Anna Sale

One of Nathaniel Hawthorne’s ancestors was a judge in the Salem witch trials. In his novel of early America, Hawthorne explores the tension between our deeply ingrained Puritanism and...

In the end, there wasn't much to debate, except for everything they'd debated already. Bill de Blasio and Joe Lhota spent 90 minutes finger-wagging Wednesday night after a general election that is closing where it opened -- with a tussle over a Dickens novel and the deconstruction of the word "divisive."

Mayoral frontrunner Bill de Blasio is continuing to raise money at a rapid clip, but we don't know much about who is helping him bring it in.

A day after Democrat Bill de Blasio blasted the influence of outside spending in the mayor's race, a union-backed group started running ads in support of his candidacy.

A federal appeals court ruling today clears the way for advocates of Republican Joe Lhota to give unlimited contributions to a political action group supporting his run for mayor. 

Joe Lhota remembered his talking points in Tuesday night's debate. Unfortunately for him, he said little to fundamentally alter the trajectory of the race, where Bill de Blasio is beating him by over 40 points. And in the most raucous exchange of the campaign, de Blasio and Lhota heatedly debated the legacies of David Dinkins and Rudy Giuliani, harkening back to a time a dwindling number of voters remember.

With the government shutdown drama playing out in Washington, Republican New York City mayoral candidate Joe Lhota and New Jersey Republican U.S. Senate candidate Steve Lonegan faced off against Democrats with surprising results. 

Republican mayoral candidate Joe Lhota is running on his skills as a manager. But he says being a candidate is requiring a lot of delegating. And, for now, the results are a candidate and a campaign message that are out of synch.

A new racially-tinged campaign ad from Republican Joe Lhota says Democrat Bill de Blasio is a dangerous threat to the city's low crime rates. Lhota links de Blasio to images of body bags, police tape and flipped cars, and makes explicit a warning the Lhota campaign has only hinted at so far.

It's apparently worse in New York City to read from a Republican playbook than from a Marxist playbook. That's the conclusion that viewers could draw after watching the first general election debate in New York City's mayoral contest.  

Between losing his leg in WWII and his tragic suicide in 1979, Bill de Blasio's father forged a career with think tanks and multinational corporations aimed at blocking the spread of ...

In the New York City mayor's race, polls this week showed Republican Joe Lhota has enormous ground to make up before the November 5th election. He's trailing Democrat Bill de Blasio by a 50-point margin. Still, both candidates are employed a similar strategy this week as they tried to paint the other as a radical outside the political mainstream.

We also learned more about Bill de Blasio's family life, with a peek at his wedding video, and an exclusive interview on WNYC about his father's suicide.

Mayoral candidate Bill de Blasio's father committed suicide in 1979, shooting himself while suffering incurable cancer, the New York Post revealed Monday. For the first time in nearly 35 years, de Blasio discussed the event publicly with WNYC's Anna Sale. "We knew his life was going to come to an end. We didn't expect it to be this way. And there had been such sorrow around it," de Blasio said.

As two Democrats readied for the Tuesday run-off of the Public Advocate, the New York Times released a new documentary that chronicles the end of Speaker Christine Quinn's long run for mayor. Meanwhile, the mayoral candidates still aiming for the 2013 win debated Latin American politics in the 1980s, with some red-hot rhetoric. Marxist playbook, anyone?

For the second day in a row, Republican mayoral candidate Joe Lhota tried to seed doubts about Democrat Bill de Blasio by linking his past activism in Nicaragua to his current policies. But Lhota is also increasingly talking about how he'd address income inequality himself.

American policy in Latin America 25 years ago has become an issue in this year's mayoral race. Republican Joe Lhota seized on a New York Times story about Democrat Bill de Blasio's past activism in Nicaragua.

Republican mayoral hopeful Joe Lhota spent part of his day on Tuesday reaching out to constituencies not likely to support him. That included a private meeting with Reverend Al Sharpton in Harlem, who famously and regularly sparred with former Mayor Giuliani, Lhota's old boss. 

The longest campaign of any of the Democratic hopefuls has ended, as Bill Thompson conceded defeat and endorsed Bill de Blasio.  Thompson's campaign began four years ago, and didn't stop -- until Monday.

Thompson met with supporters Thursday night, declaring he will wait until the Board of Elections counts the votes from machines this weekend before taking further action.

UPDATE: Democratic mayoral primary runner-up Bill Thompson emerged from a closed-door meeting Thursday night not prepared to concede the race.