By Staff Reporter |
South Tucson Mayor Roxanna “Roxy” Valenzuela is in a relationship with former New York Mayor Bill de Blasio.
De Blasio is still legally married. He and his wife, Chirlane McCray, separated in 2023 but did not divorce.
At the time that Valenzuela and de Blasio began seeing one another, the former mayor was still in another relationship with Nomiki Konst: a New York progressive activist and former Arizona candidate who formerly was a reporter with “The Young Turks” podcast, as the New York Post reported.
Although Konst hails from New York currently, she is originally from Tucson like Valenzuela. Konst ran for Congress in Arizona briefly in 2012, the same year she co-chaired former President Barack Obama’s re-election campaign.
De Blasio said he hoped Konst would still be his friend after learning of this affair.
“Nomiki and I had a lovely relationship for 10 months, I have deep respect for her and what she stands for, and I hope we can have a real friendship in the future,” said de Blasio.
Since unofficially splitting with his wife, de Blasio has enjoyed a string of affairs widely reported in the press.
In December 2023, de Blasio had an affair with a then-married woman, Kristy Stark, who at the time founded and led an early childhood behavioral company supported by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. This month, Stark joined the University of Michigan faculty as a behavioral science professor.
Although Stark claimed to be going through a divorce at the time of her tryst with de Blasio, her then-husband denied knowledge of any divorce taking place and any infidelity by his then-wife.
Court records show divorce proceedings initiated in Michigan in January 2024, almost a month to the day after reports emerged of Stark and de Blasio’s affair.
De Blasio is also affiliated with the University of Michigan within the Gerald R. Ford School of Public Policy as a residence policymaker.
Already reports have emerged that de Blasio’s latest relationship with Valenzuela has taken a turn for the worse, per anonymous sources, who say the mayor wants to progress the relationship.
Valenzuela and de Blasio met during a June fundraising dinner in Arizona. The two were introduced by de Blasio’s then-girlfriend, Konst, per reports.
In recent weeks, Valenzuela was reported as residing in a motel purchased in 2023 for affordable housing by the organization where she works, Casa Maria Catholic Worker Community.
Although Valenzuela does have two children, she is not married. The father of one of her children, Billy Peard, told The Post that he and Valenzuela share parenting responsibilities. Per social media posts, the two were partners for around one of the two years of their daughter’s life.
Peard, a Tucson attorney, previously ran for the Arizona State House in 2020 as a Democratic candidate. Prior to that, Peard was a staff attorney for the ACLU, Community Legal Aid, and Georgia Legal Services.
Like Valenzuela, de Blasio has two children.
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