Time To Fight for New York
Zohran Mamdani may have eked out his victory in New York City’s mayoral contest – prompting a literal champagne socialist celebration in some fancy restaurants – but a lot of New Yorkers are far from happy about it.
While Mamdani fell short of the two-thirds majority typical in other mayoral races, he earned his 50% in a much larger electorate than usual. Andrew Cuomo, who lost by 9 points after running a campaign that made the Titanic seem like masterful seamanship, lost with more votes in raw numbers than those with which the previous mayor, Eric Adams, won his seat.
It’s now time to think about restraining the worst damage from the new resident of Gracie Mansion, a guy who unironically endorses the Marxist credo, is poised to gut an already long-suffering police force struggling to keep crime under control, and release more lawless protests across the city. But don’t worry – they’re sure to be “mostly peaceful.”
The Trump administration, under a president who clearly loves the great city of New York, can play a large role in counterbalancing the worst of its new mayor, including by energetically enforcing immigration law and keeping order in face of the likely violence facing ICE agents doing their jobs. The federal government can also assign more prosecutors to prosecute federal crimes here, as well as use the many streams of federal revenue that the profligate spenders of the city need for their schemes as policy leverage.
Police Commissioner Jessica Tisch and the police union will also do their best, we are sure, to pop the new mayor’s Russian roulette approach to policing with the reality of safety and real-word consequences.
But even within New York state, there are many ways voters who fear Mamdani’s radical project can stop him from implementing it. Albany controls or shares oversight over some key city functions, like the MTA, state housing, and aspects of education and policing policy.
While the mayor plays a huge hand in public safety in New York City, New York’s crime problems run far deeper than the city limits. The end of cash bail – a “reform” signed by former governor and election loser Andrew Cuomo – is perhaps more responsible for the revolving door in and out of court for dangerous criminals than anything the mayor can do.
The no-bail law from Albany is the reason Jordan Randoph, who was arrested after crashing into a car at 135 miles per hour and killing its driver, bragged “I’ll be out tomorrow.” It’s the reason Tiffany Harris, who had already been arrested for assaulting two Jewish women in Brooklyn while shouting “F— you Jews” was released after her hate crime charge and was then free to assault a third Jewish woman, after which she was released again. Ernst Delma, who assaulted a female police officer on video and had a long rap sheet before that incident, was released after posting just $8,000 in bail in October of 2024. By February this year, he had punched a random woman in Times Square in the face. Apparently all that’s OK because, you know, capitalism.
Despite Mamdani’s election success, some of his radical policies, especially with regard to crime, are unpopular in the state. Sixty percent of New Yorkers support repealing the Cuomo no-bail law, and even within New York City, 55% support repeal compared with 29% opposed. But will the man of the people listen to the people?
New Yorkers also support the commonsense definition of sex everyone above the age of 15 once took for granted, and oppose men posing as women entering women’s sports or women’s prisons. For example, two-thirds of registered voters in 2024 said high school athletes should compete only with those of their biological sex.
Mamdani, by contrast, has pledged $65 million in taxpayer funding for so-called sex-change surgery and promises to put a LGBTQIA “counselor” in every public school under his jurisdiction. Will that happen? While local municipalities have a lot of control over specific curricula, the state education standards are set by the New York State Education Department, members of which are elected by the state legislature.
Making lemonade out of lemons, any Republican running for governor now has a better shot. Voters who opposed Mamdani in the city and the rest of the state ought to be considering whether a Republican governor counterweight might constrain the DSA mayor from doing too much damage. And that’s apparently the way a lot of New York voters are thinking.
In a hypothetical matchup between incumbent Kathy Hochul and likely Republican gubernatorial candidate Elise Stefanik, Stefanik holds a slim lead in some polls. Given that now-EPA head Lee Zeldin lost by just six points in 2022, that indicates that winning the governor’s office might be a real possibility for Republicans in the state for the first time since the early 2000s.
At the national level, New York is also home to several important House races for the Republican majority attempting to defend their narrow margin against the usual midterm pendulum swing. That includes a key swing district in the Lower Hudson, incumbent Rep. Mike Lawler’s 17th, as well as districts in Long Island, and the district currently held by Stefanik herself as she presumably takes up the gubernatorial nomination.
New York is blue, but it’s not as blue as many red-staters might think. It is after all the NY Republican seats that are the sine qua non of the GOP’s slim congressional majority. Good candidates and a good year, combined with Mamdani’s radicalism on issues that a majority of Democrats and Republicans alike oppose, might deliver the state.
Mamdani seems likely to represent the direction of the Democratic Party in Donald Trump’s America, whether establishment Democrats want it to or not. But it doesn’t have to be the direction of New York. America, don’t give up on the greatest city in the world, nor on the Empire State. It’s time to fight!
This article was originally published by RealClearPolitics and made available via RealClearWire.
