There are other good [congressional] candidates for sure. I have differences with them. But I came to a conclusion with five weeks to go — even with decent resources — there wasn't a lot of media coverage; it wasn't the kind of race that people were focused on; it was absolutely unpredictable who was going to vote. You can see that very optimistically. You can see that pessimistically. But one thing we knew for sure is we just didn't know. And I just didn't see how to overcome the disadvantages in that time frame given the dynamics. I think if this had been a front-page kind of election, I might have felt very differently. I might have said, ‘you know, there's still a lot of tools here.’
Honesty is the best policy in these things. If you feel it, if you feel that even though you're an underdog but you feel a pathway, I always would tell people to go for it. But if you don't feel it and you can't see it, then that's the time to stop.
How painful was it for you to drop out?
Well, it's painful because I tried to give it my all in City Hall. And this is all related, obviously, to my service as mayor and especially during the pandemic, I really did everything I could possibly think of to protect people in the city and try and help us [get] out of COVID. And I think in many ways, this city led the nation in terms of things like vaccine mandates and keeping schools open.
And we obviously rebounded and became extraordinarily safe in COVID terms compared to what we have been before. I mean, we were one of the most vaccinated places in the country. I was very proud of that. I thought that would all mean more.
But I think, at the same time, when there's a crisis, when people are going through pain, they can’t obviously associate with the people in leadership, even if the people in leadership are trying their best. And again, I made tough decisions. I made a lot of tough decisions knowing they wouldn't necessarily be popular and if I had been thinking about elections, it would have been the worst thing in the world in terms of trying to lead people out of crisis.
It's one thing to withdraw from this election, but you also announced that this would be the end of your career in elected office. Why?
Well, I certainly want to stay involved in public life. I want to stay involved in political life in a variety of ways. Because from my point of view at this point there's kind of a natural endpoint, and I'm very, very blessed. I truly am. I got to do things I could only have dreamed of. And I feel like I actually fulfilled a lot of my campaign promises and that's an amazing feeling. But it’s been clear in the last few years that whatever I did right and wrong — and I'm clear I made some mistakes — that it left a lot of people with sort of a sour feeling and that that's not going to change anytime soon.
It's just important to be honest about that and say, ‘OK, this was a great chapter of life, really amazing chapter.’ I'm not going to complain. Some of it’s bad luck, and some of it's the result of making decisions and knowing that people would react to those decisions. And some of it, though, was my own mistakes and my own failures of communication and things I did that bothered people and I gotta just accept that. And I don't feel bad. I'd love to go back and if I had a time machine, I would fix it.
I think it's interesting that you keep saying, ‘I've made mistakes.’ Is it that you feel regret? Are they policy regrets?
I think that the biggest regrets are about my inability to understand that so much of the job was about communication, was about creating the emotional connection with people. I knew it. Of course, I've been in public life, political life, for a long time. I knew it. In one way, I practiced it in different points of my career much better.
But I think in the maelstrom of City Hall, I lost the current. It's extremely difficult. I don't think even folks who watch City Hall every day — report on it or other people in the political class — I don't think hardly anyone understands how difficult it is. And it is humbling as all hell. It is not impossible to be mayor obviously, but it is incredibly difficult.
You had eight years as mayor. Is it the kind of job that you get better at? Or not necessarily?
I think I did not learn the lessons early on that I could have and should have. For example, I did not come up with [a] social media [strategy]. And social media became more and more important over the course of the eight years, even on the first day of my administration; its role was very different than on the last day.
And remember there was this little reality of Donald Trump in between. On the first day of my administration, no one was even thinking Donald Trump would ever be president of the United States. By the last day, he had already served a full term and he had transformed the landscape, among many other factors. I just didn't get how important it was to center a lot of my energy on social media. I didn't get how much in today's dynamic, it was important to sort of bring people into my personal space, personal dynamics, that people needed that sense of connection.
"Exit" - Google News
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Bill de Blasio's (last?) exit interview - Gothamist
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