Mayor Bill de Blasio brazenly questions former Mayor Rudy Giuliani's legacy of reducing crime in New York City, and suggests that ex-Mayor Michael Bloomberg was a tone-deaf rich guy — but brags that his own first year in office was "very special."
"A lot of people outside New York City understand what happened in the first year of New York City better than people in New York City," he told
Rolling Stone magazine in a lengthy profile published online Wednesday night.
"But I'm convinced something very special happened here," he said.
De Blasio tore into Giuliani, a two-term Republican, saying the tough-on-crime ex-mayor — who shepherded the city through the horror of the 9/11 terror attack — is a blatant self-promoter.
"I don't 100 percent buy into that theory," de Blasio told the magazine. "I agree that he was good at selling himself, and a lot of media over-accepted his version of the story.
"So, yeah, do you give him credit for figuring out a way to get more credit than he deserves? Sure, if that's credit."
De Blasio, who worked in the administration of Mayor David Dinkins — whom Guiliani defeated in 1993 — took full credit for have better management sense than "America's mayor."
"We've proven not only was my model more electorally popular than [Giuliani's] — by a lot — but that you can manage this place much more efficiently if you're not in fact creating division through the process," de Blasio told Rolling Stone.
As for billionaire Bloomberg, who served for three terms as both a Republican and an independent, de Blasio skewered him for favoring the rich at the expense of the poor, Rolling Stone reports.
"For God's sake, when there was a critical op-ed in the New York Times about Goldman Sachs, he went to Goldman and gave a pep talk to the employees!" de Blasio told the magazine.
"When a struggling school was having troubles in East New York, he didn't go there and give a pep talk."
A Bloomberg spokesman declined to comment to the magazine; a Giuliani representative didn't return a call.
De Blasio also is less than enthused about Democratic President Barack Obama, saying he's a slacker on the issue of income inequality — de Blasio's top talking point.
But the mayor did give props for the passage of Obamacare.
The article comes as the mayor readies a
new, progressive "Contract with America."