https://www.britannica.com/topic/mayor
Bill de Blasio
American politician
Written By:
André Munro
Last Updated: Mar 26, 2020 See Article History
Alternative Titles: Warren Wilhelm, Jr.
Bill de Blasio, original name Warren Wilhelm, Jr., (born May 8, 1961, New York, New York, U.S.), American Democratic politician who was mayor of New York City (2014– ). He also served as Hillary Clinton’s campaign manager for her successful senatorial run in 2000 and as a New York City councillor (2002–09).
Early life
At age five he moved to Cambridge, Massachusetts, with his mother, Maria, a public relations manager, and his father, Warren, a veteran of World War II who had served in the Pacific theatre and lost a leg in a grenade attack. His father, after struggling with alcoholism, later committed suicide. De Blasio graduated from New York University in 1984 and obtained a master’s degree in international and public affairs at Columbia University in 1987. (Though called Bill from an early age, he changed his name in 1983 to Warren de Blasio-Wilhelm—his mother’s family name was de Blasio—and then adopted Bill de Blasio as his legal name in 2002.)
Political career: campaign manager and councillor
De Blasio proved himself to be politically savvy early in life: as a student activist in high school and college, he advocated for student rights and protested issues as diverse as library hours and nuclear proliferation. After graduate school de Blasio served as a social relief volunteer in Nicaragua—a country then torn by a civil war between the Marxist government of the Sandinistas and counterrevolutionary forces—and returned to the United States a committed socialist. Though adopting more-centrist views with time, de Blasio continued to defend left-leaning policies.
He entered municipal politics in 1989 as a junior staffer in the mayoral campaign of David Dinkins and later became an assistant for community affairs in the Dinkins administration. In 1997 de Blasio was appointed as a regional director in the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development, working under Andrew Cuomo. De Blasio left that position two years later after being hired to lead Hillary Clinton’s first bid for the U.S. Senate. As campaign manager, de Blasio encouraged teamwork and open deliberation, to the point of being criticized by some as indecisive.