Opinion

Bill de Blasio takes office as NYC’s 109th mayor

Now it’s official: After two swearings-in — one at midnight New Year’s Eve at his home in Brooklyn, one the following noon by Bill Clinton on the steps of City Hall — it’s now Mayor Bill de Blasio.

In his remarks, Mayor Bill made clear he believes the way to best serve the city is by reducing income inequality. In this he echoes President Obama, who has recently made income inequality his own new priority. As Mayor Bill put it in his inaugural, “When I said we would take dead aim at the Tale of Two Cities, I meant it.”

Fair enough. Our mayor, after all, has the electoral numbers to back up his claim that in electing him the city was choosing the progressive future he campaigned on. Not only did voters choose him in a landslide over Republican Joe Lhota, his vision helped propel him past two more-heavily favored Democrats in the primary. So Mayor Bill can rightly feel he has more of a mandate than some of his predecessors.

On top of this, he will also have a public advocate, a City Council and a council speaker all arguably as liberal as he is. To the degree he is likely to be criticized by the city’s political establishment, it will likely be for being insufficiently left.

All the more reason for Mayor de Blasio to remember that, in the end, mayors are judged less by their ideological ambitions than by their ability to run a large, diverse and complex city.

We’ve had our differences with Bill de Blasio in the past, and we expect we will have them again in the future. But that’s for another day. Mayor Bill apparently thinks so, too: His inaugural set the tone with its gracious remarks about Mike Bloomberg — all the more striking because they were in sharp contrast to the swipes taken by our new city comptroller and our new public advocate.

Of Mayor Bill we can say this: We share with him a common belief that the well-being of this great American city must always come first.

And in that spirit, Mr. Mayor, we wish you only the best these next four years.