Depression-era Mayor Fiorello LaGuardia and urban political bosses helped shape President Roosevelt's New Deal. Other mayors since, from John Lindsay to Mike Bloomberg, have also tried to shape federal policy, with varying degrees of success.

Photo by: NARA

Depression-era Mayor Fiorello LaGuardia and urban political bosses helped shape President Roosevelt’s New Deal. Other mayors since, from John Lindsay to Mike Bloomberg, have also tried to shape federal policy, with varying degrees of success.

At an event last week when he named his deputy mayor for health and human services, de Blasio said that he was “going to begin a mission that I look forward to working with my fellow mayors on, certainly work with the president on, to slowly but surely turn the congressional focus in particular back to investments in education, infrastructure, mass transit, housing, the kinds of things that would change New York City so fundamentally,” as highlighted by Bloomberg News.

Mayors of New York have long sought and often gained a national spotlight, from John Lindsay’s role investigating urban riots (before unsuccessfully running for president) to Rudy Giuliani’s reputation as crime-fighter (before unsuccessfully running for president) to Mike Bloomberg’s anti-gun and pro-environment stances (he considered running for president but didn’t bother).

Read more at The Nation about why de Blasio’s bid for national action is essential to his agenda.