President Barack Obama gave a special shoutout to Dante de Blasio and his hair at a Democratic fundraiser on Tuesday night. Credit: Twitter/Bill Hyers
Dante de Blasio may have gotten the best compliment on his hair Tuesday night when President Barack Obama praised the teen’s afro at a Democratic fundraiser.
Obama introduced mayoral candidate Bill de Blasio as “the next mayor of New York City,” and then gave a special shoutout to “his son, Dante, who has the same hairdo I had back in 1978.”
“Although I have to confess, my afro was never that good,” Obama said. “It was a little unbalanced.”
De Blasio’s campaign manager, Bill Hyers, snapped a photo of Dante meeting the president and posted it to Twitter.
Dante and his hair grew to fame after he was featured in a TV campaign ad for his father in August.
The president endorsed de Blasio on Monday.
“We could not be prouder of the campaign Bill ran, the way he gave voice to the values that make us Democrats,” he said at the fundraiser.
“And we are confident that he is going to continue to move New York in a direction where everybody has a chance to get ahead. And so we’re very proud of him and look forward to seeing him do a great job as the mayor of New York City,” he added.
The light moments of Tuesday’s fundraiser came after de Blasio’s opponent, Joe Lhota, attacked him this week for supporting the leftist Sandinista regime in Nicaragua in the 1980s.
“Mr. de Blasio’s class warfare strategy in New York City is directly out of the Marxist playbook,” he said in a statement, according to The New York Daily News. “Now we know why.”
De Blasio dismissed the attacks as “silly” and accused Lhota of trying to obscure the real issues facing the city.
The two candidates will face off in three debates in October ahead of the general election.
