- Bill De Blasio is a political insider who worked on the campaigns of Bill and Hillary Clinton
- Grew up in Cambridge, Massachusetts, and is a lifelong Red Sox fan
- Traveled to Nicaragua as a student in the 1980s and became supporter of the socialist government
- Married Chirlane McCray in 1994 after meeting at City Hall
- Chirlane McCray wrote a seminal 1979 magazine article “I Am a Lesbian” for Essence magazine
Bill De Blasio, the first Democrat elected mayor of New York City in a generation, is a Massachusetts-raised former supporter of the communist Sandinistas who married a lesbian poet.
And he’s a lifelong Boston Red Sox fan.
De Blasio’s path to becoming the leader of America’s largest city was unorthodox – especially compared with his Democratic predecessors.
He rose up the ranks of Democratic politics. He worked as a junior aide to the last Democratic mayor, David Dinkins. He served in the Clinton Administration and ran Hillary Clinton’s 2000 bid for the U.S. Senate. He served three years as a Democrat on the City Council.
But he is not necessarily a product of the party political machine like previous Democratic mayors – in part because that machinery no longer exists in the way it once did.
Childhood in Cambridge, Massachusetts
De Blasio was born Warren Wilhelm, Jr. in Manhattan in to an Italian-American mother and a German American father. For reasons unknown, he has always gone by Bill.
Both were highly-educated – Warren Wilhelm Sr. had degrees from both Harvard and Yale and Maria De Blasio went to Smith College.
Before De Blasio was born, both his parents had worked for the federal government, but had to flee Washington after being accused of being communists.
When De Blasio was a few years old, the family moved to Cambridge, Massachusetts, home of Harvard University.
