Less than a dozen show up for de Blasio in state capital

CONCORD, N.H. — Less than a dozen people showed up for a meet-and-greet with New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio at Gibson's Bookstore, a popular stop on the campaign trial, in the state capital of Concord, New Hampshire on Sunday morning.

De Blasio originally entered through the cafe area in the front, where two disability rights activists waited with a staff to ask the New York City Mayor a question and film his response in the otherwise empty room. After turning to the camera and answering the question, de Blasio proceeded to a space in the back of the bookstore where five armchairs were arranged in a semi-circle. Only three of the five armchairs in the opening were filled.

At a bookstore in Concord, New Hampshire, New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio spoke to less than a dozen voters, two members of the media and couple staffers.

One of the seated attendees, a young person from Massachusetts who is seeing all the candidates, wanted de Blasio to sign his paper. Another was the state legislator scheduled to introduce the New York City Mayor. A couple others stood around, including an older man, a middle-aged woman, two young men and the two disability rights activists who had followed de Blasio to the back. Two members of the media, one seated and one standing, rounded out the audience.

Off to the side, de Blasio chatted with the state legislator, Representative Ryan Buchanan, for a couple minutes as the crowd waited but did not grow. Buchanan has already endorsed Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders. When de Blasio finally approached the semi-circle, he told one of his staffers to "go gather people from the cafe." Only a few more turned up from the search and the long-shot candidate eventually repositioned himself over on the left side of the semi-circle where most of the small crowd had gathered as a camerawoman scrambled to move her equipment.

While the embarrassing spectacle of the mayor of the largest city in the country talking to less than a dozen voters in New Hampshire defined the day, de Blasio remained enthusiastic, appreciative and gracious throughout the appearance. He thanked Buchanan — "an incredibly strong, clear, progressive voice" — for the introduction and led the audience in a round of applause for the freshman lawmaker.

"Extra credit to everyone," he turned to the small crowd. "Yes, it's a Sunday morning and this was when the schedule allowed but anyone who comes out to talk about their state and their country on a Sunday morning, extra credit."

He then began to explain why he is in the race. "We are used to years and years of what we see is a very narrow bandwidth of possibilities and it kind of gets amplified and it gets reinforced," he said. "People telling us what's possible in very, very limited boundaries. And bluntly, over time, if you're only told we change a little bit, you start to believe it."

While he waited for one of his staffers to gather more voters from the cafe area, de Blasio chatted with first-term state Representative Ryan Buchanan, who has endorsed Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders.

One of the far-left candidates in the race along with Sanders and Massachusetts Senator Elizabeth Warren, de Blasio has aggressively challenged those boundaries in the debates, an ideological warrior punching back at moderates like Colorado Senator Michael Bennet to continue the party's leftward lurch. To some degree, he is fighting not for votes, but over the location of the Overton window, a concept that refers to the range of policies on the ideological spectrum seriously considered in public discourse.

Like top-candidates Sanders and Warren, de Blasio believes the Overton window, a term coined after a conservative think tank executive, was too far to the right for a long time. But he told the audience that since the Great Recession, times were changing. "We were all miseducated to believe that we had to accept a certain set of ground rules and what's happened the last few years is people are rethinking the whole thing and I think it's incredibly good," he said.

"A lot of people have opened up their minds to change," he continued.

His 2013 mayoral election after twenty years of Republican rule in the liberal city, which followed the Occupy Wall Street movement but predated the 2016 Sanders campaign, provided one of the first signs of that change. The accomplishments that followed provided many more and ultimately convinced de Blasio to run for president.

"The reason I'm running for president is I know change can happen because I have been able to see it and make it happen in New York," he said. Above all, he touted his signature achievement: universal pre-kindergarten as emblematic of his efforts to change the conversation.

"I, as a candidate for mayor, said we should do pre-k for all," he said. "People were not talking about that before. I said we should have a tax on the wealthy to pay for it. People were not talking about that before. By the end of the campaign when I won, the people of New York City for demanding pre-k for their children."

When de Blasio arrived at the cafe area, two disability rights activists who contacted his campaign ahead of time filmed his response to a question on accessibility. One remarked immediately remarked on his height.

He likewise ticked through his more modest successes on paid sick days and health care, which he described as a model for the country in a tacit admission that more ambitious policies like Medicare for All and the Green New Deal are difficult to pass. "These are things we've done, or things we're doing right now, but they're all real things that are reaching real people and they're all models for what we should do in this country," he said.

He even apologized, as a New Yorker, for President Donald Trump to friendly laughter before taking questions from almost every voter in attendance.

After the event, he stuck around and answered difficult questions from a New York-based reporter, who quoted a Queens-based activist who tweeted she would have killed for the chance to meet with the Mayor in such a small setting. Although he is reputed to have a frosty relationship with the press, he remained patient and sincere for an almost ten-minute gaggle with the two journalists.

"This is New Hampshire," he responded to the reporter. "This is the way things have always been and that's a very good thing. You, in the end in this state, have to meet people very individually. It's the ultimate in retail politics and it's well-known."

In short, he did almost everything right — except one thing.

"I didn't see this event on any of the local lists, which is maybe why it was small," said Deodonne Bhattarai, one of the disability rights activists. An employee at the New Hampshire office of the Disability Rights Center, she said she reached out to the de Blasio campaign prior to his visit to arrange a time for her question.

Despite the small crowd and another appearance on his schedule that afternoon, de Blasio spent almost fifty minutes talking and answering question. He took an additional ten minutes to speak to the media.

Buchanan, the state legislator who also serves a chair of the Concord Democrats, similarly said the event was "a little bit last-minute so that's why it's smaller."

All in all, the small crowd, especially the day after Montana Governor Steve Bullock spoke to a hundred voters at the home of a former state Senate President in the same city, reflected badly on the de Blasio campaign for its failure to publicize the event more than on de Blasio himself.

Asked by the author where his campaign in New Hampshire would go from such a small event, de Blasio indicated that he would also rely upon the national media appearances that he has access to as New York City Mayor.

"It's a lot of different pieces that make up a campaign," he said. "The two times I was on the debate stage, those were very obviously vast audiences. Just in the last week or two, something like the Daily Show has 1.7 million people, Sean Hannity to go and have a tough conversation and spar with him, that's 3.3 million people including a lot of people who live in New Hampshire. So it's a mix of the media opportunities and the retail."

This work is made possible by the Russell H. Bostert Memorial Fellowship at Williams College.