Meet the de Blasio family, the first family of New York City

Bill de Blasio, a Democrat, was elected Mayor of New York City in 2013 and began his term in 2014. He was re-elected for a second term in 2017.

Born Warren Wilhelm, de Blasio changed his name to reflect his childhood nickname, Bill, and his mother's maiden name, de Blasio, the New York Daily News reported in 2013.

De Blasio was named after his father, a World War II veteran.

"All of my family, has always been, and for reasons I don't fully understand, very interested in current events, politics, news, always reading all the time," de Blasio told the New York Daily News.

De Blasio a graduate of New York University and Columbia University's School of International and Public Affairs.

Beginning in 2002, de Blasio represented Brooklyn's 39th district in New York City Council for two terms. He focused on public education and social service reform, expanding affordable housing, and protecting tenants' rights.

He was elected New York Public Advocate in 2009. The role of a public advocate is exactly what it sounds like — someone who communicates with the public to find out what they need and attempts to get it for them.

As Public Advocate, de Blasio focused on public school reform, government transparency, and helping those in need.

De Blasio is known for his efforts to reduce income inequality and increase the amount of affordable housing in New York.

De Blasio's administration has expanded universal pre-Kindergarten, introduced paid sick time protections for workers, and raised the minimum wage to $15 an hour.

De Blasio ran as a democratic candidate for president of the United States in 2020. He dropped out of the race in September 2019 after failing to gain enough campaign support.

"I have reached the point where I feel I have contributed all I can to this Democratic primary," he wrote in an op-ed article for NBC News.

During his presidential campaign, de Blasio focused on the working class and beating President Donald Trump.

In 2014, Eric Garner died after Daniel Pantaleo, a former New York City police officer, put him in a chokehold on Staten Island. Officers approached him to see if he was selling single cigarettes.

Garner said "I can't breathe" 11 times during the incident, which was caught on video.

After the incident, a grand jury declined to indict Pantaleo, and federal authorities declined to bring civil rights charges. Pantaleo was fired five years later.

During his 2020 presidential campaign, before Pantaleo was fired, protesters criticized his handling of the case, saying the officer should be fired.

When asked about the Eric Garner case from 2014 in a coronavirus update on May 29, de Blasio said, "We made a mistake. I made a mistake in believing the Department of Justice would do its job."

"When the city took over, there was due process, there was a trial. Our police commissioner made a decision. It was the right decision. The thing I feel very clearly, in retrospect, is we should have ignored the Department of Justice – because what they did was unconscionable in not acting – and just moved ahead. And that's what we will do from now on."

During what New York Magazine called his "worst week as mayor," the second week of March 2020, de Blasio hesitated to close down New York's public schools in reaction to the spread of the virus.

He's also been criticized for spreading misinformation about the virus, including that the US didn't know the virus could spread asymptomatically until April. According to fact-checkers at CNN, the Centers for Disease Control first said that asymptomatic transmission of the coronavirus was possible in February.

"It's really important for New Yorkers to understand that based on what we know right now, it's important to just go about your lives, continue living as you have," de Blasio first said at a press briefing about the virus on January 24. He made similar comments on March 13.

In 2013, McCray told the New Yorker that she met de Blasio at City Hall in 1991. At the time, she was a speechwriter for Mayor David Dinkins and he was a deputy mayor's aide.

De Blasio is Italian and his wife, Chirlane McCray, is black. De Blasio has talked about his biracial family in reference to social reform in various campaigns.

Following his win, de Blasio and his family moved into Gracie Mansion, which is the official house of the mayor of New York. It is located in the Yorkville neighborhood of Manhattan.

In 2019, de Blasio and his wife reported a joint income of $252,178 according to their income tax returns. They gave about $1,200 to charity and another $1,300 to Housing Works, an NYC-based non-profit committed to fighting homelessness and AIDS.

McCray went to Wellesley college for English. After college, she moved to New York and worked as a writer in the magazine industry.

In 2015, McCray developed ThriveNYC with the purpose of connecting people with mental health needs to the people and the programs that can help them. Ultimately, the program aims to make mental healthcare more accessible.

In 2018, McCray was named one of TIME's 50 Most Influential People in Healthcare after it became a worldwide model for mental health reform.

In 2013, when he was 15, Dante starred in an ad for de Blasio's mayoral campaign.

Years later, Dante wrote an op-ed article for USA Today. The 2019 article detailed his perspective of and experience with police as a young black man. The piece was published shortly after Dante graduated from Yale University and recalled two memories — one of de Blasio and Dante's cousins explaining how he should talk to police officers at age 13, and another of Dante feeling afraid of police officers as a young adult.

Chiara went to Beacon High School, a selective public high school in Manhattan, and Santa Clara University, according to her LinkedIn profile.

Chiara was arrested during protests in NYC on Saturday night for unlawful assembly, NYPD sources previously told Insider.

She was released on a desk appearance ticket, or DAT, which requires her to appear in court at a future date.

The New York Post reported that she was blocking traffic and refused to move.

De Blasio defended his daughter following the arrest, NBC reported.

"This is not someone who would ever commit any violence," he said. "She was very clear, she believes she was following the instructions of police officers and doing what they were asking."