De Blasio made his wife an unofficial ‘co-mayor.’ New York’s next mayor won’t.

NEW YORK — The phenomenon of de Blasio fatigue underpinning New York City’s mayoral race has extended to first lady Chirlane McCray.

Since the beginning of Mayor Bill de Blasio’s administration, McCray has played a high-profile, often criticized role in his administration. But when faced with questions over the arrangement, the mayor has doubled down, lamenting nepotism laws that barred his closest adviser from drawing a city salary: "She can’t get paid, so she is doing it as a volunteer."

Now, the Democratic candidates looking to succeed him — most of whom are trying to run away from de Blasio in one way or another — say they would largely scrap or significantly scale back the expansive profile the mayor has carved out for his wife over the last seven years. The lone exception is Andrew Yang.

Other leading candidates say their partners will not be part of New York City’s day-to-day governance.

“My partner will not have a role in my administration, nor will he have program staff,” said former mayoral attorney and MSNBC commentator Maya Wiley.

Brooklyn Borough President Eric Adams agreed. “My partner would not have a City government role,” he said.

“My wife Elyse [Buxbaum] has a career she loves and excels at. I’m the one running for Mayor and neither she nor I have any expectation she will join the administration if I am elected,” said City Comptroller Scott Stringer.

McCray chairs the Mayor's Fund to Advance New York City, and co-chairs the racial equality taskforce put together in response to the coronavirus pandemic. She has led a push to diversify the city’s statues and monuments and considered a run for Brooklyn borough president this year, but ended up opting out. While not on the city payroll herself, she has a substantial taxpayer-funded staff. And as the mayor’s “guiding light,” McCray has significant influence in the administration.

But criticism of her role has been persistent — specifically her stewardship of a $1 billion mental health program that has been plagued with accusations of mismanagement, many of them first reported by POLITICO.

It’s in that light that would-be mayors responded to a series of policy questions posed by POLITICO to 10 candidates. Stringer and Adams are considered frontrunners for the June 22 Democratic primary. But other contenders — Wiley, former Wall Street executive Ray McGuire; former Obama budget director and Bloomberg housing czar Shaun Donovan and former non-profit director Dianne Morales — also said their partners would play no formal role at City Hall, or that they would divert funding away from the unofficial position.

Yang, who’s leading the polls in these early months of the race, embraced a role for his wife Evelyn Yang — specifically her advocacy for sex crime survivors. She spoke out during his presidential campaign about being sexually assaulted by a former Columbia University gynecologist, whose no-jail deal with Manhattan District Attorney Cy Vance Jr. sparked further criticism of that office’s handling of sexual assault cases, after its light approach toward Harvey Weinstein and Dominique Strauss-Kahn, among others.

“[She is] a fierce advocate for survivors of sexual assault and domestic abuse and will continue that vital work as the First Lady of New York City,” Yang told POLITICO.

He continued: “My wife Evelyn is the love of my life, my most trusted confidante, and my partner in everything that I do."

That was reminiscent of de Blasio’s own description of McCray.

In a 2017 New York Times profile, he described the first lady as “my closest confidante,” “my partner in all I do,” and “my No. 1 adviser.”

Yang tempered his answer somewhat on Wednesday when pressed by Fox 5 News anchor Rosanna Scotto during an interview on Good Day New York.

“We have basically a co-mayor in New York City. Will your wife be a co-mayor?” Scotto asked.

Yang said he was grateful to his wife, but stopped short of the “co-mayor” moniker.

“I don’t think that’s the way our partnership works,” Yang said “People’s marriages are different.”

But, Christina Greer, a political science professor at Fordham University, points out that the “two for the price of one” style of campaigning, popularized by Bill and Hillary Clinton, wasn’t a big theme in city politics before the de Blasio era. The city has only had men as mayors, and spouses haven't played as big a role as McCray.

“New York doesn’t have a long history of first ladies doing things,” she said. “Chirlane McCray is unique in the sense that Bloomberg didn’t have a first lady, Giuliani [has a] revolving door of wives and ex wives.”

And Greer reasons the de Blasio and McCray matchup hasn’t been a net positive.

“A lot of people definitely thought Chirlane’s involvement in city politics was an overreach, Greer said. “It’s been met with very mixed reviews, so I don’t think the next first lady or first gentleman will necessarily have a lot of pressure to do anything.”

Sally Goldenberg contributed to this report.