Zohran Mamdani may not be running his mayoral campaign from his basement but the core similarity with the Biden presidential election strategy is disturbingly still there, hiding essential facts from the voting public seems a common and disturbing feature. Yet, while Biden is done, it behooves us all to demand from Mamdani that he come clean with details about the socialist changes that he has in store for the city should he win.
Unfortunately, to this point his typical response to questioning about how much of the radical agenda of the Democratic Socialists of America – his avowed ideological home – he embraces, he has been less than forthcoming.
As The New York Post has reported, Mamdani drew outrage when it emerged the DSA party’s national umbrella had adopted a platform in 2021 to wipe out criminal consequences for all misdemeanor crimes. Significantly, Mamdani himself did not address the controversy.
And even his campaign spokesman was equivocal, stopping short of fully disavowing the DSA’s far left call to decriminalize crimes short of felonies. He went only as far as to say that the national DSA doesn’t necessarily represent the views of its local affiliates, insinuating that Mamdani did not support everything the national party supported.
Nor has there been any more clarity about Mamdani’s past call to defund the NYPD. To be sure he has tried to walk it back, but even so, only to the extent of saying that police play a “crucial role” in public safety. But at the same time, he also proposed a new city agency to provide a “whole government” response to causes of crimes such as poverty and lack of mental health care. Does anyone really doubt that the money to pay for it all will come at the expense of the NYPD budget? Mamdani is also the only mayoral candidate who won’t commit to hiring more NYPD officers, even as the force levels are dangerously low.
There are other crucial areas in this race that require daylight as well.
The New York Sun has reported that Mamdani plans to spend $65million on “gender affirming care” and has promised to investigate New York hospitals that stop providing the services and create an Office of LGBTQIA+ Affairs at City Hall. Would this really address a pressing need for the city? He should be asked to tell us how.
Then there are some of Mamdani’s signature proposals related to what he has referred to as the city’s “affordability crisis.”
Thus, The New York Post has reported that Mamdani wants to cut New York’s housing costs by freezing rents and further limiting evictions. But the city’s experience with this sort of thing has been that these policies cause the physical deterioration of housing stocks because landlords are unable to afford to maintain them. It has also forced landlords to take tens of thousands of apartments off the market and also raise rents for tenants not covered by rent control. So, he has to be asked to explain why his plan would somehow turn out differently.
Mamdani reportedly also wants to deal with high food costs and the prevalence of “food deserts” by creating government-run grocery stores. Yet the existing stores enjoy barely 1-2 percent profit margins. And without even that spread as an incentive, one can readily imagine ever-spiraling costs of running the government stores and requiring government subsidization. He must clarify why he thinks his plan would work, nonetheless.
And then there is Mamdani’s astounding proposal to raise the hourly minimum wage – currently set at $16.50 – to $30 an hour by 2030. His proposal would have it raised to $20 per hour in 2027, $23.50 in 2028, $27 in 2029 and $30 in 2030. We can already hear the chimes of the death knell of tens of thousands of businesses that are simply unable to sustain such leaps in payroll costs. What does he have to say about that?
Mamdani has also proposed that New Yorkers be provided with some municipal services – like bus and subway transportation – free of charge. Yet the Metropolitan Transportation Authority already cannot pay its bills. Where then will the revenue come from when salaries must be paid and those staggering contributions must be made to the pension funds?
Mamdani has said that the answer lies in ever-increasing taxation of the rich. Yet the wealthy are leaving New York in droves in the face of rampant, anti-business, progressive wokeism and, even now pay 41 percent of New York State income taxes.
At all events, the single most critical issue for us is Mamdani’s support for Hamas but we believe that it was forever defining and it would be pointless to call for any comment from him. That ship has already sailed. There is nothing he could say that might justify his lining up with murderers, rapists and traffickers in human beings. We hope voters will take due note on election day.