Bill de Blasio speaks with potential voters on July 30, 2013. (AP Photo/Frank Franklin II)

Editor’s Note: Each week we cross-post an excerpt from Katrina vanden Heuvel’s column at the WashingtonPost.com. Read the full text of Katrina’s column here.

For the most part, Americans outside of New York have heard only one story about New York City’s mayoral race — the bizarre public self- immolation of former representative Anthony Weiner. But obscured beneath the flood lights of the Weiner farce is a populist insurgency that exemplifies the coming struggle to define the Democratic Party in the wake of President Obama.

The progressive champion in the race, New York Public Advocate Bill de Blasio, is challenging the odds-on favorite, City Council Speaker Christine Quinn, to succeed retiring Mayor Michael Bloomberg. Under pressure from de Blasio and progressives, she has begun recently to assert some independence from Bloomberg’s trickle-down technocratic politics and shown a willingness to challenge the administration on certain issues, such as the city’s harmful homelessness policies. But Quinn has too often used her influence as speaker to protect corporate and developers’ interests.

De Blasio has pitched his campaign with the most populist and ambitious agenda in memory. He does so in a city that is one of the most unequal in the country, with an extreme gulf in income and wealth. Visitors gape at Manhattan’s skyscrapers, but almost half the population lives at or near thepoverty level. In any one year, 1.5 millionsuffer hunger or food insecurity. Accelerating gentrification has made affordable housing scarce. Public schools are in crisis. Bloomberg has vetoed efforts to pass a living wage, and he is so anti-labor that all of the 152 public unions in the city now are without a contract.

De Blasio argues that New York is a “tale of two cities,” and that the central issue of this and future campaigns is “economic fairness.” “Without a dramatic change of direction,” he said in a May 30 address, “an economic policy that combats inequality and rebuilds our middle class, generations to come will see New York as little more than a playground for the rich.”

Editor’s Note: Each week we cross-post an excerpt from Katrina vanden Heuvel’s column at the WashingtonPost.com. Read the full text of Katrina’s column here.