{"id":33574,"date":"2013-09-12T01:28:05","date_gmt":"2013-09-12T01:28:05","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.mixedracestudies.org\/wordpress\/?p=33574"},"modified":"2013-09-13T12:28:53","modified_gmt":"2013-09-13T12:28:53","slug":"luck-and-a-shrewd-strategy-fueled-de-blasio%e2%80%99s-ascension","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/?p=33574","title":{"rendered":"Luck and a Shrewd Strategy Fueled de Blasio\u2019s Ascension"},"content":{"rendered":"

Luck and a Shrewd Strategy Fueled de Blasio\u2019s Ascension<\/a><\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

The New York Times<\/a>
\n2013-09-11<\/p>\n

Michael Barbaro<\/a><\/strong>, Political Writer<\/p>\n

The commercial<\/a> that changed the course of the mayor\u2019s race almost never happened.<\/p>\n

Bill de Blasio\u2019s<\/a> campaign team had mused about building an ad around his wife, Chirlane McCray<\/a>, a telegenic African-American poet, then abandoned the concept.<\/p>\n

They then turned to his 15-year-old son, but nothing seemed to go right. The de Blasio family kitchen in Brooklyn<\/a> was not big enough for the camera crew, so they borrowed a bigger one from a neighbor.<\/p>\n

The neighbor\u2019s kitchen turned out to be too fancy, sending the wrong message for a populist candidate. So a long lens was used to blur out the expensive fixtures.<\/p>\n

But when the commercial was finally shown to the candidate and his wife, they seemed overcome, instantly recognizing the power of its message: that the aggressive policing of the Bloomberg<\/a> era was not an abstraction to Mr. de Blasio, it was an urgent personal worry within his biracial household.<\/strong><\/p>\n

\u201cThis,\u201d predicted the campaign\u2019s pollster, Anna Greenberg, \u201cwill be huge.\u201d…<\/p>\n