Bill de Blasio is running for president in 2020. Here's everything we know about the candidate and how he stacks up against the competition.

Grace Panetta

May 31, 2019, 21:45 IST

Bill de Blasio is running for president in 2020. Here's everything we know about the candidate and how he stacks up against the competition.

Reuters/Brendan McDermid

New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio.

Who is Bill de Blasio?

Current job: Mayor of New York City.

Age: 58.

Family: De Blasio and his wife Chirlane McCray have a daughter, Chiara, and a son, Dante.

Hometown: New York, New York, raised in Cambridge, Massachusetts.

Political party: Democratic.

Previous jobs: New York City Public Advocate, New York City Councilmember representing Brooklyn.

Who is Bill de Blasio's direct competition for the nomination?

Based on a recurring series of national surveys we conduct, we can figure out who the other candidates competing in Bill de Blasio's lane are, and who the broader opponents are within the party.

De Blasio is a more recent addition to our surveys and at this time has an insufficient sample size for which to draw conclusions.

INSIDER has been conducting a recurring poll through SurveyMonkey Audience on a national sample to find out how different candidate's constituencies overlap. We ask people whether they are familiar with a candidate, whether they would be satisfied or unsatisfied with that candidate as the nominee, and sometimes we also ask whether they think that person would win or lose in a general election against President Donald Trump.

What are Bill De Blasio's policy positions?

On healthcare:
- De Blasio supports universal healthcare and recently unveiled a $100 million plan to extend comprehensive healthcare to uninsured, low-income, and undocumented New Yorkers to achieve a universal coverage rate in the city.
- "Everyone is guaranteed the right to health care, everyone," de Blasio said in January, according to The New York Times. "We are saying the word 'guarantee' because we can make it happen."
On immigration:
- As mayor, de Blasio debuted a program to grant New York City ID cards to undocumented residents to allow them to access city services.
- De Blasio also successfully sued the Trump administration after they threatened to cut federal funding to New York and other so-called "sanctuary cities" which do not actively cooperate with federal immigration authorities.
- Under de Blasio's administration, New York only turns undocumented immigrants accused of violent crimes over to ICE, not those accused of non-violent or status offenses.
On climate change:
- De Blasio recently rolled out a bold new plan to safeguard vulnerable parts of New York City, particularly lower Manhattan, from flooding and sea-level rise.
- He also backed city council legislation that financially penalizes the owners of large buildings that do not significantly reduce their carbon emissions.
- While de Blasio held a rally in support of the Green New Deal resolution in the lobby of Trump Tower, the event was derailed was protesters. He's also been criticized for taking a large SUV from the Upper East Side to work out at the YMCA in his home neighborhood of Park Slope, Brooklyn.
On campaign finance/election reform:
- Earlier this year, de Blasio signed legislation to expand public financing of New York City elections.
On abortion:
- De Blasio is pro-choice. Earlier this year, he applauded New York state expanding protections and access to late-term abortion for health reasons. "It's crucial that we protect a woman's right to choose, particularly at this moment in history, when women's rights are under attack," he said.
- De Blasio also spoke out against Alabama passing a bill that would ban all abortions in the state, tweeting, "Alabama's vile and illegal abortion ban is an attack on women in all 50 states ... we're in the fight of our lives and can't back down."
On LGBTQ rights:
- As mayor, de Blasio has undertaken initiatives to increase healthcare access to LGBTQ New Yorkers, and signed legislation making it easier for transgender and nonbinary individuals to amend their birth certificates and identify as neither male nor female on official documents.
On education:
- De Blasio implemented universal pre-Kindergarten in New York City, a major accomplishment of his administration.
- His nearly $800 million plan to improve struggling New York City public schools, which he termed Renewal, was phased out, however, after producing mixed results and few tangible improvements, The New York Times recently reported.
On guns:
- New York City has some of the most restrictive gun laws in the country, mainly limiting gun licenses to former law enforcement officials, professional bodyguards, and people who can establish a strong need for self-defense.
- As mayor, de Blasio has partnered with the NYPD to direct resources towards reducing gun violence in neighborhoods with the highest rates of shooting incidents and stopping gun trafficking.
- "We need the laws that we have to protect against guns being on our streets and we will fight to protect ourselves, that's the bottom line," de Blasio said in January regarding the Supreme Court hearing a case challenging a New York City ordinance prohibiting most gun owners from taking their guns outside of their homes.
On criminal justice reform:
- As Mayor, de Blasio has phased out the Bloomberg administration's controversial "stop-and-frisk" policy, which gave police officers wide latitude to stop people they deemed suspicious and was criticized by civil rights groups for disproportionately affecting black and Latinx New Yorkers.
- In 2016, de Blasio signed eight criminal justice reform bills that required the NYPD to increase data collection and transparency, and expand the uses of community service and fines instead of jail time for low-level infractions like violating open-container laws, public urination, and noise violations.
- De Blasio has also supported some bail reform measures in the New York state legislature.
On trade:
- De Blasio has not yet publicly commented on his stance on trade or the Trump administration's tariffs on China and the EU.
On foreign policy:
- De Blasio forcefully spoke out against the Trump administration's ban on immigration for people from majority-Muslim countries in 2017.
- New York City is home to the United Nations headquarters, and de Blasio mainly engages in foreign policy issues through his Office of International Affairs. He's particularly focused on collaborating with UN member states on global issues like migration and combatting climate.
On taxes:
- De Blasio has long advocated for redistributing wealth by levying higher taxes on the very wealthiest Americans. "There's plenty of money in the world," he said in a speech in January. "It's just in the wrong hands!"
- In 2017, de Blasio proposed a "Fair Fix" tax plan to tax New York's wealthiest 1% of residents in order to improve the subway and subsidize Metrocards for low-income New Yorkers.
- De Blasio has also supported taxing legal marijuana operations, congestion pricing for vehicles in New York City, and taxing the owners of vacant storefronts.
On jobs and the economy:
- Expanding jobs and upward mobility for middle and low-income Americans has been a major fixture of De Blasio's mayoral and presidential campaigns.
- De Blasio was a major supporter of Amazon's plan to build a second headquarters in Queens, which the e-commerce giant pulled out of after local resistance.
- While de Blasio pledged to create 100,000 new jobs by 2027 with his New York Works program in 2017, his administration said earlier this year that just 3,000 jobs have been created so far.
On technology:
- Through his Mayoral Office of Technology, de Blasio's administration is working on expanding broadband access to New Yorkers, increasing the use of technology in classrooms, and forming public-private partnerships to increase technological innovation in New York.

