From LeBron to Legend, celebs praise Mayor-elect Karen Bass: ‘CONGRATULATIONS QUEEN!’
Bass, a former United Nations ambassador and New York City Council member, led the campaign to become the nation’s first black mayor.
Karen Bass
It took a long time, but Karen Bass may now be New York City’s first black mayor.
At a time when Donald Trump and Steve Bannon have been leading the White House and the alt-right has been calling for a “whitelist” of immigrants and refugees, Bass, a former United Nations ambassador and New York City Council member, is breaking barriers and making history.
“I don’t think in a million years this is going to happen here where I live, but we have been told to be proud of who we are and we are in a great American city and I am really happy to be the one to do this,” Bass told CBS This Morning in a sit-down after she was sworn in as mayor on Thursday.
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Bass is a native New Yorker who became the first black elected to City Hall through an open election after getting elected as council’s vice president in 1989. She is widely regarded as one of the most progressive officials ever elected to public office.
But she’s not a white Republican, like many Democrats in a city where Republicans control all three branches of government, making her something of a rarity: a Democratic mayor in a city that is about 85 percent white and Democratic-leaning.
During her campaign, Bass said she was inspired by her predecessor, Bill de Blasio, and vowed to lead New York City as “someone who looks at the most vulnerable people, and that’s what I am doing today.”
The new mayor has already faced her fair share of criticism. In January, she told a reporter that she had been told by a friend from Jamaica “that the American Dream does not exist, that people are working two and three jobs to make ends meet, that people drink so much that they can’t drive, that people are shooting up in parks and going to jail for drugs.”
Bass has also faced controversy when it comes