New Yorkers handed Bill de Blasio a landslide mandate in his bid to take the city in a sharply different direction after 20 years of Republican mayors.
The victory was never in doubt — the Democrat was projected to be the 109th mayor barely a minute after voting closed, with exit polls showing him beating Republican Joe Lhota across virtually all political, ideological and ethnic lines.
The public advocate and former councilman held a commanding 74-24 percent lead with 88 percent of the votes counted.
“Make no mistake — the people of this city have chosen a progressive path,” de Blasio, his family at his side, declared at a packed victory party inside the Park Slope Armory.
He added that voters had chosen to alter paths from the Bloomberg era, “united by a belief that our city should leave no New Yorker behind.”
To emphasize his progressive message, de Blasio walked onto the stage to the pop song “Royals.”
The No. 1 hit, by the 16-year-old singer Lorde, has a strong message of class consciousness that many listeners took to be a slap at the current billionaire mayor, if not all wealthy New Yorkers, upon whom de Blasio has vowed to raise taxes.
“And we’ll never be royals/It don’t run in our blood/That kind of lux just ain’t for us/We crave a different kind of buzz,” goes the chorus to the song.
He later celebrated with a victory dance (of sorts) dubbed ‘The Smackdown’ with this family. The de Blasios have whipped out the boogie routine several times before, including on winning the Democratic primary and at the September West Indian Day Parade in Brooklyn.
Lhota, who never gained traction in his underdog campaign, conceded 45 minutes after the polls closed.
“It was a good fight and it was a fight worth having,” the Republican told supporters at the Gansevoort Park Hotel on Park Avenue South.
“The road was difficult right from the outset,” he added, in the understatement of the night.
Exit polls showed 65 percent of voters made their pick for mayor before October. And 40 percent said their decisions were locked in even before the party primaries on Sept. 10.
What should have been Lhota’s strong suits — his managerial experience, his support for the NYPD and fears about rising crime — didn’t resonate with voters.
With murders here at an all-time low, only 15 percent said crime was the most important issue in the race, the exit polls showed.
Voters ranked experience last on their priorities in a new mayor. Lhota has a long resume covering city and state government as well as the private sector.
Political allies cheered the biggest Democratic mayoral victory since Ed Koch’s 68-point blowout re-election in 1985.
“Tonight is a night for celebration,” proclaimed Hector Figueroa, president of the building workers union, 32BJ SEIU. “It is one of the most hopeful moments for working families in New York City in many years.”
Another sign of the shift in the political landscape were the warm words quickly issued from some of the potential targets of a de Blasio administration.
“His message of uniting all New Yorkers clearly resonated with voters,” said New York City Charter School Center CEO James Merriman, one of the first to congratulate de Blasio via an e-mailed press release.
The new mayor had vowed to not to follow Mayor Bloomberg’s support for charter school expansion.
Merriman said his group stood “ready and willing to work with the next administration and our district counterparts to promote policies that help public schools, both district and charter, to flourish.”
Bloomberg, who dominated city politics for 12 years, prepared to let de Blasio have his day by clearing his own public schedule Wednesday.
Exit polls showed how conflicted New Yorkers were about the current mayor.
More than half, 52 percent, said he did a good job. But 70 percent said they wanted his successor to take the city in a different direction.
De Blasio, who at 6-foot-5 will become the city’s tallest leader, warned supporters in his victory speech that he faces a daunting challenge to fulfill his campaign promises of vast change.
“We have no illusions about the task that lies ahead. Tackling inequality isn’t easy, it never has been and never will be,” he said, as supporters on the victory podium nodded in agreement.
“The challenges we face has been decades in the making,” he said. “And the problems we set out to address will not be solved overnight.”
In his 18-minute speech, de Blasio took about a minute to translate key lines into Spanish, appearing to do a better job at pronunciation than the bilingual Bloomberg.
De Blasio also touched on his family’s immigrant roots by saying to his Italian relatives “Grazie a tutti” — that is, Thank you all.
A campaign source said de Blasio was planning to make an announcement about his transition team as early as Wednesday.
The mood among the some 500 de Blasio supporters at his victory party was fairly low key because the outcome was so anti-climactic.
The candidate drew his biggest applause when he spoke of how he fought the closing of financially-threatened hospitals, not surprising since his path to victory in the crowded Democratic primary field seemed to launch after he won a court order barring SUNY Downstate from closing Long Island College Hospital in Brooklyn’s Cobble Hill.
He returned to favorite themes of the campaign including his portrayal of New York as “a tale of two cities.”
“That inequality, that feeling of a few doing very well while so many slip further behind — that is the defining challenge of our times,” he said.
He said Lhota had called him to concede earlier in the evening.
“Despite our differences, I know he loves this city as much as I do,” de Blasio said.
The relatively low-frills and drama-free general election couldn’t have contrasted more greatly with the scrappy circus of a Democratic primary that elevated de Blasio into the title fight.
The primaries also elevated Brooklyn City Councilwoman Tish James, a close de Blasio ally, into his job of public advocate and Manhattan Borough President Scott Stringer into the comptroller’s post.
As recently as early July, de Blasio had been polling in fourth place and struggling to make a name for himself — amid the larger-than-life personalities of disgraced Congressman Anthony Weiner and Council Speaker Christine Quinn.
It wasn’t until Weiner’s campaign imploded in mid-July — after it was revealed that the sexting habits that caused him to resign from Congress had continued long after his departure — that de Blasio began to climb.
His campaign mantra of the need to end the growing divide between rich and poor caught fire,
De Blasio’s priorities when he takes the helm include increasing the income tax on the city’s wealthy to help fund universal pre-K programs and expanding economic benefits to workers through Living Wage and Paid Sick Leave legislation.
He also has vowed to reduce the use of stop-and-frisk by cops, and to improve relations between the NYPD and the minority communities that have been most affected by the widespread use of the crime-fighting tactic.