Democrat voters in America’s largest city and the financial capital of the world picked a 33 year-old Ugandan-born socialist with a brief career as a rapper and two terms as a backbencher in the New York State legislature to be their candidate to run a city with a $116 billion budget, 72 departments and 364,000 workers.
Democratic Socialists of America (DSA) candidate Zohran Kwame Mamdani’s 43.5% to 36.4% victory in the June 24 Democrat primary over the disgraced former Governor Andrew Cuomo and a sad sack bunch of nine other candidates has thrown the leaderships of New York’s Democrat and Republican parties into turmoil. Whatever their political differences, they are now united in their goal -- Mamdani must be defeated.
The city’s power brokers are justifiably worried about the irreparable damage that would result from an agenda consisting of free everything, eliminating the police, closing the prisons and eating the rich. Two of Mamdani’s favorite policies are replacing privately-owned grocery stores with government-owned ones and taxing white neighborhoods more than minority areas.
New York’s Democrats view Mandami’s victory as a threat to their power and have withheld their endorsements. Governor Kathy Hochul, who purposefully mispronounced his name multiple times, declared that until the election she’s “working closely with Mayor Eric Adams, who is the mayor.”
The morning after the election New York’s political and business honchos determined that the solution to Mamdani’s Marxism, antisemitism and inexperience was anyone but Mamdani. They supported Cuomo in the primary, thinking that he’d blow out Mamdani just by name recognition. By day’s end, they had switched horses to the incumbent mayor and began pressuring Cuomo and Republican-Independent Curtis Sliwa to step aside.
Neither Cuomo nor Sliwa obliged.
In the Nov. 4 general election, the main contenders will be the incumbent mayor, running on the “Safe Streets, Affordable City” line; Cuomo, running on the “Fight and Deliver” line and Sliwa, running as the Republican candidate and on the “Animal Welfare” lines; Mamdani will have the Democrat and the far left Working Families Party lines.
The pundits are proclaiming a Mamdani victory in November. Don’t underestimate the Anyone But Mamdani bipartisan effort.
Eric Adams is no panacea. Adams opted out of the Democrat primary because local Democrats wouldn’t back him following his federal corruption indictment and he concluded Cuomo would wipe him out. Smart, because Adams’ approval is only 20%, according to a May Quinnipiac poll.
New Yorkers are disgusted with Adams’ record of welcoming tens of thousands of illegal aliens into the city, with outlandish deals for housing, food and free cell phones doled out under no-bid contracts to Adams’ political buddies. He treated violent crime on the streets and subways as figments of New Yorkers’ imaginations. When he deduced that Donald Trump might prevail, Adams cozied up to Trump, sacked corrupt cronies from City Hall and hired competent administrators, in the hope of a reprieve from the federal charges.
The details of the Quinnipiac poll provide further perils to Adams’ winnability. The party breakdown of dissatisfaction with Adams runs deepest among Democrats. Only 15% of Democrats approve of his performance; 78% disapprove. His numbers are slightly better with independents at 20%/63%. The surprise was that Republicans were more forgiving; 35% approved and 52% disapproved.
His electoral strengths come from the Black faith community, Hispanics and the city’s commercial real estate interests, for whom he spearheaded a massive rezoning of the outer boroughs to allow denser development. To win, he has to peel off Cuomo’s Black, Hispanic and working class supporters. This will be a hard task, because he alienated many Queens and Brooklyn home owners with the rezoning. Republicans are unlikely to vote for Adams if Sliwa stays in the race.
As a thrice-elected governor, Andrew Cuomo should be able to claim the mantle of managerial competence. He is deeply unpopular for his policies, mismanagement of the state, and personal offensiveness. Many of New York City’s current problems with crime above and below ground, are due to his adoption of new laws eliminating bail for many crimes. Thousands of nursing home residents died as a result of his placement of COVID patients in the nursing homes. Allegations of sexual improprieties still linger.
New Yorkers expect their mayor to be hands-on and interact with constituents. Cuomo is aloof and ran his primary campaign in a detached manner.
Despite $24 million in PAC money and name recognition, Cuomo failed to get-out-the-vote in areas that should have been his strengths, Eastern Queens, the Bronx and working class Brooklyn. Voters just don’t like Andrew.
Zohran Mamdani ran a great campaign. Thousands of Gen-Z boots were on the ground doing door-to-door canvassing throughout the spring. Mamdani himself went door-to-door and proved to be a natural retail politician.
Mamdani’s troops were able to engineer a massive turn-out-the-vote effort in the districts that housed the most progressive voters in areas with young, well-educated professionals. He ran up huge margins in the areas along the East River, dubbed the “Commie Corridor” by a local political analyst. The Commie Corridor includes trendy Astoria, the heart of Mamdani’s Assembly district, and Long Island City, gentrifying parts of Brooklyn and Red Hook. Other strongholds were Morningside Heights, the home of Columbia University, and the rest of upper Manhattan.
To win the general election, he has to appeal to middle and working class voters on Staten Island, which is Republican majority, eastern Queens and Brooklyn, and the Bronx.
He’s already been denigrated as a nepo baby, brought up in affluent surroundings, and supported by other similar entitled twits. As Republican New York Councilwoman Vickie Paladino put it, “He knows nothing and they [his voters] know nothing.”
As the months progress, more information about Mamdani’s lack of qualifications and radicalism will emerge. His natural constituency is closely connected to the pro-Palestine demonstrators who demonstrated at Columbia University, illegally clogged city streets at rush hour and shut down Grand Central Station on several occasions over the past year. His brief career as a rap singer under the names of Mr. Cardamom and Young Cardamom, and pro-Palestinian lyrics are also unhelpful.
Guardian Angels founder Curtis Sliwa is a New York institution with high name recognition and deep understanding of how the city and its many ethnic neighborhoods work. As a radio host on New York talk radio WABC, now suspended due to his candidacy, he exposed many of Mayor Adams many corrupt acts and actors. Sliwa’s focus on crime, housing and effective government appeal to the same constituencies as Adams and Cuomo. Like Adams and Mamdani, he is a hands-on campaigner.
His main problem is that he’s a Republican in a city that is more than 7-1 Democrat. When he ran for mayor in 2021 against Adams, he got 27.8% of the vote, winning only Staten Island. To understand the steep challenge any Republican faces, Donald Trump barely topped 30% in 2024 of New York City’s vote.
Pressure will mount on Sliwa to step aside.
Mamdani’s primary victory threw the city’s status quo power structure into disorder that cannot persist. Neither the Democrats, the Republicans nor the pay-to-play business community want no disruptions in the painful recovery of New York, first from COVID, and then from the influx of illegal aliens. New York is highly dependent on the financial and commercial real estate industries.
Moscow-on-the-Hudson would not be a good outcome.
Linda R. Killian is a retired financial analyst and executive. She is a local chairman of a New York Republican committee.
Image: Bingjiefu He, via Wikimedia Commons // CC BY-SA 4.0 Deed
