Blas & Stringer best frenemies
They spent the better part of four years at each other’s throats — but with election time rolling around, City Comptroller Scott Stringer and Mayor de Blasio are ready to kiss and make up.
The political odd couple tried to put their bad blood aside as they stood together at a press conference in Chelsea Sunday and endorsed each other’s bids for re-election this fall.
Even Stringer felt forced to address the sudden change of heart.
“I’m the first to say I don’t always make his life easy,” he said. “But as Democrats, we play on the same team. We agree on so much more than we would ever disagree on.”
Highlighting what they have in common, Stringer praised de Blasio for his work on paid sick leave, the IDNYC program and universal pre-kindergarten classes.
“We are very much in lockstep when it comes to fighting for New York City,” he said.
De Blasio responded in kind, describing Stringer as a “strong comptroller” and complimenting him for “always asking tough questions.”
Mutual admiration is a departure for the two leaders, who have traded barbs both publicly and behind the scenes since taking on their respective roles after the 2013 election.
Since then, Stringer has hit de Blasio for failing to remedy the lack of diversity among city vendors, spending on overtime and the mayor’s attempts to reform the ailing city-hospital system.
Days after de Blasio delivered his annual State of the City address at the Apollo Theater in February, Stringer publicly de- rided the mayor’s job-creation plan as an “empty promise” and slammed the city’s “out of control” homelessness.
And in private, Stringer wasn’t coy about making his mayoral ambitions known. In December, he went so far to tell fellow Democrats that if a federal probe into de Blasio’s fund-raising resulted in an indictment, he planned to run against the mayor in the Democratic primary.
De Blasio and his surrogates have been more tight-lipped in their attacks against Stringer, but they haven’t held their tongues entirely.
De Blasio ally Bill Hyers slammed Stringer in September for complaints Stringer made about conditions in his Manhattan Municipal Building offices just three weeks after becoming comptroller.
The mayor-comptroller feud dates back to as early as 2014, when the two politicos didn’t speak for more than two months after the administration failed to submit pre-K contracts to Stringer’s office for review.