Bill de Blasio cruised to victory in his bid for the office of New York City Mayor with the help of an army of 1199SEIU members who have been working since the spring to help ensure victory and make him the next Mayor of New York City.

“Hard work really pays off,” said Roberta Kenner, a registrar at Wyckoff Heights Medical Center in Brooklyn who worked for five months as a member political organizer (MPO) in Queens. “It feels good being with him. He was at the bottom and now he is at the top. We finally have a Democrat in office. A lot of people thought the Republicans were just going to keep stepping all over us, but we proved them wrong.”

1199SEIU officially endorsed de Blasio in May. It was a watershed moment for his campaign; 1199SEIU’s unmatched GOTV operation kicked into gear and, ever since, innumerable member-volunteers canvassed New York City’s neighborhoods.

1199ers reached out to their union brothers and sisters, making over a hundred thousand calls during phone banking. Volunteers knocked on hundreds of thousands of doors. They collected tens of thousands of pledges to vote for de Blasio, visited worksites, and increased the campaign’s visibility on social media. De Blasio also joined 1199SEIU members at major celebrations and events including the Puerto Rican Day Parade and the Dominican Day Parades in Manhattan and the Bronx.

1199SEIU’s expanded bandwidth for the de Blasio mayoral campaign in many ways grew out of its decades-long friendship with the Mayor-elect. De Blasio has been a constant voice for New York City’s healthcare workers, unfailingly supporting the Union’s homecare workers. More recently he’s stood with workers from Brooklyn’s Long Island College Hospital and Interfaith Medical Center in their battles to keep open the doors of their institutions.

The platform de Blasio ran on was built from the deeply-held progressive values he shares with 1199SEIU and its membership. At every campaign appearance, his vows to end the NYPD policy of stop and frisk, to create a shared prosperity and to once again make New York City a home for working families, not just a playground for wealthy, were met with applause, cheers and calls of encouragement and thanks.

“I was thinking about stop and frisk when I went in to vote,” said Queens MPO Shawn Gibson, a cook at Nassau Extended Care in Hempstead. “When I lived in Far Rockaway, that went on every single day. I’m also really concerned about what’s going on in our schools. My son is 4. I think a lot about the future

In his victory speech, de Blasio said that by electing him the city had spoken “loudly and clearly for a new direction for the city, united by a belief that our city should leave no New Yorker behind.” De Blasio spoke of a clear, progressive vision for New York City and the necessity for the wealthiest among us to pay just a little more to ensure that all of our children have the same opportunities in life.

His words resonated with Dotlin Morrison, a CNA at St. Barnabas Nursing Home in the Bronx, who volunteered for the campaign the weekend before Election Day.

“I’m a single mom. I have a son in college and another one in the military. I’ve worked two jobs to support my children. I really want a mayor who supports poor and working people and who understands what we need to do to move this city forward,” said Morrison. “He’s the man who can do it.”