Mamdani thinks he doesn’t have to care about the New Yorkers who are not already converted to the progressive cause.
A genuine attempt to engage with the New Yorkers outside Zohran Mamdani’s cheering section would probably preclude forums like Al Sharpton’s weekend MSNBC show. Nevertheless, it was there that the Democratic candidate for New York City mayor was asked to explain to the precious few skeptics in Sharpton’s audience what he planned to do with their money and why they should stick around to enjoy the utopia he intends to build.
“How do you get them to stay?” Sharpton asked on behalf of city residents with means. “In part by showing them that asking them to pay more in taxes would increase even their quality of life,” Mamdani replied.
See that? Even the city’s tax base would benefit from the additional income tax revenue filling the city’s coffers. If this immense generosity of spirit isn’t sufficiently convincing, Mamdani continued.
What do expatriate New Yorkers complain about most, he asked. A lot, actually, but Mamdani zeroed in on cleanliness, affordability, and safety. He insisted he’s “not asking to raise taxes for the sake of it,” but to provide deliverables. Among them, making “slowest buses in the country fast and free.” Sounds nice. But New Yorkers are likely to discover that there’s nothing so pricey as a free ride, as Kansas City residents discovered when the costs of their attempt to make public transportation “free” vastly exceeded the program’s benefits.
What about defund— er, reforming the NYPD to address the “failures of our social safety net?” On that front, the candidate let loose a blizzard of superficially authoritative-sounding syllables, promising to “create a department of community safety that would deploy dedicated teams of mental health outreach workers to the top hundred stations of the highest levels of mental health crises and homelessness.” It seems the candidate is still committed to his plan to “eliminate the Police Department’s huge overtime budget,” disband “a unit known as the Strategic Response Group that responds to protests,” and dispatch social workers and “mental health teams” to “respond to 911 calls.” Why that would make New Yorkers feel safer, I have no idea.
Zohran’s goal may not be taxation for taxation’s sake, but he and his fellow progressives do tend to view spending as its own virtue. As Joe Biden used to say (all too frequently), “Don’t tell me what you value, show me your budget, and I’ll tell you what you value.” To judge from how often he and his fellow progressives emphasized the price tag on their plans over and above what they were supposed to achieve, he and his fellow progressives really meant it.
As I wrote last year about the extent to which “the spending is the point”:
In Joe Biden’s era, the “American Rescue Plan” with its $1.9 trillion Covid-relief, was hailed as “the biggest investment” in Democratic policy priorities since 1945 — the “largest-ever one-time federal investment” to objects of progressive desire. What it was designed to do — deliver America from the pandemic — was beside the point. Biden’s infrastructure bill, which was whittled down to about $1 trillion from the White House’s preferred $2.3 trillion ask, was hailed as “the largest American jobs investment since World War II.” The progressive wish-list items that failed in Congress are touted for their “bigness,” not in the scope of their objectives but in the sums they would appropriate. Conversely, proposed reforms that the left sees as failing to meet the measure of the moment are condemned because their price tags should be, in Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez’s words, “way higher.”
In the end, however, Mamdani revealed that his attempt to assuage city residents’ concerns felt half-hearted only because his heart wasn’t in it. “We know that it’s not just a fiscal policy that takes somebody from New York City to somewhere else,” he mused. “Because a lot of New Yorkers, if they leave, they go to California — another high-tax state. They go to New Jersey — another high-tax state.” Indeed, sometimes they go to places like Florida, Mamdani conceded. But the state’s policies under Governor Ron DeSantis, like attempting to lift vaccination mandates on school children, “makes them question why they would ever want to go there.”
In short, what choice do you have, New Yorkers? Where are you gonna go? Another (marginally less) expensive state? Some MAGA hellhole like Florida? You’re stuck.
Of course, they’re not. Florida remains the top destination to which ex-New Yorkers decamped in the last several years, despite, or perhaps because of, the tyranny over which DeSantis has presided since 2019. In 2023, about as many New Yorkers relocated to Texas as California. Because “family” is the top reason cited by New York residents who pick up stakes, New Jersey ranks high on the list of destinations — but Pennsylvania, a purple state that is far enough from the city to forbid a comfortable daily commute, edged out Connecticut in 2023. Why?
If Mamdani thought he really had to address voters’ misgivings about his proposals and philosophical outlook, he’d probably have devoted more thought to that project than he demonstrated on Sharpton’s show. That he didn’t is an indication of how little he thinks he has to care about the New Yorkers who are not already converted to the progressive cause.