CLAY: Bill de Blasio, your former mayor in New York City — we just talked about him a little bit in association with the situation with Jose Alba — he is running for Congress — remember he initially ran for president, then he was gonna run for governor or whatever else. Nobody wants him to run for anything.

A new poll — there are a lot of people running in this district, the 10th district of New York City, and New York’s 10th congressional districting, he is right now in seventh place in the House District, and the most recent poll had him getting 3% of the vote. That’s pretty incredible for a guy who was the mayor for as long as he is to know him as well as they do and for only 3% of voters to be willing to vote for him in Congress.

BUCK: He inherited, as mayor, a New York City that was the safest, cleanest, and most prosperous it had been in decades and managed over the course of his time in office to turn it in every way in the wrong direction, to make it the most miserable place to be during covid, to make it a rising crime, rising poverty, dirty streets mess.

And it was really almost like he was doing this intentionally. I mean, he felt we deserved it or something, to have been so — first of all, he’s lazy, he’s reckless, and he’s destructive.

The truth is that anybody who voted for him — and very few New Yorkers — people forget this — he got like 20% of the vote. I mean, very few people even wanted him in New York City to be mayor, but because of the way the election worked here, he destroyed the progress the city that made and sent it hurtling in the wrong direction.

So, I mean, the fact that anybody would vote for him for Congress makes me question that person’s sanity. Anyone who would cast a vote — even a de Blasio family member voting for him I’d be like maybe we should have you checked out.

CLAY: There are some primaries going on today as well where it’ll be interesting to see exactly how these shake out. But you know I’m a poll nerd so I love looking at the latest data there, and effectively de Blasio appears to be ending his career on this run for a congressional seat. And I’m not sure we’ve ever seen anything like this. He’s a two-term mayor and you can’t even get elected to a congressional seat now from the New York City area. To hang himself in this way is kind of unprecedented.

BUCK: I just hope that people — the agreement we used to have, I thought, in New York — and I think this probably true in a lot of other cities — was we can argue about the national political stuff. You can be Democrats when it comes to, you know, the border, when it comes to, you know, abortion, when it comes to things that are national political issues. But when it comes to crime, clean streets, and a functioning subway, functioning city, we can all agree that we want the same things on that, at least, right?

And at the local level, that’s what you’re really dealing with. De Blasio broke that. De Blasio managed to go so hard left and to elevate so many of the wrong ideas. It’s true in Chicago. I’m sure the people in Chicago would like crime to drop there. I’m sure the people of Houston would like to see their crime numbers turn in the other direction. Woke just ruins everything it touches, man. You talk about the Bidas touch with Joe Biden, wokeness is a corrosive ideology that can destroy any city, any state, any country.

CLAY: You’re a hundred percent right about wokeness destroying every it touches, and I think the Bidas touch is certainly infected by wokeness.

But you look at the major American cities right now, I know L.A. is about to have a mayor’s race which is gonna be pretty significant. But Lori Lightfoot might be the worst mayor in the history of Chicago. I think many people who are listening to us in the Chicago area cannot pick somewhere where things would theoretically be worse than what she has done.

De Blasio worse mayor probably in the history of New York City, certainly in the modern history. And have there been any lessons learned about how awful those choices have truly been? Not really. It feels like a lot of the decisions are being doubled down on, but at least de Blasio personally is potentially having his political career end. This is a guy who went from running for president a couple of years ago to now not even being able to be elected theoretically from a New York City area congressional district.

BREAK TRANSCRIPT

CLAY: We were just talking about Bill de Blasio as we closed out the last hour. During the commercial break, official news comes down, Buck, that he has dropped out of the congressional race. I don’t know —

BUCK: Do you think he listens to the show? Like, did we make him sad?

CLAY: It is pretty incredible, the timing on that. During the commercial break he officially has dropped out. Former mayor of New York City, Bill de Blasio, 10th Congressional District in New York, his campaign is no more after everyone had effectively decided they were done with him. That timing is pretty incredible. I knew it wasn’t a good sign when you only are showing polling 3% in what is a very crowded Democrat primary for a certain Democrat congressional seat. But you would hope that is the end of his career as a politician because it’s hard to believe he could go anywhere else. So the update on there, he is gone, he is finished as a congressional candidate.