‘I don’t think there could be two more different people than the current president’s daughter and my son Dante…’
(Ben Sellers, Liberty Headlines) While many on the Left sought to criticize President Donald Trump’s inclusion of his own daughter and son-in-law as official White House advisers, casting aspersions on their security-clearance eligibility and other procedural matters, one potential Democratic challenger didn’t see the big deal.
New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio said he would not rule out hiring his own son, Dante, as an adviser in the longshot event that he were elected a year from November, the New York Daily News reported.
But he was quick to draw a contrast with Trump’s daughter Ivanka and her husband, Jared Kushner.
“I don’t think there could be two more different people than the current president’s daughter and my son Dante,” de Blasio said Thursday.
Dante, a 21-year-old Yale University graduate, joined the campaign last month as a paid policy analyst, for which he’s helping draft an official platform and working with his dad on debate prep—assuming the elder de Blasio meets the threshold for the September round.
Candidates must garner at least 2 percent in four national or early state polls, as well as receiving donations from at least 130,000 unique contributors, with 400 being spread amongst no less than 20 states, said the Daily News.
The mayor, who has a storied history of blurring personal affairs with official business during his stint in City Hall, has struggled to gain traction in the crowded field of competitors.
De Blasio has garnered some of the most negative polling numbers of the more than two-dozen candidates, which now has been culled to 23 with the recent exit of former Gov. John Hickenlooper and Rep. Eric Swallwell.
“We’ve been working and fighting to get into September, it’s not there, I can be honest about that,” he said. “We’re going to keep working until the final hour because you never know what happens, a bunch of polls still could come in, and all sorts of things could happen online.”
De Blasio was reported to have been asking donors for $1 donations to meet the fundraising benchmark.
However, he wouldn’t say if and when he might consider dropping out, instead noting that if he didn’t make the September debate stage there was always October.
“I think this is a wide open situation … debates are a part of the picture, a lot of other things too,” he said.