UPDATE: The mayor responded to the criticism on MSNBC this Monday morning.
"When you are a chief executive it doesn’t matter where you are," De Blasio explained. "You are in charge.”
He added that all the agencies and emergency services who were expected to respond to the crisis did so impeccably.
“Our agencies performed exactly the way we prepared them to perform, they got to people and they provided the help people needed.”
ORIGINAL POST
New York City was in the dark this weekend. The blackout, which occurred Saturday night and lasted about five hours, affected about 72,000 people in Manhattan. The utility company Con Edison explained in a statement that they will get to the bottom of it.
"Over the next several days and weeks, our engineers and planners will carefully examine the data and equipment performance relating to this event, and will share our findings with regulators and the public."
Citizens needed their mayor to help rein in the chaos, but he was hanging out with Iowans instead in his long shot campaign for president.
The NYPD, which has a history of animus with Mayor De Blasio, once again reamed him out for his skewed priorities. Here's what the Sergeants Benevolent Association, made up of 13,000 active and retired sergeants of the NYPD, condemned the liberal leader in a biting, Amber Alert type of message.
MISSING PERSON ALERT- if seen please return to NYC, it’s the city that had a blackout,has homeless all over the streets,people being killed by bicycles, broken down public housing,& a transit system that’s a mess. Subject is on presidential campaign with plans to destroy a nation pic.twitter.com/UbdMwXt4M7
— SBA (@SBANYPD) July 14, 2019
While De Blasio was hobnobbing with Iowa voters, Gov. Andrew Cuomo not only deployed state troopers to the city, but pledged to examine the transformer responsible for the incident. He also told the mayor what he thought of his absence.
"Mayors are important," Cuomo said on CNN. "And situations like this come up, you know. And you have to be on-site."
It's not like De Blasio has much a chance for the White House anyway. The 2020 presidential candidate is polling on average at half of a percent. Before he announced his run, a majority of New Yorkers asked him to reconsider.