New York state Republican Party Chairman Ed Cox has made the staggering prediction that New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio will be the Democrat nominee for president in 2016 – and not Hillary Clinton.
Citing information from a powerful Democrat lobbyist, Cox recently told friends and GOP operatives that the mayor’s attempt to portray himself as the leader of the “urban progressive centers of the nation’’ is part of his strategy towards making a White House run in 2016,
the New York Post reported.
“It’s like Barack Obama – he was a brand-new freshman senator, and he ran for president and won. I think de Blasio is going to do it,’’ Cox, whose father-in-law was President Richard Nixon, told a recent gathering.
The state’s leading Republican also noted that de Blasio has a close relationship with “the racially divisive” Rev. Al Sharpton, who has a widespread political network, as proof that the mayor has national ambitions, a source said.
“Cox has been pointing out that Sharpton is back and forth to the White House and serves as an emissary for de Blasio,’’ said the source.
Cox insinuated that de Blasio was also laying the groundwork for a possible presidential run with a controversial column he wrote for The Huffington Post last week, in which he blamed the Democrat thrashing in the midterms on the failure of candidates not being progressive enough.
“This year, too many Democratic candidates lost sight of those core principles – opting instead to clip their progressive wings in deference to a conventional wisdom that says bold ideas aren’t politically practical,’’ de Blasio wrote.