NYC Mayor de Blasio mourns David Dinkins, calls for fresh look at his record
Shant Shahrigian
Mayor de Blasio remembered David Dinkins, who died on Monday night, as a “good man with a good heart” and called for New Yorkers to reassess his mentor’s record.
“We miss him already,” Hizzoner said on WCBS 880 on Tuesday. “This is a guy who just, for so many of us — he was the person who put us on the path to public service and showed us the right way to do it.”
De Blasio worked as an aide to Dinkins for four years, having started out as a volunteer coordinator on Dinkins’s 1989 mayoral campaign.
De Blasio met his wife Chirlane McCray while both were working for Dinkins, who was the city’s first Black mayor.
“I would say, ‘You know, mayor, all I owe you is my marriage, my family, you know, my career — nothing else than that,’” Hizzoner quipped.
Dinkins’s 1990-1993 administration was marked by crime and racial turmoil that ultimately doomed his re-election.
“I hope now ... that his legacy will be examined more fairly because he really is the guy who helped set this city on a path to safety,” de Blasio said. “He’s the person who started the focus on young people, with after-school programs.
“I hope now there will finally be that sort of fair assessment of all the good he did for us,” he added.
City Comptroller Scott Stringer remembered Dinkins as “a pillar and a patriot.”
“Mayor Dinkins blazed a trail to City Hall and made history several times over as the first Black man to hold our city’s highest office,” Stringer said in a statement. “He invested in communities that had been overlooked for too long and made mental health a priority for his Administration. In many ways, he was ahead of his time.”