When Jan. 1 rolls around, New York City will have its first self-avowed socialist mayor. As a New York resident and a keen observer of Mayor-elect Zohran Mamdani’s rise to power, I thought it worthwhile to write what I expect of him in the new year.
A lot is riding on Mamdani’s success for the Left. He’ been touted as the way of the future for the Democratic Party. He’s the Barack Obama for a new generation, just as the old Obama becomes passe.
Whereas Obama carefully laid the groundwork for the radical turn in American government and institutions leading up to the Great Awokening of 2020, my feeling is that Mamdani will be more open and aggressive in the way he promotes his agenda.
Obama insisted he was neither a Muslim nor a socialist. His replacement proudly says he’s both and is hardly concerned about being lumped in with some seriously radical folks. He wants to show everyone that real socialism is going to be tried this time, and it will work great when the cameras are rolling.
While Mamdani can’t run for president, given that he wasn’t born an American citizen, he will almost certainly have a huge amount of influence in state and national politics. The media will amplify his every action, downplay his setbacks, and tout every policy as a remarkable and incredible success.
Gov. Kathy Hochul, who was already browbeaten into endorsing him, will have a difficult time refusing Mamdani’s demands. Any attempt by New York state leaders to constrain his ability to act will likely be treated as a betrayal of the energized voters who put him in office.
Universal childcare, free buses, and even the government-run grocery stores he promised will need significant funding and approval from the state government. Will Democrats who effectively run the state be able to tell him “no” when the money runs out or isn’t there to begin with?
And if at any point the city, state, or federal government refuses to foist over money to pay for his numerous programs, he’ll have a built-in excuse for why they failed and enemies to pin the blame on when they do.
Though I’d almost certainly bet on Mamdani’s project ultimately failing in New York, let’s not set the bar too low here. This is perhaps in part why President Donald Trump held his fire when Mamdani came to visit the White House. It never helps to be hysterical.
The expectation should be that things will work out. After all, New York is one of the great cities of the world, the heart of American finance, and has proven to be quite functional when managed successfully.
You can be sure that if the city doesn’t immediately turn into a real life “Escape from New York” the day Mamdani enters office it will be spun as proof that his critics were wrong. That shouldn’t be the standard.
If Mamdani’s socialist ideas are so great and can make an unaffordable blue city a suddenly affordable socialist paradise, his standard for success shouldn’t just be modern Venezuela with worse weather.
I suspect that Mamdani won’t be pleased just to keep the free buses running on time. His 400-person transition team is so filled with loonies that you could post a list of the names on a wall, throw a dart at it, and expect to find someone who demands the police be abolished on a committee for safety, a transgender rabbi working on a committee for health, or a literal career criminal among a crowd of Democratic Socialists of America organizers, radical academics, and staffers of the previous disastrous regime of former Mayor Bill de Blasio.
The best thing that could be said about Mamdani’s transition team is that perhaps he is simply awarding campaign loyalists and will simply jettison them later when he doesn’t need them. More likely, he will be using the New York government apparatus as a training ground for his activist army.
But there are other signs that Mamdani really means to carry through with the far-left’s war against human nature.
In early December, Mamdani announced that he will stop shutting down homeless encampments in the city. In 2022, the soon-to-be former Mayor Eric Adams wisely decided to shut down the homeless encampments that were popping up in the city and provided opportunities for those on the street to enter homeless shelters.
I hesitate to elevate this move the level of “wisdom.” It was simply common sense. Pockets of homeless people, where drug use was rampant, were popping up through the city.
Mamdani apparently saw that and thought that he’d rather turn New York into San Francisco, where open air drug markets and tent cities are the norm.
This doesn’t seem like a person who will suddenly tack to the center and work on bringing high quality, competent governance to the city. That would be the shrewd thing to do. Promise socialism but make sure it works by not following through and pretending it did.
That outcome seems unlikely. I’d expect Mamdani to use every tool at his disposal to ensure that the perception is that he’s ushering in an irresistible tide of socialism in America.
He will do television appearances, he’ll make slick social media posts about how he’s stopping Trump, and he’ll do his part to ensure that the Democratic Party’s socialist faction emerges triumphant in 2028.
He will also push through with his most high-profile programs and make a grand show demonstrating that they “work” as the city slowly deteriorates. That’s what I predict is in store for the Big Apple’s new mayor.
The city is in for some interesting times.
