When New York City’s liberal new mayor-elect Bill de Blasio met Michael Bloomberg in the technocratic billionaire’s open-plan City Hall office yesterday morning, he politely declared the conversation “cordial”.
Yet New Yorkers’ sweeping vote for a self-styled champion of the middle class who has promised to rein in the city’s yawning gap between rich and poor looks likely to mark a sharp change of tone.
Mr de Blasio’s victory over his Republican rival, Joe Lhota, will send a Democrat to City Hall for the first time in two decades. It also marks the closing of the 12-year tenure of Mr Bloomberg, who guided the city’s recovery from the September 11 attacks and the 2008 financial crisis but became a symbol of prosperity that has passed many residents by.