Bill De Blasio: Hillary Clinton's Puppet for Mayor of New York City?--Part 1

“In February 2000, I formally declared my candidacy…Patti Solis Doyle…coordinated my White House and campaign schedules,…overseeing logistics and helping to run campaign strategy…On the campaign, Patti joined an experienced team led by my campaign manager, Bill de Blasio, who proved to be an outstanding strategist and trusted emissary among the…communities of New York…Finance director Gabrielle Fialkoff…handled the…critical job of raising money…”

--former U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton in 2003


BILL DE BLASIO: HILLARY CLINTON'S PUPPET FOR MAYOR OF NEW YORK CITY?

In 2000 the wife of former Arkansas Governor and then-Democratic President Bill Clinton decided she wanted to disenfranchise voters in New York--by “carpetbagging” from the White House, grabbing a third seat in the U.S. Senate for Arkansas’s white corporate power structure, using the seat in the U.S. Senate as a stepping-stone for her presidential campaign, and voting to support the Bush Administration’s 2003 military attack on Iraq that most New Yorkers opposed.

And, coincidentally, when former Wal-Mart board member Hillary Clinton needed a campaign manager in New York to help her disenfranchise New York City anti-war voters, the local politician she hired to manage her 2000 campaign to grab New York’s seat in the U.S. Senate was none other than 2013 Democratic mayoral candidate Bill de Blasio. As the “New York Times” (8/25/13) recalled:

“Mr. de Blasio, a former official in the Clinton administration under Housing Secretary Andrew M. Cuomo, joined the campaign in late 1999, after being recommended by several people close to the Clintons, including Harold Ickes, a former deputy chief of staff to President Bill Clinton….His primary objectives — given the carpetbagging charges that dogged Mrs. Clinton — included serving as a liaison to New York’s power brokers, in the city and upstate…

“Never was he more instrumental, his colleagues say, than when he soothed the feelings of Jewish leaders…Indeed, Mr. de Blasio stayed in close contact with Assemblyman Dov Hikind ... And Patti Solis Doyle, a longtime adviser to Mrs. Clinton, said that the former first lady `would not have been senator without him’ because `he paved the way for her with many of the prickly political factions in New York State.’

“Mr. de Blasio’s assiduous courtship of Jewish leaders in Brooklyn also solidified his credentials for his own Council run in 2001. Colleagues even joked about his frequent trips to Brooklyn during the Senate race, and started calling him Councilman.

“And his networking efforts paid off: Mrs. Clinton’s Senate donors eventually accounted for more than a third of his fund-raising haul in his Council race, according to an analysis by `The New York Times’….”

Like her apparent puppet, Hillary Clinton did not get any of her pre-2000 jobs by being chosen in an election by New York City voters. “Hillary: Her True Story” by Norman King describes how the possible 2016 Democratic Party presidential candidate obtained, for instance, her lucrative corporate lawyer job at Arkansas’s Rose Law firm during the 1970s:

“When her husband took the oath of office in January 1977 and prepared for two years of dealing with the enforcement of law in the state of Arkansas. Hillary looked around for some kind of legal work…She was pleasantly surprised to land a place at the Rose Law firm…

“Conflict-of-interest questions frequently arose because the Rose organization was so ingrained in the Arkansas establishment…The firm specialized in…business litigation…Many of its clients were corporations, including General Motors,…the Winthrop Rockefeller Foundation, and Tyson Foods.

“…According to partner George Campbell of Rose, `Herb [Rule] was responsible for getting her’…Clinton and Rule, a former member of the Arkansas House of Representatives, had been friends since Rule’s campaign for the 1974 congressional seat. `I was the point person on recruiting,’ Rule recalled, `and I got the word that she was coming, and I tracked her down.’”

Between 1985 and 1992, the Clinton Administration in Arkansas, coincidentally, dished out over $240,000 in Arkansas government contracts to the Rose corporate law firm that employed Hillary Clinton, according to the April 27, 1992 issue of "U.S. News & World Report". Of the $240,000 in state contracts Hillary Clinton’s law firm received from her husband’s administration, $135,000 came from Arkansas state agencies and $109,000 came from Arkansas state bond counseling work. Although Bill Clinton’s economic program in Arkansas enabled his family to accumulate over $1 million in assets during the 1980s, in 1991 only seven other states had a greater percentage of people living in poverty than had Arkansas. Only four other states had a lower average income than Arkansas in 1989, when Arkansas’s average income was over $5,000 less than the U.S. national average and nearly $10,000 less than the average income in New York, New Jersey and Connecticut.

So don’t expect a New York City Mayor who has a history of being an apparent puppet of the Clintons of Arkansas to be anymore politically effective in finally ending poverty in New York City after 2013 than the Clintons were in finally ending poverty in either Arkansas or the United States when they held political offices prior to 2013.