Classic Bloomberg Move: The Mid-Sentence Walk-Off

For those who like to collect stories of Mayor Mike being a dick, here’s a pretty good one from Chirlane McCray:

She remembers going to a reception [at Gracie Mansion] in 2006 for council members and spouses. Chiara de Blasio — now 18 and a sophomore at a college in Northern California — had just begun middle school, and Bloomberg’s Department of Education had instituted a ban on student cell phones. McCray approached the mayor. “I said, ‘Mayor Bloomberg, you are my hero! Because you instituted the smoking ban, which is so important and has done so much for people who have respiratory problems in this city and for our children. I want to thank you for that. But the cell phones in the schools’ — and as soon as I said the words cell phones, he turned his back and walked away from me,” she tells me. “I was so shocked. I had never had that experience before — someone just turning and walking away like that! Bill shook his head and said, ‘That’s just how he is.’”