Mayor Bill de Blasio takes rear door to vote during protest

Mayor Bill de Blasio, voting Tuesday with his wife in Brooklyn, took the rear door of his polling place and avoided activists protesting that he’s moving too slowly to shut down the violence-plagued Rikers Island jails.

As dozens of activists from the group #CLOSErikers chanted “Mayor Bill de Blasio, we’re calling out your name! Ten years of pain! Ten years of shame!” de Blasio, a Democrat, was breaking with his long-running practice of entering the Park Slope library polling site by the front door.

In March, de Blasio reversed his stance on closing down Rikers, which the U.S. Justice Department has said is beset by a “deep-seated culture of violence” and corruption.

De Blasio has frustrated activists by insisting that the closure would take 10 years — long after he’s out of office — and punting to a future mayor the politically fraught choice of where to open replacement lockups and whether to actually shutter the complex.

The state’s former chief judge Jonathan Lippman, who oversaw a panel that recommended closing Rikers, wrote in an opinion piece in amNewYork in October the timeline could be shorter and that de Blasio’s plan “won’t get us across the finish line.”

De Blasio on Tuesday did not address the Rikers controversy, and chants were inaudible from inside the library. Asked after voting why he went in the back door, he said, “We wanted to keep it simple today.”

The same group of activists had greeted the mayor in September, when he voted in the primary election. That morning, he walked past them and spoke to the press as activists chanted in the background.

Among the activists both mornings was Darren Mack, who in June confronted de Blasio while the mayor stretched on a mat during his workout at the YMCA. Mack shook his head when reporters told him that the mayor had already been in and out of the library.

“It’s just a sign that he’s running from everyday New Yorkers,” Mack said. “Today is just an example of what he’s done for the last seven months since he announced that Rikers was gonna be closed: He just says stuff, and he hasn’t done anything.”

De Blasio, first elected mayor in 2013, is running for re-election. Opinion polls show him with a 40-point lead over his closest rival, Republican Nicole Malliotakis. She opposes shuttering Rikers and wants to keep the jails there.

Malliotakis arrived at her Staten Island polling station to a warm reception, receiving hugs from supporters on hand.

Malliotakis, a state assemblywoman, arrived at the Shirlee Solomon School just before 7 a.m. to cast her vote alongside her parents, George and Vera, immigrants of Greece and Cuba respectively. Her parents wiped tears from their eyes after their daughter cast her vote.

“They came as immigrants to this country, not speaking the language, not having family . . . and yet today they’re casting their vote for their daughter, one generation later, to be mayor of the City of New York,” Malliotakis told reporters. “That shows you how truly special New York is and we must keep New York City as a place of opportunity, and we must restore it as a beacon of hope.”

Malliotakis repeated her criticisms of the incumbent’s first term in office.

“Today is the day New Yorkers decide if they want another four years of corruption, of pay to play, of mismanagement, of deteriorating quality of life,” she said.

De Blasio, at a news conference with his wife, Chirlane McCray, after they voted, highlighted what his administration has enacted, such as more below-market-rate rental apartments, a rent freeze, free prekindergarten classes for all 4-year-olds and city-provided after school programs, and mandatory, employer-provided sick leave.

“We have to be more deeply connected to the grass roots,” he said. “We need a clear progressive message, and a message about changing people’s economic reality.”

With Laura Figueroa

By Matthew Chayes

matthew.chayes@newsday.comchayesmatthew

Matthew Chayes, a Newsday reporter since 2007, covers New York City.