Bill de Blasio is mentioned across three episodes of The Bob Zadek Show, never as the subject of an episode but as an example invoked by guests and by Bob Zadek in discussions of pandemic policy, taxation and school governance. The excerpts identify him as the mayor of New York City and attribute to him positions on mask guidance, vaccine enforcement and school reopening. No excerpt supplies his full name, his dates in office, or any biographical detail beyond the mayoralty.
Mask guidance and the early spread of COVID-19
In a June 2020 episode on the unseen health and economic consequences of lockdowns, Zadek raised de Blasio in connection with the early spread of the virus in the New York metropolitan area. Zadek said that studies had traced a great deal of the spread to the subway system, where people were encouraged by de Blasio not to wear a mask, and where subway workers were told not to wear a mask because it might frighten passengers. Zadek framed this as a feature of the early phase of the pandemic, and he placed it within a broader argument that the New York area suffered more critically than other parts of the country, which he attributed largely to population density Here comes “the spike…” (2020).
The same episode used the pandemic to argue against concentrated decision-making authority. Zadek said that the more decision-making authority is placed in the hands of fewer people, the more the resulting incentives work against the public interest, regardless of who holds office. He illustrated this with a governor weighing whether to lift a lockdown: because lifting restrictions produces more visible cases and press criticism, while the costs of over-caution — permanent job losses, evaporated savings, forgone medical treatment, and a reported 40 percent decline in immunizations over two months according to the CDC — remain unseen, the executive is incentivized to err on the side of keeping things locked down longer than necessary. De Blasio appears in this episode as an instance of the early guidance that Zadek says worsened the New York outbreak, not as the subject of the incentive argument itself Here comes “the spike…” (2020).
Taxation and migration
A November 2020 episode on the flight of the golden geese, featuring David Lesperance, invoked de Blasio in the context of tax-driven migration. Lesperance said that New York City had the highest combined tax rate of any location in North America, combining federal tax, New York State tax and a New York City surtax. He described how, when COVID hit, many people went to Palm Beach or the Hamptons and stayed, discovering that they had overcome life inertia and might not hurry back. In that setting, Lesperance quoted Governor Cuomo saying he would make them dinner and de Blasio saying he would tax them some more, and observed that the migration back had not occurred because people had learned there were other places The Flight of the Golden Geese (2020).
Lesperance’s broader argument was that COVID acted as an accelerator, overcoming the inertia that ordinarily keeps people in place even when tax policy gives them reason to leave. He cited Canada as an alternative, noting that it has no estate tax and no gift tax, and described legal pre-immigration tax planning that can reduce or eliminate the tax base in his equation. He warned an incoming Biden administration against adding new taxes, saying that for families with backup plans it could be the straw that breaks the camel’s back. De Blasio’s quoted line about taxing more functions in the excerpt as an illustration of the posture that pushes residents to consider leaving The Flight of the Golden Geese (2020).
Vaccine mandates and passports
In an August 2021 episode on vaccine mandates, George Mason University and the Bill of Rights, Jenin Younes distinguished a vaccine mandate — an employer or university requiring students or employees to get a vaccine — from a vaccine passport, which she described as a city or municipality requiring proof of vaccination to enter businesses. She said that what was happening in places like New York, and she believed San Francisco, was the government telling businesses they had to do this, and that de Blasio had said businesses would be penalized if they did not require people to show proof of vaccination. In her view that was government action, not private business action, and she added that most businesses did not want to do it Vaccine Mandates, George Mason, and the Bill of Rights (2021).
Zadek had opened that exchange by comparing vaccine requirements to ordinary business rules such as no shoes, no service, or a jacket-and-tie dress code, asking what was wrong with a business making an economic calculation about whom to serve. Younes answered that the New York program was not a private business decision at all. Todd Zywicki added a separate objection, not about legality, that requiring disclosure of private medical information as a condition of entering premises is not obviously comparable to a dress code, and described his case with Younes concerning George Mason University’s treatment of natural immunity. De Blasio appears in the exchange as the official whose stated policy converted private choice into government compulsion Vaccine Mandates, George Mason, and the Bill of Rights (2021).
School closures and union influence
A September 2021 episode on parents voting with their kids’ feet, featuring Matt Welch, treated de Blasio as an example of the gap between a mayor’s rhetoric and the policies that follow. Welch said he was no fan of de Blasio, but that four or five months earlier the mayor had flipped his script on schools, saying schools had to stay open, that remote learning was a debacle, and that the city would not even offer it anymore. Welch said he was happy to hear this, at the moment he and his family were deciding about their own six-year-old Parents Voting With Their Kids’ Feet (2021).
Welch then explained why the rhetoric did not change his decision. He said he rationally looked at the statement and asked what rules would be promulgated afterward and who would influence them, and answered that the teachers unions would. Therefore, he concluded, the policies regardless of rhetoric would make it more likely that elementary schools would close in large numbers that year, with children quarantining on a hair-trigger, while the private school across the street would stay open. In the same episode Welch identified two factors that predicted whether a school district opened or closed: how the district voted when given a chance to vote for Donald Trump, and the strength and influence of the local teachers union. He named Randi Weingarten, president of the American Federation of Teachers, and the unions in Los Angeles, Chicago and elsewhere, and said union officials treated parents advocating for open schools as speaking from white privilege. De Blasio’s reversal serves in the excerpt as the clearest illustration of a mayor whose stated position was overtaken by the institutional forces Welch expected to shape the actual rules Parents Voting With Their Kids’ Feet (2021).
Across episodes
De Blasio is touched on in three episodes — the June 2020 lockdown episode, the November 2020 migration episode, and the September 2021 school episode — with a fourth, the August 2021 vaccine episode, adding the mandate and passport discussion. The excerpts show no development in the treatment: each guest or host reaches for de Blasio as an example within a distinct argument, and no speaker revisits or revises an earlier characterization. The mask guidance discussion, the taxation remark, the vaccine enforcement policy and the school reopening reversal are each raised once and not carried forward.
What the sources do not cover
The excerpts do not state de Blasio’s full name, his dates in office, his party, or any prior or subsequent career. They do not describe the content of any New York City vaccination order, the penalties attached to it, or the name of any bill or program. They do not report de Blasio’s own account of the mask guidance, the tax remark or the school decision, and no excerpt quotes him at length beyond the single reported line about taxing residents more.