Bill de Blasio’s Moment: Can He Handle It?

Here’s the good news for New York City Public Advocate Bill de Blasio, my Brooklyn neighbor. Less than a month before the Democratic mayoral primary, on September 10th, he’s leading in the latest Quinnipiac University poll, and liberal billionaires, famous Ivy League professors, big public-sector unions, and music and film celebrities are lining up to endorse him as the second coming of Franklin D. Roosevelt, Fiorello LaGuardia, Mario Cuomo, or Mark Green. (O.K., maybe not the last one. Green, the last public advocate to land the Democratic nomination for mayor, didn’t exactly fare well in his 2001 race against Michael Bloomberg.)

And here’s the bad news for de Blasio. Two weeks before he raced to the top of the Quinnipiac poll, Christine Quinn, who’s now just about clinging onto second place, above Bill Thompson, was leading by six points. And not so long ago, one of the co-leaders was Anthony Weiner, whose chances of being elected are melting away faster than an ice cube on the Coney Island boardwalk. “Follow the bouncing ball, folks,” Maurice Carroll, the director of the Quinnipiac University Polling Institute, commented upon the release of the poll showing de Blasio ahead. “This line-up keeps changing.”

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