Our [Potential First] Lady of 11th Street

It’s fun having a Park Sloper run for Mayor! A neighborhood guy stretching his wings, flying into the big time on behalf of the rest of us who trudge along with our broken dreams and double strollers…

It seems, however, that the proverbial wind beneath Mr. de Blasio’s wings is his wife of 20 years, Chirlane McCray. 

You might have written Chirlane McCray off as just another Park Slope lesbian-turned-mom-of-two with a prestigious education and a husband who picks up the take out on his way home from work. She’s also, however, a dedicated politician.  And, like Hillary before her, she’s making it known that she’s as much a part of husband’s platform as he is.

Last week, the Times called McCray a “mastermind behind the biggest political upset of the year and a sought-after voice as the city re-evaluates what it most wants from its first family:”

As much as anyone on his staff, Ms. McCray has built and guided her husband’s campaign, thoroughly erasing the line between spouse and strategist.

Political meetings are planned around her schedule. She sits in on job interviews for top advisers. She edits all key speeches (aides are known to e-mail drafts straight to her). 

Ms. McCray is a poet, an activist, a Wellesley-grad (just like Hillary!), and a fierce mouthpiece for equality and justice. Her ideology and drive can be traced, in part, to her own experiences with racism, sexism, and alienation as she came of age in the ‘60s and ‘70s. Her childhood home in Longmeadow, MA was “scrawled with racist graffiti,” and, for a time, she was the sole black student at her school. She was bullied by her classmates, and also by the community at large. She “freaked out” her peers when she came out in college, and then freaked them out again when, years later, she married a man. 

Now, she’s as dismissive of the establishment as a teenager (calling dinner at the Bloomberg house  “very stiff…I think everyone was, like, on their best behavior”), and as wistful about New York as a young artist (“you have banks, and chain stores – all the chain stores. And they take over a neighborhood. You lose so much.”)

If that’s not enough, everybody’s favorite New Yorker/person-in-the whole-wide-world, Alec Baldwin, thinks she’s cool: “What Chirlane and Bill bring is the image of . . . How do I put this? It’s that image of a modern New York.”

Well there you have it: Modern New York begins with a Park Slope mom.