The spot had been chosen with care. It was here, in 1991, that New York City’s deep racial divide had exploded into three days of violence, when Mr. de Blasio was a low-level aide to Mayor David N. Dinkins. Mr. de Blasio’s opponent this year, Joseph J. Lhota, had pointed to that dark episode as a reason not to vote for him, as a warning of the bad times that Mr. Lhota predicted would return if he were elected.
But there was no strife on Tuesday, no flying bottles. Just handshakes on the way to winning, as Mr. de Blasio was welcomed as a hero and celebrity. “All I want to say is that I love you,” said a woman in jeans, a denim jacket and a paisley shawl.
It was a note-perfect play in a campaign of them, summing up both his sharp political instincts and the changing feel of the city he wanted to run.
On Tuesday, Mr. de Blasio was elected to become the first Democratic mayor of New York City in 20 years. Few had initially predicted his victory except, perhaps, the candidate himself. In high school, he was known by a nickname, Senator Provolone, and his classmates sometimes hummed “Hail to the Chief” when he entered the room.
But throughout his life, Mr. de Blasio had come to delight in upsetting expectations.
He overcame a troubled childhood and attended some of the country’s most prestigious universities. He married a black writer who once identified as a lesbian, Chirlane McCray, and created a proudly biracial home. He cut his teeth as a political operator but abandoned life as a strategist to make an audacious bid for public office himself.
Now, as Mr. de Blasio, 52, prepares to become chief executive of one of the world’s largest cities, he will have a far grander stage on which to test the decidedly liberal worldview that has been the hallmark of his career.
Bill de Blasio was born on May 8, 1961, in a hospital across the street from Gracie Mansion, the mayoral residence. He was given the name Warren Wilhelm Jr. after his father, a Yale- and Harvard-educated economist and veteran of World War II, but for reasons that are now unclear, his relatives began calling him Bill.
When he was a young child, the family moved to Massachusetts, and Mr. de Blasio quickly learned to fit in. He became a rabid fan of the Red Sox and worshiped players like the shortstop Rico Petrocelli and the catcher Carlton Fisk.
But family life quickly grew turbulent. His father, who had lost part of his left leg in the Battle of Okinawa and endured a lengthy government investigation into accusations that he and his wife were Communists, began drinking heavily. When Mr. de Blasio was 8, his parents filed for divorce.
Mr. de Blasio has said he learned the importance of building a nurturing home in the wake of his father’s decline. He began strongly identifying with the Italian roots of his mother, Maria de Blasio, a public relations manager, and visited his father from time to time. As a young adult, he adopted his mother’s maiden name, permanently declaring his distance from his father.
In high school, Mr. de Blasio found a passion for politics, helping form student groups and attending rallies against nuclear energy.
In a 1979 interview with The Boston Globe, Mr. de Blasio, then 17, spoke about the difficulties of student organizing. “Sure I get discouraged sometimes about trying to get students more closely involved with school,” he said. “I don’t get into yelling at people, so I have a lot of pent-up feelings, but I go jogging or listen to music, soft rock or opera. You can’t let your problems get into your whole life.”
Soon Mr. de Blasio was off to New York University, where he helped found a student coalition that took up the causes of scrutinizing the university’s finances and increasing student input in decision-making.
But Mr. de Blasio, with a sprawling beard and an unruly head of hair, was increasingly drawn to international politics, particularly the roiling political battles of Latin America, and so he enrolled in graduate school at Columbia University’s School of International and Public Affairs. After graduation, he joined a cause that seemed well suited to his interests: opposing the American intervention in Nicaragua.
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