Mayor de Blasio delivered the first State of the City speech of his second term this week. He talked about the need to safeguard city elections against hacking, warned of voter participation plummeting and argued that now is the time to fight to save our democracy.
Simply put, he says, "We cannot be the fairest big city in America if we have some of the most unfair and most exclusionary election laws of any state in the country." But is a mayor who was just reelected in one of the lowest turnout elections in city history the right guy to rally the troops?
WNYC's City Hall and politics reporter, Brigid Bergin joins us on This Week in Politics to look at where we're headed in the mayor's second term.
Speaking with host David Furst, she breaks down the his 10-point plan to save democracy – and has the latest on the city's plan to close Rikers Island and transfer inmates to smaller city jails. Brigid says, "This is a very politically-charged process. Presumably, City Hall is anticipating that they are going to have a fight ahead of them… regardless of how soon they tell people about it."
