Mayor de Blasio’s biggest Primary Day challenge was trying to tune out a barrage of hecklers — including one of his own city employees in a Housing Authority van.
“Yo, de Blasio! Give us a raise!” the disgruntled worker shouted as he drove past the mayor stumping for votes outside a Brooklyn subway station Tuesday morning.
Earlier, Hizzoner voted for himself at the Park Slope branch of the Brooklyn Public Library, where about two dozen jail-reform activists chanted “Close Rikers now!” as he arrived with First Lady Chirlane McCray at 7:45 a.m.
When the couple came out, the protesters repeatedly yelled out “Exercise leadership! Ten years sucks!” in response to de Blasio’s decade-long plan to shutter the overcrowded, violence-plagued lockup.
Even though cops kept the demonstrators in corrals at either end of the block — about 50 feet from the entrance — their chants were loud enough to all but drown out de Blasio as he spoke to reporters for nearly 15 minutes.
From there, the mayor went to press the flesh outside the Ralph Avenue subway station in Bedford-Stuyvesant, where he smiled and waved at the heckling NYCHA worker.
General contractor Rob Peters of Belle Harbor, Queens pulled his pickup truck to the curb to voice his discontent when he spotted Hizzoner working the crowd.
Gregory P. Mango“Boo! Boo! Anybody but de Blasio!” Peters screamed through an open window on the passenger side of his dark blue Ford.
Peters kept yelling even after cops told him to move along.
“He’s been making my life harder and harder. He doesn’t want working people,” Peters fumed afterward, while stopped at a nearby traffic light.
Other angry New Yorkers confronted de Blasio in person, with one woman saying: “I’ve seen you on TV. What have you done for the community?” according to an account on Twitter.
Another woman asked the mayor why he hasn’t fired the Staten Island cop who put Eric Garner in a fatal chokehold, prompting de Blasio to try to shift blame to the US Justice Department, writer Ross Barkan tweeted.
Despite the volleys of outrage, de Blasio was confident enough to abandon the campaign trail at 11 a.m., after just an hour of last-minute electioneering.
He headed off for a snack at his favorite cafe, the Colson Patisserie in Park Slope, then hit the gym at the YMCA across the street — while his wife kept campaigning in Staten Island and Queens.
Additional reporting by Yoav Gonen and Lia Eustachwich
