The Ad That Bit The Big Apple

Twelve years, evidently, was enough. After three terms under Mayor Michael Bloomberg, New Yorkers took the first steps toward electing his successor on Sept. 10. Bill de Blasio, the city’s public advocate, handily took first in the Democratic primary. Joe Lhota, a former city-transit boss and top aide to Rudy Giuliani, won the Republican race.

A long shot at the outset, de Blasio portrayed himself as the populist antidote to a billionaire mayor, with a plan for taxing the wealthy to aid the middle class. A well-timed sexting scandal that torpedoed Anthony Weiner’s candidacy helped. But nothing may have boosted him more than a 30-second TV ad featuring his biracial son Dante. The ad humanized de Blasio’s message and made a viral star out of his teenage son–and his son’s hairstyle. “Everybody is talking about Dante’s Afro,” says former Bloomberg aide William Cunningham. “After 20 years of Bloomberg and Giuliani, [New Yorkers] were ready for a change, and de Blasio gave them a very distinct picture of what his change would look like.”