Automotive
The NYC mayor race of Nov 2013 was between DeBlasio and Joe Lhota... and the next will be 11 months from now, in Nov of 2017. Whether this will be a hot topic will soon be seen as I bet the politicians running for the mayors office will take all year to fatigue us with their nonsense.
One of the smaller issues in the 2013 election was getting the horse carriages banned from NYC, and some saw that as a way to acquire the property under the horse stables. Those properties have been off the market an awfully long time, and their value to developers now is ridiculous.
When DeBlasio said he'd stop the horse carriage business, he was pushed into the controversy, and put the whole controversy into the news for both animal rights activists (and fanatics) and profiteers (investment companies looking to buy and flip the stables for huge profits) and opened the matter up for the many news sources in NYC to work on this story for years.
Unexpectedly, celebs like Liam Neeson and Danny Glover took the stand on the side of the horse carriage businesses. On the other side are the foaming at the mouth fanatics assaulting drivers, scaring kids possibly about to go for a carriage ride, and working up scare tactic propaganda against the horse carriage business.
You know, once the PETA type nutjobs were given the green light to let their freak flag fly, it became a storm of lies, half truths, and chaos. No one fact checked the hyperbole before the speech the NYC mayor gave, and then the nonsense was taken as fact. Mayor DeBlasio is said to have spoken about banning horses, in following London and Paris having done so. But they haven't. Then there are accusations about mistreating the horses.... well, we all know that is possible, but not likely. There are about 10-15 million people in NYC, all with camera phones, and few who would not lose their cool and they would tweet or snapchat an example of a horse getting hurt.
http://www.mensjournal.com/entertainment/articles/how-liam-neeson-became-central-parks-horse-carriage-champion-w455364
http://nypost.com/2016/12/11/de-blasios-horse-carriage-fake-news-is-creating-chaos/
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_York_City_mayoral_election,_2017
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/11/05/bill-de-blasio-joe-lhota-_n_4219240.html
http://www.nydailynews.com/news/politics/de-blasio-plans-carriage-horse-visit-not-change-mind-article-1.2050688
