🔴 Website 👉 https://u-s-news.com/
Telegram 👉 https://t.me/usnewscom_channel
On paper, the mayoral candidacy of Queens Assemblyman Zohran Mamdani is preposterous.
He is a 33-year-old Muslim and a harsh critic of Israel running to lead the city that has the world’s largest Jewish population.
He accuses Israel of “committing a genocide” in Gaza and counts among his high-profile supporters and fundraisers two notorious antisemites, Linda Sarsour and Michigan Rep. Rashida Tlaib.
He is also an avowed socialist whose quest to lead the city that sits at the heart of American capitalism has been endorsed by the Democratic Socialists of America.
A Bernie Sanders acolyte, he believes free is the right price for passengers on city buses. He also wants to freeze rents in the city’s 1 million rent-stabilized apartments.
He promises to raise the city’s minimum wage to $30 an hour and make child care free while also raising the wages of child-care workers.
And to address the high cost of groceries, he would open a government-run grocery store in each of the five boroughs that, he claims, could offer lower prices than privately owned stores.
He would, of course, pay for all this government largesse by raising taxes on the “wealthy,” most of whom would be smart enough to flee before he gets the chance.
Defend by another name
With crime and disorder a major issue among voters, some of his rivals, including former Gov. Andrew Cuomo, promise to hire more police officers.
Not Mamdani.
He says the NYPD already has too much money and power.
Although he is careful not to use the phrase “defund the police,” which most Democrats now realize was a disaster for their party, he proposes something similar.
He would shift some work away from the NYPD by creating a new agency called The Department of Community Safety.
In a public safety plan he released Tuesday, he promised the new unit “will fill the gaps of our programs and services . . . and prevent violence before it happens by taking a public health approach to safety.”
He went on to vow “that no New Yorker falls through the cracks of our social safety net.”
If all that sounds familiar, his plan echoes the promises made by the most far left mayor the city has had in modern times, Bill de Blasio.
Mayor Putz spent a cool $1 billion to create something he called “ThriveNYC,” and put his wife in charge.
The money was spent but the problems grew.
That’s what you get when you mix socialism with incompetence and graft.
Nonetheless, The New York Times, in a glowing profile, calls Mamdani a “fresh-faced Socialist.”
His face may be fresh, but his ideas are old and ruinous.
And they have failed wherever they were implemented for a simple reason: They stifle human initiative and create more poverty and disorder, not less.
Prolific fundraiser
And despite his “Kumbaya” prattle about an alternative to the NYPD, there is no longer a serious debate about whether there is any substitute for police.
There isn’t.
When cops are properly trained and led and allowed to do their jobs, crime falls and citizens are safer.
As Mayor Adams often says, “Public safety is a prerequisite to our prosperity.”
Yet the city’s chaotic decline, widespread voter discontent and population changes are providing an opening for radicals such as Mamdani.
He is proving to be a prolific fundraiser and claims to have become first in the race to hit the spending cap.
He reports he has raised more than $8 million, including projected matching funds from about 18,000 city donors, and says he has done so at a faster rate than any campaign in New York history, according to Gothamist.
Under campaign finance rules, mayoral candidates who join the system can spend about $8 million, with more than $7 million of that coming from public matching funds.
In addition, a separate super PAC is reportedly being formed to support him and spend money apart from his campaign.
One result of his war chest and youthful vibe is that Mamdani is widely viewed as the top alternative to both Adams and Cuomo in the June primary.
Cuomo, who left Albany in disgrace in 2021, leads the pack of 10 Dem candidates with a consistent 40% or so in most polls, while Mamdani stands second with 15%, according to a recent Data For Progress survey.
All others, including Adams, register in single digits.
Gaming the system
With the other eight to the left of Cuomo and Adams, the socialist party and their fellow travelers are trying to game the ranked-choice voting system that was first used in the 2021 mayoral race.
Their aim is to coalesce around one candidate so they don’t cancel each other out and allow Cuomo or Adams to win the nomination.
To that end, the Working Families Party on Sunday endorsed four of the eight — Mamdani, city Comptroller Brad Lander, City Council Speaker Adrienne Adams and Zellnor Myrie, a Brooklyn state senator.
Party leaders said they would eventually throw their support behind a single candidate.
Meanwhile, each of the four promised to ask their supporters not to list either Cuomo or Adams among their choices, which allows voters to rank up to five candidates in order of preference.
Mamdani was born in Uganda to Indian-born parents.
The family moved to Cape Town, South Africa, for two years when he was 5, and then to New York.
His mother, Mira Nair, is a celebrated filmmaker.
His father, Mahmoud Mamdani, is a professor at Columbia University who has called for the elimination of the Jewish state.
Zohran graduated from the demanding Bronx HS of Science and then Bowdoin College in Maine, with a degree in Africana studies.
His opposition to Israel is so extreme that he was arrested at a pro-Palestinian rally outside Senate. Minority Leader Chuck Schumer’s housme in Brooklyn soon after the Hamas terrorist invasion of Oct. 7, 2023.
That was before Israel sent large numbers of troops into Gaza.
He supported the “uncommitted” movement of Muslims in the presidential campaign that was trying to persuade then-President Joe Biden to drop support for Israel.
Later, he told CBS Biden “won’t be able to defeat Trump if he continues to ignore millions of Americans who won’t stand for a genocide of Palestinians in Gaza being committed in our names & with our tax dollars.”
He also introduced a bill in Albany that would have allowed the state attorney general to dissolve any New York groups helping to fund Israeli settlements in the West Bank.
It went nowhere.
If New York is smart and lucky, neither will his campaign for City Hall.