Bloomberg commissioner, Obama secretary — and mayor next? Shaun Donovan kicks off NYC campaign
Shaun Donovan evoked former President Barack Obama but mostly ignored his other ex-boss, former Mayor Mike Bloomberg, as he officially kicked off his mayoral campaign on Tuesday.
He started his speech by comparing his time as Obama’s housing secretary in the aftermath of the 2008 financial crash with the crises facing the city today.
“Working with President Obama and now-President-elect-Biden ... I saw firsthand that we can overcome challenges and blaze innovative new paths forward,” Donovan said, one of several times he named his popular former boss.
He suggested Obama’s center-left approach would be his model while addressing the defining challenges of the time: the coronavirus outbreak, the economic devastation it’s caused and demands to reform the police.
“When President Obama trusted me to manage the $4 trillion federal budget, I understood that it was more than a ledger of dollars and cents. A budget is a statement of our values,” said Donovan, who headed the U.S. Office of Management and Budget during Obama’s second term. “That is why we invested in education, improved health care and fought to reduce the devastating impacts of climate change.”
Liberals whose votes Donovan will be seeking in the crowded June mayoral primary widely criticize Bloomberg’s legacy of policing, which disproportionately targeted people of color through policies like “stop-and-frisk.”
Donovan promised to appoint a chief equity officer who would help reform policing and “the broken criminal justice system.”
While Donovan’s latest positions were in Washington, the 54-year-old native New Yorker noted his Big Apple creds, saying he led the Obama administration’s response to Hurricane Sandy. He also promised to ride the subway “every day” if elected mayor.
With a sweeping view of the Manhattan skyline behind him, he gave his speech alongside his wife and children on the roof of an affordable housing development in the Bronx called Via Verde.
Asked after his speech why he hadn’t mentioned Bloomberg, whose own effort to reenter the political arena came to a quick and humiliating end last year, Donovan said he was proud of his time in the former mayor’s administration.
“I’m deeply, deeply proud to have served this city in a different time of crisis, after 9/11, and to have served with a mayor who is a great manager, a strong leader and made this city the leader in the country and even in the world, fighting against climate change, taking guns off our streets, improving public health and many, many other accomplishments,” Donovan said.
Other candidates in the race include Brooklyn Borough President Eric Adams, City Councilman Carlos Menchaca, ex-de Blasio Sanitation Commissioner Kathryn Garcia, former nonprofit CEO Dianne Morales, Comptroller Scott Stringer, de Blasio’s former, veterans affairs commissioner, Loree Sutton, and ex-de Blasio legal adviser Maya Wiley.
