New major of New York de Blasio gives first address

Bill de Blasio claimed his place as the 109th mayor of New York City shortly after 1 pm local time today, delivering an inaugural address at City Hall in front of luminaries including former President Bill Clinton and Hillary Rodham Clinton as well as hundreds of New Yorkers.

“We are called to put an end to economic and social inequalities that threaten to unravel the city we love,” Mr de Blasio said. “And so today, we commit to a new progressive direction in New York. And that same progressive impulse has written our city’s history. It’s in our DNA.”

De Blasio (52), was formally sworn in shortly after midnight in a brief ceremony in front of his family's rowhouse in Brooklyn. On the steps of City Hall, he was ceremonially sworn in by Bill Clinton, in whose administration he served as a regional official in the Department of Housing and Urban Development. Mr de Blasio was sworn in using a Bible once owned by Franklin Delano Roosevelt.

A Democrat, he begins his term as an emblem of resurgent liberalism, offering hope to progressive activists and officeholders across the country - but also as an untested chief executive whose management of the city will be scrutinised.

Previously the city’s public advocate and before that a city councilman, Mr de Blasio rose out of obscurity in a crowded Democratic primary field as he shaped his campaign around the “tale of two cities” - a succinct summation of the rising income inequality that he vowed he would urgently address as the next mayor.

He won a landslide victory on November 5th over the Republican candidate, Joseph J Lhota, seizing on an anxiety among voters that the city was increasingly becoming a gilded enclave for the rich, and vowing a sharp turn from the administration of his predecessor, Michael R Bloomberg.

Mr de Blasio appeared at City Hall today with his wife, Chirlane McCray; his 19-year-old daughter, Chiara; and his 16-year-old son, Dante. His inauguration team last week made 1,000 tickets available to the public; they were claimed within two hours.

Dozens of New Yorkers were invited to join Mr de Blasio onstage at the event, including an engineer from Queens who had emigrated from Bangladesh, a Staten Island couple whose home was damaged by Hurricane Sandy, and a fast-food worker from Brooklyn.

Mr de Blasio's successor as public advocate, Letitia James, who had been a city councilwoman, was also inaugurated today, as was the new city comptroller, Scott M Stringer, who had been the Manhattan borough president.

New York Times