A Hillary Defeat in Brooklyn
New York Times Empire Blog

Brooklyn City Councilman Bill de Blasio, a seasoned political operative, may be smarting today. He made an appearance before a local Democratic organization in his Brooklyn district on Thursday night to urge members to endorse his old boss, Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton. (Mr. de Blasio managed Mrs. Clinton’s 2000 Senate campaign before running for a Council seat.)

But in a public rebuff, the group, the Central Brooklyn Independent Democrats, instead endorsed Jonathan Tasini, the antiwar activist who is in the process of collecting the signatures he needs to enter the Democratic primary against Mrs. Clinton.

The de Blasio camp tried to minimize the significance, pointing out that the group didn’t support him during his first election in 2001 and hasn’t been a particularly strong ally since. “This is a club with a lot of left-wing activists,'’ said one prominent Brooklyn Democrat.

– Raymond Hernandez