De Blasio uses pizza toppings to explain NYC’s ranked-choice voting system
Stick a fork in him!
The recently playful Mayor Bill de Blasio, who is leaving office at the end of the year, performed a ranked-choice voting tutorial to show New Yorkers how to vote in the race to replace him — using toppings on a pizza, which the mayor infamously ate with a fork in 2014, in place of candidates for mayor.
De Blasio, holding up a large eight-option “ballot,” ranked green peppers first, olives second, sausage third, mushrooms fourth and pepperoni fifth on his brick-oven ballot. Voters on June 22 and during early voting, which begins Saturday, June 12, will be able to rank up to five candidates in the Big Apple’s first citywide election under the new ranked-choice voting system, which does away with the need for a run-off election.
“A lot of people don’t appreciate green peppers enough,” de Blasio deadpanned. “I have southern Italian roots. Green peppers are a very big, important part of our life.”
He said he chose the “controversial” topping olives second, because the mayor’s “had very good experiences with olives.”
A “really good Italian sausage” comes in third “clearly,” with the “often-maligned, misunderstood” mushrooms in the cleanup spot. De Blasio said he’ll “always will say yes” to pepperoni, which is sometimes “boring.”
As of 12:20 p.m., pepperoni held the lead in the 2063-vote poll, while sausage trailed in second and mushrooms in third place. But in the ranked-choice simulation, pepperoni faced off against mushrooms in the seventh round, after sausages were eliminated.
But pineapple, de Blasio explained, “doesn’t belong on pizza.”
“We’re not in California, OK?” de Blasio playfully shouted. “This is sacrilegious in Italy to put pineapple on a pizza. No way.”
The lefty mayor said he’s “not ready” for vegan cheese, which was also a choice on the mock rated-choice ballot, but he “honors what the vegan cheese-makers are doing.”
And clams? That’s for the Massachusetts-raised de Blasio’s former neighbors.
“I respect a different way of life in New Haven, we don’t do that here,” he said of the locale for his frequent weekend summer getaways in Connecticut.
The bit-performing mayor, however, wouldn’t say when asked by The Post which mayoral hopeful is his “pineapple,” or least favorite contender.
“I’m going to watch, very carefully, all of the candidates, and I’m going to make my own decision personally,” de Blasio said.
“I’m going to be doing five candidates, and I’ll think about if, how [and] when to share my thoughts with the people of New York City, but we’re just not there yet.”