NEW YORK — A poll on the New York governor’s race that puts New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio at the back of the pack won’t factor into his decision on whether to run for the job, he said Tuesday, citing his “long, rich history of being an underdog.”
De Blasio, who’s term as mayor will end this December, hasn’t formally announced a run for governor yet, but has been testing the waters for months now, and on Tuesday, he once again appeared to be leaning toward a mounting a campaign.
“I have seen polls like that literally every time I’ve run for office. If I worried about stuff like that I wouldn’t be sitting in this chair right now, literally. If I had been daunted and overawed by early polling, I wouldn’t have bothered to keep forging ahead — and I’m glad I forged ahead,” he said. “We’re talking about polling that’s over the years gotten less and less reliable. So we’ll see what the future brings.”
The poll in question — which was released by Siena College on Tuesday morning — showed incumbent Gov. Kathy Hochul outperforming other possible contenders by between 14 and 19 points in three hypothetical scenarios in next June’s Democratic primary.
In one of those, Hochul scored 31% support, with former Gov. Andrew Cuomo notching 17%, Attorney General Letitia James winning 14%, Public Advocate Jumaane Williams reaching 7%, and de Blasio coming in last with 6%.
Another scenario laid out by the pollsters — this one did not include Cuomo in the primary picture — showed Hochul winning 39% of projected votes, James with 20%, de Blasio winning 10% and Williams with 8%.
De Blasio was responding to a question Tuesday about whether the newly released polling data would impact his deliberations “surrounding your gubernatorial run.”
The mayor, who’s known to “question the premise” of queries he disagrees with, did not in this instance question the premise that he’s running for governor.
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