Mayor Bill de Blasio's poll numbers hit a new low Wednesday, with a plurality of New Yorkers saying he does not deserve a second term. NY1's Grace Rauh filed the following report.
Mayor Bill de Blasio's poll numbers are hurting. 44 percent of New Yorkers approve of the job he's doing, according to a new Quinnipiac University poll. 44 percent disapprove. Even more - 47 percent - think de Blasio should be a one-term mayor.
Other politicians are faring better. 58 percent of city voters approve of the job Governor Andrew Cuomo is doing. 54 percent say they like what they see from City Comptroller Scott Stringer.
Meanwhile, black New Yorkers continue to give de Blasio much higher marks than white residents, a fact trumpeted on Twitter by Howard Wolfson, a former deputy mayor in Michael Bloomberg's administration.
Wolfson wrote, "Amazing. Guy who ran on ending ''two cities" has a bigger gap btwn white and AA approval (32 points in new Q poll) than Bloomberg ever did."
However, at this point in Bloomberg's first term, he had even lower numbers overall than de Blasio.
A spokesman for Mayor de Blasio said in a statement, "This is a mayor who focuses on the fundamentals New Yorkers care about, not political chatter. What matters are results: crime is down 6 percent from last year's record lows, more affordable housing is being built than at any time in the past forty years, and the city has added more than 150,000 jobs since the mayor took office."
A de Blasio aide privately suggested his poll numbers took a hit over his recent fight with Uber. The car service company attacked him aggressively on social media and television.
The poll comes at a delicate time for the mayor. He is dealing with an outbreak of Legionnaires' disease that has claimed eight lives. The Daily News took him to task over it Wednesday, calling on de Blasio to get a grip on the situation. It's a front-page headline that likely won't help those poll numbers.