Gary Bauer: ‘Jihadi’ Mamdani Fallout

The fallout from New York City’s primary election has Democrats in shock. Veteran strategist James Carville called Zohar Mamdani’s win a “potentially damaging event” for the Democrat Party.
 
While the Left is praising Mamdani’s victory, there are several red flags emerging in the post-election analysis.
 
Turnout in Tuesday’s primary was low. So low, in fact, that one analysis suggests only five to seven percent of New Yorkers actually voted for Mamdani in the primary, hardly a sign of a popular mandate.
 
Working-class voters overwhelmingly voted for Andrew Cuomo. College-aged, white liberals voted for Mamdani. How do you explain that? They’ve been indoctrinated.
 
Mamdani’s voters have gone through the four-year Marxist bootcamps we call “higher education.” They come out hating America, Israel, free markets, and the police. Working-class Americans know the reality of life. They know what works and what doesn’t.
 
In addition to his own radical views, Mamdani’s radical supporters are coming under scrutiny.
 
Speaking of his views, Mamdani is a follower of the Shia Muslim Twelver sect, the official religion of the Islamic Republic of Iran. The Twelvers are waiting for the 12th imam, the “hidden imam” known as the Mahdi, to reveal himself and conquer the world in the name of Allah.
 
That would be bad for Christians, Jews, women, and, I hate to break it to them, the LGBTQ community. But Mamdani says he’s a huge supporter of LGBTQ rights. His platform calls for publicly funded transgender surgeries.
 
There is no way he can be a faithful Twelver Muslim and support LGBTQ rights. Homosexuality is punishable by death in Iran. I recall former Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad claiming there were no homosexuals in Iran.
 
One possible way to defeat Mamdani would be to remind Muslims that he supports the extreme gay rights agenda and to remind the LGBTQ crowd that he supports the side that throws gays off buildings.
 
Andrew Cuomo has not yet ruled out running as an independent candidate in the general election, as Mayor Eric Adams is currently doing. Given Mamdani’s radical positions, it is not inconceivable that Republican Curtis Sliwa could win a divided four-way race.