What are Bill De Blasio's political successes?

De Blasio has a history of winning crowded Democratic primaries, both in the 2009 New York public advocate race, and his 2013 mayoral campaign, where he beat out four and eight other candidates for the nomination, respectively.
His administration successfully implemented universal pre-Kindergarten across New York, a major victory for the mayor's agenda.
Also in his time as mayor, de Blasio has overseen increases to New York's minimum wage, introduced paid sick time protections for workers, and debuted New York City ID cards to allow undocumented and homeless residents to access city services.

How much money has Bill De Blasio raised?

Since De Blasio only entered the race on May 16, he hasn't disclosed any fundraising numbers yet. His campaign will be required to file their first official quarterly fundraising report with the Federal Election Commission on July 15.

Could Bill De Blasio beat President Trump?

So far, de Blasio's early polling numbers bode very poorly for his presidential prospects.

The latest version of INSIDER recurring survey of the 2020 Democratic primary found that despite 51% of respondents having heard of him - a fairly good level of name recognition - just 10% would be satisfied with him as the nominee and 44% would be actively dissatisfied, the highest dissatisfaction level any 2020 candidates have received in our surveys so far.

And just 12% of respondents believed de Blasio would beat Trump in a head-to-head match-up compared to a staggering 49% who thought he would lose. For comparison, 32% of our survey respondents believe a generic Democrat would beat Trump and 30% think a generic Democrat would lose.