Mayor Bill de Blasio will campaign in Iowa again Thursday in his bid for the White House.
He will head to the Hawkeye State on Wednesday evening for a union rally the next day with McDonald's workers in Des Moines who are demanding to be paid $15 an hour. Several other Democratic candidates for presidents are slated to attend the demonstration. De Blasio will return to New York City that night. The mayor campaigned in Iowa last Friday, making his pitch to rural voters that he could help their economic standing as president.
De Blasio will be away again this weekend for campaign stops, expected to head to Nevada, another early caucus state in the race for White House. The mayor stumped in the state in early April as he mulled his decision to run.
"I look forward to putting my credentials before the American people. We are the safest big city in America, we have the most jobs we've ever had, we have the highest graduation rate we've ever had, we have pre-k for all our children," the mayor said in an unrelated news conference Wednesday at City Hall. "The things we are doing here would help people all over this country."
Like his fellow White House hopefuls, the mayor has been focusing on four early presidential nominating states — Iowa, Nevada, New Hampshire, and South Carolina — as he tested the 2020 waters and officially campaigned for president last week.
The mayor's travel comes after a new national poll released Tuesday found he was barely registering with voters, and 45 percent of respondents had a negative opinion of him. It was the first poll released since de Blasio launched his campaign last week.
De Blasio has not been deterred by his low polling numbers, pointing his underdog status in the 2013 Democratic primary for mayor.
"I never worry about where I begin; it's where you end," de Blasio said while campaigning Sunday in Charleston, South Carolina.
The mayor did stop by City Hall on Wednesday to sit down with reporters from ethnic and community news organizations. NY1 was not invited. De Blasio signed an executive order that requires all New York City agencies to spend at least half of their advertising budget in community and ethnic media outlets.
At the outset, it seems like de Blasio will campaign alone or with his wife, First Lady Chirlane McCray, who joined him for most of his campaign stops last week. Their son, Dante, recently graduated from Yale and is taking a trip to Asia.
In a radio interview, Dante was non-committal when asked if he would help with his father's campaign.
"I mean, maybe. We've talked a bit about it. But, I mean, once again my main focus right now is just going on this trip, coming back, resting for a bit, and then figuring things out," Dante said in the interview on WOR-AM Radio (sound courtesy of Lisa G.)
Dante starred in a pivotal de Blasio campaign ad in the mayor's race in 2013.
The mayor's poll numbers may spell even bigger trouble ahead: the first Democratic debate is about a month away. Right now, de Blasio does not have a spot on the stage.
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