Electing Mamdani Mayor Will Be A Costly Mistake For New York Opinion

Bonisiwe Shabane

-Dec 15, 2025, 11:36 AM

electing mamdani mayor will be a costly mistake for new york opinion

Every time I pull into New York City, I blast Taylor Swift's "Welcome to New York." Prosaic, perhaps, but the thumping bass and lyrics painting New York as a city of bright lights and... In New York City, as the song goes, "the lights are so bright but they never blind me." But after the Nov. 4 New York mayoral election, Zohran Mamdani's policies may open the eyes of Gen Z so blindingly enthralled with democratic socialism, they seem poised to give the Democratic nominee the reins of one of... It would be a devastating loss for common sense and New York City. More than 735,000 New Yorkers cast ballots during the early-voting period, and 16% were Generation Z voters. Mamdani's socialist policies and extreme views on the New York Police Department and the city's robust Jewish population will destroy − or at least dim the lights of − the city they call home.

It might drive some to actually leave. We are seeing hints of this already. A survey done by J.L. Partners for the Daily Mail found that, despite Mamdani's incredible popularity with the youth vote, not everyone is excited that the state legislator will institute his socialist agenda on New Yorkers. According to the New York City Department of Records and Information Services, Zohran Mamdani will not actually be the city’s hundred-and-eleventh mayor, as many people have assumed. A historian named Paul Hortenstine recently came across references to a previously unrecorded mayoral term served in 1674, by one Matthias Nicolls.

Consequently, on New Year’s Day, after Mamdani places his right hand on the Quran and is sworn in at City Hall, he will become our hundred-and-twelfth mayor—or possibly even our hundred-and-thirty-third, based on the... “The numbering of New York City ‘Mayors’ has been somewhat arbitrary and inconsistent,” a department official disclosed in a blog post this month. “There may even be other missing Mayors.” New York City has already had youthful mayors (John Purroy Mitchel, a.k.a. the Boy Mayor), ideological mayors (Bill de Blasio), celebrity mayors (Jimmy Walker, a.k.a. Beau James), idealistic mayors (John Lindsay), hard-charging mayors (Fiorello LaGuardia), mayors with little to no prior experience in elected office (Michael Bloomberg), immigrant mayors (Abe Beame), and even one who supported the Democratic Socialists...

(That would be David Dinkins.) Whether Mamdani turns out to be a good or a bad mayor, he will also not be alone in either respect. He will, however, be the city’s first Muslim mayor, and the first with family roots in Asia. He is as avowedly of the left as any mayor in city history. And the velocity of his rise to power is the fastest that anyone in town can recall. Since his general-election trouncing of the former governor Andrew Cuomo, Mamdani has been preparing for the sober realities of governing—appointments, negotiations, coalition management, policy development. Trying to preserve the movement energy he tapped during the campaign, he has also made an effort to continue the inventive outreach practices that brought him to broad public attention.

Just last Sunday, for instance, he sat in a room in the Museum of the Moving Image, in Astoria (a few blocks from the rent-stabilized apartment he’s giving up to move into Gracie Mansion),... It was a gesture to show that he could look his constituents in the eye, and that he could listen to them. Mamdani ran a disciplined campaign, and he has run a disciplined transition. He didn’t take the bait when Mayor Eric Adams criticized him, told Jews to be afraid of him, and pulled other last-minute maneuvers seemingly designed to undermine him. Mamdani met with President Donald Trump in the Oval Office—and they startled everyone by having an outwardly productive meeting. (Trump happily told Mamdani that it was O.K.

to call him a “fascist.”) Mamdani discouraged a young D.S.A. city-council member, Chi Ossé, from staging a primary challenge next year to the House Minority Leader, Hakeem Jeffries—a magnanimous move, considering Jeffries’s ongoing chilliness toward Mamdani. In rooms full of wealthy business leaders and in others filled with donors, he has tried to win over skeptics among New York’s élite. (“They are finding themselves, unexpectedly, charmed,” the Times reported recently.) It was a relief to the city’s political establishment when he asked Jessica Tisch, the current police commissioner, whom Adams appointed, to stay in... Last week, when a top appointee’s old antisemitic tweets surfaced, Mamdani accepted her resignation within hours. Having rocketed, in a matter of months, from one per cent in the polls to mayor, Mamdani seems comfortable facing his doubters.

