A Creep, a Crook, and a Communist Walk Into a Primary
New York’s Next Mayor Will Be a Disaster, No Matter Who Wins
New York City wrapped its Democratic mayoral primaries yesterday. Because the Democratic primary is effectively the defacto election, the city is likely looking at its 111th mayor: 33-year-old Zohran Mamdani.
It’s not entirely a given, though. Mamdani is deeply unpopular with establishment Democrats who viewed disgraced former governor and sex pest Andrew Cuomo as a more palatable option. Mamdani may have won the primary, but the DNC has a history of denying socialists institutional backing (cough Bernie Sanders cough).
But while pundits are excitedly chattering about what Mamdani’s win means for Democratic politicking pre-midterms/2028, they should be considering how New York City ended up with a such a poor showing of politicians.
The serious candidates were all terrible. Between Mamdani, Cuomo, and current mayor Eric Adams, there’s not a single one without glaring flaws.
Let’s start with the primary winner. Mamdani’s campaign ran on making NYC more affordable. "This is a city where one in four of its people are living in poverty, a city where 500,000 kids go to sleep hungry every night," Mamdani told the BBC. "And ultimately, it's a city that is in danger of losing that which it makes it so special."
Mamdani has suggested solving the affordability issue requires investing public dollars in “gender-affirming care,” enacting rent freezes, providing free transit, constructing a chain of city-owned grocery stores, enacting universal childcare for children six weeks old to five years old, and having the government pay for union-built housing.
These proposals go well beyond the usual Democratic-socialist talking points and veer into full-on communism. Government-run grocery stores, in particular, should raise red flags for anyone with even a basic understanding of history and excruciating bureaucracy.
Nationalizing the bodegas is not going to help the suffering poor of New York.
Funding all of this would require money the city just doesn’t have. The budget is already in the red, and that’s before the astronomical costs of free housing, free transit, and free childcare. Where exactly is this money supposed to come from?
Mamdani, like all communists, believes in waving a magic government wand and saying “All this shit is free now.” It’s a policy set to exacerbate the already disastrous exodus of wealth from the city.
By the way, I didn’t label Mamdani a communist myself. It’s a label he proudly attaches to himself. See his tweet.
Mamdani’s economic policies are communist trash, his public safety policies are dangerous (he wants to end cash bail and set up “safe” injection sites), and he’s stupidly liberal on culture war topics Americans already hate. Still, he’s probably gonna be mayor of the biggest city in the country.
Not that the competition was particularly tough.
Eric Adams has been a disaster. New Yorkers see him as hopelessly corrupt and scandal-ridden. His “solution” to the migrant crisis was to spend nearly a billion dollars on a no-bid contract to house migrants in hotels. And he’s just a bad politician when it comes to acting normal. That “New York City is the X of America” supercut still cracks me up.
Somehow, Andrew Cuomo was worse. COVID may be five years behind us, but the fallout from Cuomo’s decisions still looms large. He forced nursing homes to re-admit COVID-positive patients, causing the virus to rip through vulnerable elderly populations. When the death toll mounted, he edited health department reports to omit hospital deaths and then had the gall to write a book praising his own pandemic leadership.
But it wasn’t Cuomo’s pandemic policy that led to his downfall, it was his wandering hands. Several women accused Cuomo of inappropriate conduct like kissing or groping. He denied wrongdoing, but claimed he may have been “too familiar” and blamed his Italian heritage. Frankly, I would say murdering a bunch of old people is a graver sin than being too Italian, but either way, Cuomo is a scumbag.
And yet, that was the alternative.
Adams is unlikely to win the general mayoral election in November due to his historically low popularity. Cuomo was apparently the only other option. How is that even possible? How do Democrats have such a small bench that a pervert and a communist were the only two plausible options for leadership?
Many politicos are already doomsaying over the results of this primary. They are correct to do so. The Democrats are in a death spiral with the American people and the New York mayoral election looks to be a microcosm for why. Regardless of who wins, there’s something to point to as why the party can’t be trusted with leadership.
The most likely outcome in November is that Mamdani wins, pushes a slew of terrible communist policies, and wrecks the city. But even if Adams wins or, through some twist of fate, Cuomo ends up back in power, that’s awful too. Adams is comically corrupt and Cuomo has blood on his hands that even hand sanitizer made with prisoner slave labor can’t clean.
If this is the best Democrats can come up with, the party is living on borrowed time. Come November, New York is going to be in a really bad spot.
Maybe a Giuliani can come in to clean up the mess afterwards…