The good news from New York’s Democratic mayoral primary on Tuesday is that the career of Andrew Cuomo, the nepo-baby former governor of the Empire State, serial alleged sex pest, and mass murderer of grandparents in Manhattan, is over. Despite the backing of former boss Bill Clinton, six sitting Congress members, dozens of current and former local lawmakers, and the Democratic Party chapters of three of the city’s five boroughs, Cuomo’s loss was staggering enough that he was forced to concede before the night was over. For Cuomo’s dozen sexual misconduct accusers, the 15,000 seniors killed by his 2020 decision to pack nursing homes with COVID-19-positive patients, and the families of both camps of victims, Cuomo’s unalloyed failure in the open primary is a wonderful thing.
The bad news for everyone else is who actually won.
Zohran Mamdani, the son of an Oscar-nominated filmmaker and Columbia University professor, spent only three years in the workforce between graduating from Bowdoin College with a degree in Africana studies in 2014 and joining the New York State Assembly in 2021. Mamdani’s professional resume includes a failed rap career, working as a music supervisor on a Disney film directed by his mother, and managing the unsuccessful primary campaign of an essayist running for the state Senate.
Mamdani, a self-described socialist who passed only three bills in his four years in the state Assembly, ran for mayor on a platform of producing state-operated grocery stores, mass rent control, making the city’s already impoverished bus system and publicly funded childcare system 100% free, using taxpayer dollars to fund transgender surgeries, turning subway cars into homeless shelters, freezing police hiring, and replacing law enforcement officers on public transit with “mental health navigators.”
None of this is to mention Mamdani’s calls to “globalize the intifada,” excoriation of Israel the day after the Oct. 7 massacre, and refusal to respect the Israeli state’s right to exist. This is a collection of attitudes indicating a level of antisemitic vitriol that should be unacceptable for the mayor of a city with the largest Jewish population in the world outside of Israel.
If any New Yorkers believe that real socialism hasn’t been tried before, Mamdani is the guy who is openly professing to enact it. But the potential for pain pushed by a communist mayor would not just be felt by the Big Apple. The economic collapse of the New York City subway, which comprises roughly 8% of the nation’s economy, would reverberate across the country.
New York state is still paying for the city’s near-default in 1975, with the last quarter-billion dollars of outstanding debt due for complete repayment nearly 10 years from today. While wealthy financiers can escape the city for Miami or Charleston, the New York Stock Exchange cannot, and real estate stocks have already tumbled upon the revelation of Mamdani’s victory. Furthermore, expanding rent control and the city’s “sanctuary policies” would likely crowd out space for NYC’s tourist industry, which employs some 7% of the city’s workers and welcomes a fifth of the nation’s international tourists (but nearly half of all their dollars are spent stateside).
All of this is to say that if you are not a communist, a Hamas sympathizer, or an enemy of America, you have a financial self-interest in seeing Mamdani lose come November’s general election. And to beat Mamdani and save whatever chance the greatest city in the world still has, the man for the job is … the man who already has the job.
Eric Adams, the incumbent mayor who is running for reelection as an independent, has overseen a 22% decline in homicides, 40% decline in murders, total jobs hit a record high, and the highest number of new homes built in 60 years while supporting both city-wide zoning reform to deregulate the private sector and affordable housing spending in the public sector. While Adams is still a liberal — and why wouldn’t the mayor of NYC be? — he’s running a decent enough agenda that the far Left pushed him entirely out of the Democratic Party.
Normal Clinton- and Biden-supporting liberals, centrists, and Republicans have only one viable alternative to a socialist “failson” occupying City Hall, and that’s Adams. The only way for Adams to win is for national Republicans, including a certain president from Queens, to push the official GOP nominee, long-shot radio host Curtis Sliwa, to stand down. Rallying around Adams would also require some humility from Cuomo, who may technically still be able to force himself on the general election ballot through his conveniently created new third party called “Fight and Deliver.”
A Manhattan Institute poll from earlier this month found that if Cuomo did not run a vanity campaign in the general election, Mamdani would only garner 33% of the vote, compared to 19% for Adams and 16% for Sliwa. But betting markets make clear that in a head-to-head matchup, only Adams stands a chance. Whereas Polymarket gives Mamdani a 73% chance of winning the general, Adams retains 22%, multiple times that of the combined share of Cuomo and Sliwa.
THE BARISTA PROLETARIAT WINS IN NEW YORK
For what it’s worth, there is decent historical precedent for Adams. John Lindsay, initially elected as NYC mayor as a Democrat in 1965, tried and failed to run for the Republican Party’s nomination in 1969. Lindsay proceeded to run as the Liberal Party’s candidate and won.
NYC has exactly one way out of coming under the control of a communist. That’s by begging Cuomo to put ego aside, Republicans to eschew partisanship, and for the silent majority of the city to rally around Adams again.