Zohran Mamdani will officially be sworn in as the next mayor of New York City on January 1. At age 34, Mamdani will become the Big Apple’s second-youngest mayor in the city’s history, behind Hugh J. Grant, who became mayor at 31 way back in 1889. Interestingly, both represented the Democrat Party, but Mamdani’s version of Democrat is a far cry from Grant’s.
To that point, Mamdani is a member of the Democratic Socialists of America. Unlike traditional Democrats who generally try to hide their socialist bent, he’s an avowed socialist who sees capitalism as the problem and big government socialism as the answer. In his victory speech, he boasted, “We will prove that there is no problem too large for government to solve and no concern too small for it to care about.” And they’re worried about “King Trump.”
The question is, as NYC’s mayor, just how much change/damage can Mamdani actually impose? Can he make the city’s buses free? Can he make child care free? Can he set up a bunch of city-run grocery stores? Can he force rent freezes across the city? In short, can Mamdani do what he campaigned on doing?
Of course, when he was campaigning, his answers to the complex issues plaguing the city were as simplistic as they were unrealistic. Andrew Cuomo was right when he observed of Mamdani during their last debate, “There is no reason to believe you have any merit or qualification for 8.5 million lives. You don’t know how to run a government.” Cuomo also noted, “You don’t know how to handle an emergency, and you literally never proposed a bill on anything that you’re not talking about in your campaign.”
Mamdani has never run anything, aside from a winning campaign.
Given his inexperience, just how “successful” will he be — and, more importantly, how much power will he have to effect the changes he has pledged to make?
Here’s where Mamdani’s refusal to endorse Governor Kathy Hochul in return for her clearly less-than-enthusiastic endorsement of him may come back to bite him.
For example, New York City’s trains and buses fall under the purview of state-run Metropolitan Transportation Authority (MTA), a state agency whose members are appointed by the governor. MTA CEO Janno Lieber observed that the transit agency doesn’t treat “New York like it’s Dr. Frankenstein’s laboratory: Let’s just attach the electrodes and see what happens.” In other words, Mamdani won’t have unilateral authority to simply implement his “free buses” policy. If he’s to see any movement on this front, at the very least, he’ll have to get Hochul on board.
The trouble is, for MTA, NYC buses are an important and reliable source of revenue. And even if the MTA wanted to terminate the NYC revenue stream, it doesn’t have the legal authority to do so.
Furthermore, operating the city’s buses costs nearly a billion dollars annually. Not only would Mamdani’s plan cost the state hundreds of millions in revenue, but where would he get the money to pay the operating costs?
His answer, of course, is “tax the rich,” but as mayor, he doesn’t have the authority to levy new taxes. That is the purview of the state legislature, which importantly also requires Hochul’s signature — and that’s unlikely.
“I cannot set forth a plan right now that takes money out of a system that relies on the fares of the buses and the subways,” Hochul said Saturday. “But can we find a path to make it more affordable for people who need help? Of course we can.”
Similar roadblocks exist for all his other freebie policy proposals, which consist of questions of legality and affordability.
Mamdani is incredibly dangerous from a branding standpoint — from what it increasingly means to be a Democrat. But what he will soon find out is just how difficult it will be to do what he so earnestly claimed he could and would do. So, while it is disconcerting that an avowed socialist will be New York City’s new mayor, the fact of the matter is, he won’t have the power to unilaterally turn the Big Apple into a socialist hellhole. Ironically, we can thank all the trappings of government that make changing things so frustrating as a huge blessing.
