Bill De Blasio

Vocation

New York City city Mayor, elected on 5 November 2013, taking office in January 2014. De Blasio was born Warren Wilhelm, Jr. in Manhattan, New York, the son of Maria (née de Blasio) and Warren Wilhelm. His father had German ancestry, and his maternal grandparents, Giovanni and Anna, were Italian immigrants. De Blasio has stated that he was 7 years old when his father first left home and 8 years old when his parents divorced. In an April 2012 interview, de Blasio described his upbringing: "[My dad] was an officer in the Pacific in the army, [and] in an extraordinary number of very, very difficult, horrible battles, including Okinawa...And I think honestly, as we now know about veterans who return, [he] was going through physically and mentally a lot... He was an alcoholic, and my mother and father broke up very early on in the time I came along, and I was brought up by my mother’s family — that’s the bottom line — the de Blasio family." In September 2013, de Blasio revealed that his father committed suicide in 1979 while suffering from incurable lung cancer. In 1983 he legally changed his name to Warren de Blasio-Wilhelm, which he described in April 2012: "I started by putting the name into my diploma, and then I hyphenated it legally when I finished NYU, and then, more and more, I realized that was the right identity." By the time he appeared on the public stage in 1990, he was using the name Bill de Blasio as he explained he had been called "Bill" or "Billy" in his personal life. He did not legally change over to this new name until 2002, when the discrepancy was noted during an election. He was a member of the New York City Council from 1 Januaray 2002 - 31 December 2009. He became the New York City Public Advocate on 1 January 2010, being elected on 9 November 2009. On 27 January 2013, de Blasio announced his candidacy for Mayor of New York City in the fall election of 5 November 2013. He was elected with about three quarters of all votes. De Blasio and his wife, activist and poet Chirlane McCray, an African American and former lesbian born 29 November 1954, met while both were working for the Dinkins administration. They married in 1994 and live in Park Slope, Brooklyn, with their two children, Dante and Chiara. Link to Wikipedia biography