(CNN) - Howard Wolfson, Hillary Clinton’s former communications director, will be a top strategist for New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg's re-election effort.
Bloomberg, who was first elected as a Republican, is now a registered Independent.
"As a New Yorker, I am very excited at the prospect of helping the Mayor at this very critical time in our city's history," Wolfson wrote in an Tuesday e-mail. "It is quite clear to me that the mayor's strong record provides a compelling case for his reelection - and that he will provide the proven leadership we need to guide the city through the unprecedented fiscal challenges we face."
Wolfson, a former advisor to New York’s Democratic Party and a long-time Bloomberg critic, downplayed his earlier assessments of his boss as an “out-of-touch billionaire.”
“That was my evil twin,” he told NY1 Tuesday.
(CNN) – Hillary Clinton’s communications director Howard Wolfson spoke about the New York senator’s failed presidential bid on CNN’s Late Edition - and acknowledged: “There are things that we would have done differently.”
“I think Barack Obama did a pretty good job of learning from whatever mistakes we made,” he told host Wolf Blitzer. “If his campaign wants to study ours and see what we did right and wrong, I'm sure they're going to do that.”
The outspoken adviser also defended the fact that Clinton waited until Saturday to give her concession speech.
“I know we live in the minute-by-minute media culture,” he said. “I think it's a little unrealistic and frankly unfair to expect somebody who's been running for president for 18 months and has done as well as Senator Clinton did – [she] was winning states in the last several months by 30, you know, 40 points to - on the last day of the primary - immediately come out and give a concession speech.”
Despite Wolfson’s admission that the campaign made some slip-ups, he insisted that not highlighting the history-making aspect of being the first female president was not one of them.
“It didn't seem to hurt our ability to get the votes of women who were Senator Clinton's strongest supporters. We overwhelmingly won the woman's vote in this race… African-Americans as a whole tended to vote for Senator Obama in overwhelming numbers, a great credit to him. But white women and Latinas did vote overwhelmingly for Senator Clinton, over 60 percent.”
And what about Wolfson’s immediate plans?
“I'm looking forward to a summer of some relaxation. I'll miss talking to you on a daily basis. But I'm going enjoy talking to my family more,” he said with a smile.
From CNN Politics
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