The Slatest

De Blasio Won’t Attend Super Bowl, Will Watch From Home Just Like You

 A Customs and Border Protection (CBP), Blackhawk helicopter flies past MetLife Stadium ahead of Super Bowl XLVIII on January 28, 2014 in East Rutherford, New Jersey

Photo by John Moore/Getty Images

New York City’s new mayor won’t be among the thousands to brave the weather—and the traffic—to attend the Super Bowl, via the Associated Press:

Bill de Blasio will not travel across the Hudson River to MetLife Stadium on Sunday to watch the Denver Broncos face the Seattle Seahawks in a game that will showcase the nation’s largest city to a television audience expected to top 100 million people.

De Blasio said he would stay home to watch with his teenage son, but the decision not to buy tickets to the high-priced event and to publicly say so is in line with the image he crafted during his campaign: that he was a middle-class family man focused on fixing the city’s widening income inequality.

“I’ve enjoyed participating in all the festivities leading up to Super Bowl Sunday, but I’ve decided to watch the game on TV, just like the vast majority of New Yorkers,” the new mayor said in a statement. As an elected official, de Blasio is barred from being comped tickets, so he’d have to pony up at least face value if he wanted to take his son to the game—so we’re talking at least $1,000 for a pair, even if he was lucky enough to land two of the cheapest tickets available. Something tells me there’s worse places to watch the big game than Gracie Mansion.