NYC Mayor de Blasio announces candidacy

Associated Press

NEW YORK

He’s deeply unpopular among fellow New Yorkers, often savaged by the city’s tabloids and fights with the media that cover him. He also believes he can be elected president in 2020.

That’s Donald Trump. And that’s Bill de Blasio.

On the day when de Blasio, New York City’s Democratic mayor, announced his unlikely candidacy for president, the current occupant of the White House was headed back to his hometown of New York to raise campaign cash.

There are significant limits to any comparison between the two men: They are on opposite ends of the political spectrum and have wildly different family and economic backgrounds.

And while Trump is the most polarizing and talked-about politician on the planet, de Blasio suffers from low national name-recognition and is often greeted with shrugs even across the five boroughs he governs.

But they are also deeply intertwined, their political pasts connected to the city they call home.

After arriving in New York on Thursday, Trump tweeted a video of himself aboard Air Force One predicting that the mayor won’t last long in the 2020 race and saying that de Blasio, who was traveling to Iowa Thursday to campaign, should go home.

“I wish him luck. But really, it’d be better off if you got back to New York City and did your job for the little time you have left,” Trump said.

De Blasio, though a 2020 longshot, made clear on Thursday that he’d keep returning Trump’s fire, promising: “I’m going to be very aggressive with this guy ‘cause that’s the only way to deal with him.”