voice (and face) as he describes his dad as “the only one who will end a stop-and-frisk era, which unfairly targets people of color.”
Call it the Dante Effect: A Quinnipiac poll released shortly after the debut of the “Dante” ad found de Blasio in first place among likely Democratic primary voters with 30 percent of the vote, compared with Christine Quinn’s 24 percent and Bill Thompson’s 22 percent. (An NBC New York/WSJ/Marist poll the following week put Quinn and de Blasio neck and neck at 24 percent; a Quinnipiac poll reflecting Quinn’s endorsement by multiple papers, including this one, will be released today.)
Over the past several months, Dante’s Afro — which he says he started in third grade and stuck with because of his love for the TV show “The Boondocks,” with its Afro-sporting main character — has spawned legions of fans, a nickname for the campaign’s surge in the polls (“fromentum”), its own Twitter account (@danteshair has yet to tweet, though it does have 37 followers) and an official campaign hashtag, #gowiththefro.
“I didn’t know everyone would like it so much,” Dante says with a self-conscious laugh, still sounding a little incredulous about his — and his hair’s — newfound local-celeb status. “People are constantly stopping me now. Some want photos. Some are just like, ‘Hey, were you in a commercial?’ ”
The most amusing part, he says, is “now people will sometimes introduce themselves to me before my dad!”
The teen, who’s going to be a junior at Brooklyn Tech — and will turn 16 Sept. 4 — certainly hasn’t had much of a chance to enjoy a normal summer vacation as he and his sister, Chiara, 18, volunteer for the campaign. A typical day on the trail for Dante might include subway meet-and-greets with his dad and sister, a visit to a senior center with his mom and evening campaign events with the whole family.
Not that he’s all work, Dante insists. “I definitely watch TV,” he says. “I like comedies — ‘Community’ and ‘Parks and Rec.’ ” (Perhaps not surprising, given his dad’s vocation.) His musical interests are varied: “I’m into classic rock, folk-metal, American folk. It’s a blend.”
He’s also a voracious reader — Kurt Vonnegut is his favorite — and he’s a big fan of the Onion.
But he never considered himself a performer. “I would definitely say it was not my idea” to be in the ad, he says, laughing. “I just didn’t think I had much of an onscreen presence.” The family, choosing from a number of scripts offered by the campaign media team, decided the Dante angle was a good call.
And it indisputably was — he generated so much heat that a related follow-up ad, “Dignity,” was released on the 19th. A shot of the multiracial family at the breakfast table shows wife Chirlane McCray and Dante wearing bright yellow shirts — a likely shout-out to the controversy over a multiracial Cheerios ad earlier this summer.
Spouses are often prevalent in candidates’ campaigns — but the Dante phenomenon is an unusually front-and-center use of a mayoral candidate’s kid. Previous mayoral ads have pictured Michael Bloomberg’s and Rudy Giuliani’s children, but none actually filmed their own TV spot.
Dante’s popularity seems to be a different, bigger thing — he may be the first politician’s kid, in the age of social media, to really go viral.
De Blasio has come under fire before for using his family to campaign: In 2009, City Councilman Charles Barron took aim at de Blasio’s emphasis on his black wife, McCray, during his campaign for public advocate, saying he was pandering to black voters.
And last week saw a new dust-up when McCray criticized the childless Quinn, saying, “I don’t see her speaking to the concerns of women who have to take care of children at a young age . . . and I suspect that other women feel the same thing.”
For the most part, though, the candidate’s focus on his family has been instrumental in sending him to the top of the polls, experts say.
“So many people say Dante is really the mascot of the campaign, so to speak. He’s so photogenic, he seems very energetic and smart,” says Jeanne Zaino, professor of political science at Iona College.
Still, Zaino acknowledges that the choice to include a child in a campaign can be fraught: “I think you can always make the case that there is risk when you’re presenting family members. There’s a risk of overexposure, especially at the age of 15. That age is tough to begin with.”
But in this case, says Zaino, Dante’s natural charisma offsets any concerns she might have. “He seems willing and able and happy to help his dad. I have not heard anything negative.”
If you ask Dante, he’ll assure you he doesn’t feel exploited. “I’m volunteering my time,” he points out. “It’s a cause I believe in. People don’t seem to have much of a problem with it.” Besides, he says, “it seems like many candidates choose to show off their families. It just seems to get attention paid to them. It makes sense to me.”
This may, in fact, be the beginning of a new political career: Dante says he’d like to someday get into the field himself. And with the experience and exposure he’s getting, he’ll be ahead of the game if he does. He even won a city debate championship last year with the Brooklyn Tech team. His topic?
“Transportation infrastructure!” he says. “It’s a lot more exciting than it sounds.”
sstewart@nypost.com