de BLASIO'S SLOW SUICIDE – AT 11:38 A.M. ET:  New York may be a liberal city, but the elections of Rudy Giuliani and Mike Bloomberg showed that the right Republican or moderate can be elected mayor. 

Currently, New York has, in Bill de Blasio, the most left-wing mayor in its history, a former (and maybe current) supporter of the Sandinistas and Fidel Castro.  He has become public enemy number one among police officers for his criticism of police and his apparent siding with anti-police demonstrators.

A meeting between de Blasio and police union chiefs several days ago, held to relieve tensions, went poorly.  de Blasio has ignored pleas to apologize to the NYPD for insensitive remarks.  The assassination of two New York City cops, coming after much anti-police rhetoric and poisonous demonstrations, increased the gulf between de Blasio and the police dramatically.

Now de Blasio seems to have gone out of his way to make matters worse.  From the New York Post:   

Mayor Bill de Blasio delivered another blow to New York’s Finest on Wednesday when he reappointed a Brooklyn judge who freed without bail two men who threatened cops just days after the Bed-Stuy double police assassination.

A New Year's Eve reappointment, done when the city wasn't looking.

The stunning decision came even as one of the suspects — a gang member charged with posting police death threats online — skipped a court date and had a warrant out for his arrest, sources said.
Brooklyn Criminal Court Judge Laura Johnson had faced a midnight expiration of her term. She was appointed by then-Mayor Mike Bloomberg in January 2013.

Obviously, a Bloomberg mistake.

Her one-year, interim reappointment by de Blasio outraged law enforcement officials a day after he met with the heads of five police unions to heal his fractured relationship with cops.

“The mayor’s actions of reappointing this judge are completely hypocritical to his argument that he’s pro-police and counterproductive to what he claims to be an effort to open dialogue going forward,” said sergeants union chief Ed Mullins.

“He had the opportunity to demonstrate good will and support for the police, and he once again has demonstrated the opposite.”

The head of the state ­court officers union, Dennis Quirk, called de Blasio’s decision “a disgrace.”

COMMENT:  de Blasio probably figured that he could not fail to reappoint this incompetent judge without infuriating his leftist base.  So he's taking more heat from police, whom the base despises.

One of the problems here is that the organized Republican Party is so weak in New York City.  It often surrenders before the election campaigns begin.  Rudy was a fluke, a man who had built an independent reputation as a prosecutor.  Bloomberg, a zillionaire, could finance his own campaign.

de Blasio is up for re-election in 2017.  Where is the new Rudy?

January 1, 2015