It could be that New York City is staring straight at a possible apocalypse. Hyperbole? I don’t think so.
In a little over two weeks from today, on June 24th, New York’s registered Democrats will vote in their primary for mayor, and the candidate who winds up with 50% or more of the vote in this heavily Democratic city, is the likely next occupant of City Hall.
With that in mind, I forced myself to watch the poorly produced televised debate this past Wednesday evening with all nine mayoral candidates.
After digesting their answers, evasions and lies, how shall I say it? The choices are obviously less than optimal. You’ve read (or watched) Fifty Shades of Grey? Well, watching the debate was like watching eight shades of liberal, with one guy kinda in the middle.
Forget the fringe candidates for now, people like former New York City Comptroller Scott Stringer, whose ill-fitting clothing and wan complexion made him look like a guy who was hankering for a smash burger in the fifth hour of an intermittent fasting diet.
Or the current comptroller, Brad Lander, whose Forrest Gump-like persona doesn’t resonate with voters outside of his Park Slope, Brooklyn progressive box of chocolates bubble.
Forget City Council Speaker Adrienne Adams, who only emerged from her slumber when Andrew Cuomo haughtily declared he had nothing to regret from his time as governor.
Forget Zellnor Myrie, Jessica Ramos, Michael Blake and Whitney Tilson (who?). They have as much of a chance of becoming mayor as a pedestrian has of dodging an e-bike.
It’s an Andrew Cuomo-Zohran Mamdani race, pure and simple.
Zohran Mamdani? He’s a loud and proud socialist. Full stop. One look at his platform and you can see his vision for NYC. He’s not going to spend money and put more cops on the street but he will spend lots and lots of money to build city-run grocery stores and create free child care for kids six months to five years old. In five years raise he says he’ll raise the minimum wage to $30 an hour. If that happens, forget about ever eating out in a restaurant. Your check for a pizza and a glass of beer will be $100.
He will put the city’s large and vulnerable Jewish population in greater peril than it already is. He refuses to say if Israel has a right to exist as the homeland for the Jewish people. If elected mayor he says he won’t visit Israel, something every mayor since Vincent Impellitteri in 1951 has done.
Mamdani is a supporter of the Boycott, Divest and Sanctions movement that has targeted Israel and he believes that anti-Zionism is not antisemitism.
Simply put, he’s no friend of the Jews.
Oh, and this past week, Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez endorsed him. I’ll let that speak for itself.
But Andrew Cuomo has lots of baggage of his own in addition to being so unlikable.
As governor, he was accused of sending thousands of elderly people to their deaths when he forced nursing homes to take in COVID patients straight from the hospital. Cuomo says the feds made him do it.
Now, the Trump justice department is reportedly investigating Cuomo for possibly lying to Congress about a misleading New York State Health Department report about nursing home deaths during COVID, that Cuomo says he never saw or edited. Hard to fathom since he’s such a micromanager.
He was forced to quit the governorship amidst sexual misconduct allegations. Numerous allegations. At least 11 women, according to the New York State attorney general.
Cuomo denied all of it. The investigations were closed. No criminal charges were ever brought against him.
Look, Andrew Cuomo is not a good guy, everyone knows that. He’s also a liberal in centrist clothing. The disastrous bail and discovery reform legislation he signed into law as governor, has created havoc for law enforcement and made shopping for toothpaste at CVS a sad farce.
Now, according to his platform, he wants to increase the size of the NYPD. He wants to crack down on quality of life crimes. He wants to get the homeless off the streets and subways and into treatment.
He also has the strong backing from the city’s unions and he wants to raise the NYC minimum wage to $20 an hour. You can’t build affordable housing if the cost of building the housing is dictated by the unions. You can’t make New York City run more efficiently with the unions’ outmoded and onerous work rules.
I don’t think the debate on Wednesday evening changed anyone’s minds about the candidates they support. Debates usually don’t, unless you’re Joe Biden debating Donald Trump.
This election will come down to voter turnout; the insane Democratic socialist left vs. what’s left of the rational Democratic center. Those centrists in Queens and Brooklyn and the citizens in Manhattan that are concerned about a safe and prosperous city, must turn out to turn away what will be a disaster for NYC if Mamdani is elected. He must lose and he must lose big to send a serious message to him and to his radical cohorts that New York refuses to become Chicago or Los Angeles.
As the head of the Far Rockaway Jewish Alliance said on Friday after endorsing Cuomo, “Choosing not to vote for Cuomo isn’t neutrality—it’s handing Mamdani a victory.”
I’ll say it a little more bluntly. Andrew Cuomo is the devil New York knows and has survived. Zohran Mamdani is the devil New York has come to know and who will be its demise.