OPINION EDITOR

When I finished reading The New York Times‘ story on Bill de Blasio’s days as a “young leftist,” I was as unsurprised as Joe Lhota was, well, surprised.

In the 1980s, the story went, the now-mayoral candidate became an ardent supporter of the Sandinista Party, a nationalist revolutionary party in Central America. De Blasio situated himself in the midst of a polarizing political topic by joining droves of Americans traveling to Nicaragua to help create a more egalitarian society in the country. While he and his compatriots claimed humanitarianism and idealism as motives, critics believed they were more motivated to denounce President Reagan’s military support of the Contras.

De Blasio, despite his critiques of the violence of the Sandinista party (which has been accused of murdering upwards of 3,000 people), admits to having been driven to do activist work when he witnessed the horrid inequality in the struggling country of Nicaragua.

So, the New York City public advocate who ran the most liberal campaign in the Democratic primary was an activist supporting an idealistic liberation movement in Central America? Who would have guessed?

Apparently, not Joe Lhota or his campaign strategists. In response, Lhota and his team immediately pounced on de Blasio, calling his campaign something he called “straight out of the Marxist playbook” and  “democratic socialist.”

Lhota was able to expand on his point in an interview with The Huffinton Post. “At the moment, Bill’s political philosophy is based off of the idea that the government needs to be intrusive,” Lhota said in an interview with The Huffington Post. “And he decided to pick murderers, in the form of Sandinistas….He’s predisposed to what I think are the more left-wing elements in this world and I think New Yorkers need to understand that.”

Lhota is right: New Yorkers need to become aware of de Blasio’s dangerous left-wing policies. New York City is no place for self-righteous liberals.

In all seriousness, Lhota’s intentions seem a bit mismanaged. De Blasio has run on a campaign in attempt to end “a tale of two cities, a place where City Hall has too often catered to the interests of the elite