But what he’s up against cannot be overstated. It’s been an open question for centuries as to whether New York is “governable” in a top-to-bottom, municipal, positive sense. For a long time, city government here was considered little more than a trough for Tammany Hall. In the past century, the city proved that it could (more or less) pick up its own garbage, get a handle on crime, and operate large school and hospital systems, even if sometimes just... It can do more than that, of course, but can it durably make life in New York better, and not just more tolerable, for the bulk of its residents? In his effort to answer affirmatively, Mamdani will have to navigate problems of management, budget, and bureaucracy inside City Hall, and also Trump (does anyone think their chumminess will last?), ICE raids, intransigent billionaires,...

The billionaire exodus that was forecast during his campaign has shown no signs of materializing, but one bad blizzard in January could hamper Mamdani’s ambitious agenda for months. The 33-year-old's success prompted varied reactions in the city. Just hours after Democratic Socialist Zohran Mamdani declared victory in New York's mayoral primary on Wednesday, a small group of business leaders convened with Mayor Eric Adams, who bypassed the Democratic primary and is... Attendees were focused on strategizing how to prevent Mamdani, a 33-year-old state assembly member, from winning the mayoralty -- and assessing whether Adams was the strongest contender to oppose him in November. Among those present was former NYC mayoral candidate and former hedge fund executive Whitney Tilson, who recently shared a debate stage with Mamdani. Tilson described Mamdani as "very charming and charismatic," but added he sharply disagrees with Mamdani's policies and that "[a small fraction] of New York City voters picked him… It's a totally rigged closed primary."

Tilson told ABC News when it became clear the race was between two people, he had hoped former New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo would win. He said he would "...continue for the next 130 days what I began in earnest 45 days ago -- to make sure Zohran Mamdani, an unqualified radical socialist, does not become mayor of our... Zohran Mamdani is on the cusp of becoming New York’s 111th mayor, and perhaps its most radical. He could also fairly claim to be one of the country’s most influential Democrats, which makes the reasons for his rise relevant far beyond the Big Apple. Updated on: November 5, 2025 / 11:32 AM EST / CBS New York

Mamdani promised to bring New York City into an age of "relentless improvement" as he claimed victory in the mayoral race late Tuesday night. He said his win was one for the working people of New York and reiterated his campaign promises on affordability. "Let the words we've spoken together, the dreams we've dreamt together, become the agenda we deliver together," Mamdani said. "New York, this power, it's yours. This city belongs to you. Thank you."

To watch his full victory speech, click here. Prepare to hear a lot about New York’s new mayor. Zohran Mamdani will be the unlikeliest mayor in New York City history. A 34-year-old backbench state assemblyman and self-proclaimed democratic socialist, Mamdani ran on the promise of affordability and was declared the winner not long after polls closed tonight. On his path to victory, he thrilled young voters in a way that few Democrats have in years. But perhaps no one was more delighted by his election than President Donald Trump.

Mamdani’s victory was his second decisive win over former Governor Andrew Cuomo, whom he defeated in the Democratic primary in June. (The current mayor, Eric Adams, skipped the primary, choosing instead to run as an independent, but dropped out of the race in September.) Cuomo’s father, Mario, another former governor, famously said, “You campaign in... Previous New York mayors, of course, have had to take on those tasks, but Mamdani will also face a challenge unique to him: a brewing war with the president of the United States, himself... Trump can no longer vote in the city that he called home for more than seven decades, but he got involved in the race anyway. He erroneously declared Mamdani a Communist and gave the younger Cuomo an eleventh-hour endorsement that the candidate, running as an independent, didn’t really want. But Trump will offer more than antagonistic rhetoric; he’s promising dramatic action, too.

He warned in a social-media post last night that he would slash federal funding to the nation’s largest city because he had a “strong conviction that New York City will be a Total Economic... New York City—a Democratic stronghold that soundly spurned Trump—has so far largely been spared the president’s wrath. That’s because Trump has been waiting. So far this year, he has defied mayors’ wishes—and court orders—to send National Guard troops to Los Angeles, Chicago, Washington, and Portland, Oregon. He has offered various defenses for the deployments—protecting ICE agents and fighting crime being the top ones—but has deliberately held back on doing so in New York. He wanted to see who won the mayor’s race, his advisers have told me.

Trump privately made clear to them that, were Mamdani to triumph, he would use that outcome as justification to deploy troops in a city that, he said, would be left inherently unsafe under socialist...

Electing Mamdani Mayor Will Be A Costly Mistake For New York Opinion

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