The most recent hilarious example of this was a British newspaper that contacted “Bill DeBlasio” by email for comment on the NYC mayor election (Bill de Blasio

The most recent hilarious example of this was a British newspaper that contacted “Bill DeBlasio” by email for comment on the NYC mayor election (Bill de Blasio is a former mayor of NYC), without ever verifying (or apparently, even asking) that they had found the person they intended. https://www.semafor.com/article/10/29/2025/british-newspaper-spoke-to-the-wrong-deblasio-not-an-imposter https://www.semafor.com/article/10/29/2025/british-newspaper... The man at the heart of a high-stakes mix-up that rippled through global political journalism in the final days of the New York mayoral campaign was neither “falsely claiming” to be former Mayor Bill de Blasio — as the Times of London suggested — nor, as The New York Times wrote, a “de Blasio impersonator.” He is, instead, a 59-year-old Long Island wine importer named Bill DeBlasio, who merely responded to an email from a journalist seeking his views on Democrat Zohran Mamdani’s policies. “I’m Bill DeBlasio. I’ve always been Bill DeBlasio,” DeBlasio said in an interview conducted Wednesday evening through his Ring doorbell in Huntington Station, Long Island, from his current location in Florida. “I never once said I was the mayor. He never addressed me as the mayor,” DeBlasio told Semafor. “So I just gave him my opinion.”