Mayor De Blasio's "sense of humor" strikes again

In it, the mayor appears with two Broadway actors—Jenna Ushkowitz and James Monroe Iglehart—as well as his wife, Chirlane McCray, and senior adviser Andrea Hagelgans. De Blasio, sitting in the back of what the New York Times reports appears to be one of the city-owned SUVs, is speaking with his wife on the phone about a musical project to communicate all of his administration’s accomplishments in the past year. Those accomplishments include increased tenant protections, universal free pre-k classes, and filling their one-millionth pothole.

These are all laudable achievements, but the production of a video like this using, apparently, the city’s resources and distributed through official channels feels somewhat gross, given that the mayor is running for reelection next year and it is essentially a campaign advertisement. “This is a virtual campaign ad that is meant to be a public-service announcement,” Dick Dadey, the executive director of Citizens Union, a government watchdog organization, told the Times, “but goes beyond that in serving to promote the mayor.” Elected officials are prohibited from appearing in any “advertisement or commercial” funded by taxpayers in an election year.