The Republican assemblywoman believes de Blasio is more vulnerable than his allies let on.
Republican assemblywoman Nicole Malliotakis made headlines in New York City last fall when she filed a lawsuit to prevent Mayor Bill de Blasio from destroying city records to protect illegal immigrants, including felons. Now, as the suit sputters in appellate court, Malliotakis is back, ready once again to be a thorn in de Blasio’s side. This time, she’s after his job.
Since Republican Paul Massey dropped out of the race in late June, Malliotakis has surged ahead to become the clear front-runner among de Blasio’s challengers. She believes that the mayor’s poor record on the city’s most pressing issues provides her with the perfect opportunity to unseat him, despite the way he and his supporters have attempted to paint her as New York’s very own Donald Trump.
“She made clear the other day she voted for Donald Trump. That puts her at odds with the vast majority of New Yorkers,” said de Blasio at a press conference a few weeks ago. He also noted the assemblywoman’s support for the Trump administration’s immigration policy and criticized her for not speaking out against the Senate health-care bill.
Malliotakis insists that de Blasio’s tactics won’t work. “This mayor is doing his best to deflect to Trump when this election isn’t about him,” she tells National Review. “It’s about transit, traffic, and trash, the many quality-of-life issues that de Blasio is not addressing.”
It’s worth noting that Malliotakis was never a Trump cheerleader. She served as the New York state chair for Florida senator Marco Rubio’s competing presidential bid, and her policy positions have less in common with the Trump administration than de Blasio supporters would have you believe.
“Bill de Blasio is trying to make himself a leader in the national progressive movement rather than doing the job that he was elected to do as the mayor of New York City,” Malliotakis says. “And it’s the people of New York who are suffering as a result.”
Despite the fact that she’s running against an incumbent and has comparably little funding, Malliotakis has every intention of going on the offense, and so far, it seems to be working. Rather than ignoring her campaign — as most incumbents do when their challengers don’t have substantial financial backing — de Blasio’s surrogates have responded to her attacks on several occasions.
When Malliotakis unveiled her plan for alleviating homelessness, pointing out the rising numbers of homeless people and criticizing de Blasio’s weak response to the problem, his campaign quickly hit back, calling her proposal “full of empty rhetoric and recycled ideas.” “Today, New Yorkers got a chance to see what Assembly Member Malliotakis stands for,” de Blasio campaign spokeswoman Monica Klein told Politico.
In late May, Malliotakis called on de Blasio to withdraw from marching in the city’s Puerto Rican Day Parade over its plan to honor Oscar Lopez Rivera, the former leader of the FALN terrorist group. “I think it’s completely outrageous that we have a mayor and a council speaker who think it’s appropriate to not only attend, but to march alongside the leader of the organization that claimed responsibility for these attacks on our city,” she said in a press conference at the time.
Since Republican Paul Massey dropped out of the race in late June, Malliotakis has surged ahead to become the clear front-runner among de Blasio’s challengers.
Five days later, the mayor claimed that he had never defended the decision to honor Rivera and said he had told the parade committee that he wouldn’t march unless that decision was reversed. Just weeks earlier, he had said of Rivera: “I believe he renounced terrorism. He was part of an organization that obviously did employ violence. He was not involved directly in that violence.”
In mid June, Malliotakis held a Friday afternoon news conference, slamming de Blasio for his lackluster response to the ongoing dysfunction in the city’s subway. “There’s 70,000 delays a month compared to 28,000 delays in 2012. And our mayor is simply turning a blind eye,” she said, noting the mayor’s aversion to using public transportation himself.
In an earlier radio interview, de Blasio had defended his habit of avoiding the subway and instead driving two SUVs: “I again challenge the premise that this is a burning issue. It’s not a burning issue. I think this has been really painted in an unfair light. I’m going to do what I think is going to help me be effective and stay connected to the neighborhood I come from.”
But the Wednesday after Malliotakis’s press conference, de Blasio was spotted riding the C train uptown. When asked why he chose to take the subway on that day in particular, he said only, “It’s the easiest way to get where I’m going.”
Even as she attacks de Blasio’s record, though, Malliotakis is ready to provide substance and to articulate her vision of a better New York City. On homelessness, for example, she has a 15-point proposal that would drastically expand the city’s concrete efforts to address the root causes of the crisis. She wants to establish 24-hour “pop-up walk-in intake centers” to provide the homeless with physicians, psychiatrists, counselors, and drug-addiction specialists. While de Blasio has banned the New York Police Department from interacting with homeless people, Malliotakis would have the city’s police force participate with other city departments to form a Homeless Outreach Task Force, escorting homeless individuals to intake centers so that they can receive the services they need.
Malliotakis firmly opposes the idea of sanctuary cities, and she wants to reverse de Blasio’s allocation of $27 million to protect illegal immigrants — including those who have committed felony-level crimes such as fraud, rape, and murder — from deportation. She talks frequently about her genuine appreciation for immigrants — her own mother fled to the U.S. from Communist Cuba — and she opposes the idea of rounding the undocumented up for deportation. But at the same time, she wants to once again allow the city’s law enforcement to protect the people of New York from violent crime.
“This is a very Democratic city,” she acknowledges, “but New Yorkers are very reasonable. This mayor is trying to play New Yorkers for fools.” Just this week, Malliotakis found another reason to criticize de Blasio, when he traveled to Germany just after a New York City police officer was assassinated.
“I think we will win this election because we have a mayor who doesn’t do his job, who doesn’t even pretend to do his job,” she says. “But he thinks people will elect him simply because of his Democratic label. It’s a slap in the face to the people of New York City.”
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