In yesterday’s primary New York Democrats vomited up one Zohran Mamdani. Bill Glahn assessed his rise earlier this week. Mamdani pulled 43.5 percent of the vote. Disgraced former governor Andrew Cuomo was his strongest competitor. Cuomo conceded before the final result that will be produced by the city’s arcane ranked-choice procedure on July 1. Among other notable features, Mamdani supports “globalizing the intifada” at least in some metaphorical sense (Mamdani is a Muslim and socialist). This in the city with America’s largest Jewish population. Mamdani mia.
The Manhattan Institute’s Eric Kober looks at the respective bases of Mamdani and Cuomo in the City Journal column “There’s No Hope for the Center-Right in New York’s Mayoral Race.” Drawing on the analysis of local political commentator Michael Lange, Kober breaks down the race — I’m simplifying slightly — as a contest between Cuomoland and the Commie Corridor. The Commie Corridor prevailed.
The editors of the New York Post refuse to give up hope for something better emerging in November’s general election day. They look ahead in the editorial “Zohran Mamdani’s win leaves NYC staring at the curse of ‘interesting times’ — but he’s not the prohibitive favorite.” Even they don’t seem to believe it insofar as the realistic alternative to Mamdani appears to be Eric Adams. Adams will appear on the ballot as an independent.
By contrast, the New York Times all but celebrates Mamdani’s victory in the story “Mamdani Stuns Cuomo in New York Mayoral Primary.” The Times reporters note that Mamdani ran on “an economic platform that included everything from free bus service and child care to publicly owned grocery stores.” A little further down in the story the Times reporters add: “Mr. Mamdani has proposed paying for his proposals, which also include freezing rent on rent-stabilized apartments and publicly financing vast amounts of new housing, by raising $10 billion in new revenue through taxes on businesses and the wealthy.”
Students of Aristotle’s Politics will not be surprised by the appeal of “free stuff” in the deviant form of democracy intimated by the Democratic primary. Although the Times reporters write that Mamdani “faces an unusually competitive general election in November,” the Post’s muffled pessimism seems like the more realistic take.
