Christine Quinn making her campaign announcement. (Photo: YouTube)
In a move that will come as a shock to no one, City Council Speaker Christine Quinn officially announced she’s running for mayor this morning via a video released online.
“I’m running for mayor ’cause I love this city,” Ms. Quinn says in the clip.
Ms. Quinn’s video, which is just over five minutes long, gives voters a chance to learn about her background growing up in a “typical, middle-class household” with Irish immigrant roots, a father who was in a union and a mother who died from breast cancer when her daughter was 16 years old. Overall the video has an intimate feel, with a soft soundtrack and Ms. Quinn at times laughing and letting her voice quaver with emotion.
Along with the details about her early family life, the video described Ms. Quinn’s political experience. It notes her background as a tenant organizer, LGBT activist and in the City Council, with a focus on her backing of the living wage bill and pushes to expand the city’s public kindergarten program.
“I’m about keeping New York City a place for the middle class to live and grow,” Ms. Quinn says in the clip. “I’m not about talking, and fingerpointing and complaining. I’m about getting things done.”
Ms. Quinn finished the video with a promise to launch a “walk and talk tour” that will take her through “every neighborhood in this city.” That tour will begin today and, like her rival Bill de Blasio, Ms. Quinn will be making stops in all five boroughs in her first day on the campaign trail. With Ms. Quinn officially in the mayor’s race along with Bill Thompson and Mr. de Blasio, Comptroller John Liu remains the final major Democratic candidate who’s expected to enter the fray and hasn’t officially declared his intention to run.
Watch Ms. Quinn’s announcement video below.
