Good Luck, New York!

Democracy is the theory that the common people know what they want, and deserve to get it good and hard.

– H.L. Mencken

As an Angeleno and Californian I don’t typically spend a lot of time paying attention to New York politics. In fact I’m so down in the weeds in my home city and state these days that my knowledge of national and international news consists of scanning the headlines of the major papers each morning primarily to make sure a literal or metaphorical asteroid isn’t hurtling toward earth. 

That’s changed over the last month since a member of the “Democratic Socialists of America” (DSA) named Zohran Mamdani won the New York City Democratic Party mayoral primary. Since winning the Dem primary in New York is tantamount to winning the election, it seems that Mamdani is well on his way to becoming the city’s next mayor.

To which this Angeleno says: Good luck, New York. You’re gonna need it. This qualifies as a metaphorical meteor headed straight for Gotham.

A bit of background is in order.

After a brief, self-destructive dalliance with the far left and the likes of ANTIFA, BLM, and the “Democratic Socialists of America,” Democratic officeholders and candidates have moved decidedly back to the center over the last two to three years. The examples are everywhere: New Yorkers elected a moderate mayor in Eric Adams to replace the leftist Bill de Blasio. In Los Angeles, former Republican Nathan Hochman defeated leftist George Gascon as District Attorney. In San Francisco voters recalled socialist D.A. Chesa Boudin, a Gascon acolyte, as well as two ultra-progressive members of the city’s school board. Last year, Frisco voters elected a decidedly tame, middle of the road Democratic mayor, Daniel Lurie. Up in Portland, voters tossed put their entire city council, expanded the number of council seats, and approved ranked choice voting, all in response to the city’s disastrous leftward lurch following the George Floyd riots in 2020.

Remember all of this? The DSA would rather you didn’t.

Also last year, California voters overwhelmingly approved Prop. 36, which restores tougher penalties for so-called “nonviolent” offenses, primarily robbery, assault, and the sale and manufacture of certain deadly narcotics like fentanyl. Nationally, voters replaced some 21 progressive D.A.’s who’d been backed by George Soros with centrists or even Republicans who promised to be tougher on crime. Kamala Harris lost the presidency largely because she couldn’t uncouple herself from the Biden administration’s unfortunate leftward lurch (that, and because she nominated an ultra progressive wackadoo as her running mate).

None of this is to say Republicans made inroads in big cities. Democrats still hold supermajorities on the city councils of all but two of the country’s 20 largest cities. The five largest – New York, L.A., Chicago, Houston, and Phoenix – have a total of 141 seats, with 123 held by Democrats, 14 by Republicans, and 4 by independents, two of whom lean Democrat. Smaller cities like Seattle, Portland, San Francisco, Cleveland, Austin, Boston, and Washington DC have all Democratic city councils. In the country’s 50 largest cities, there are just eight Republican mayors.

Which, as it turns out, is one of the party’s biggest problems. One-party dominance is never good, regardless of who’s in charge. One-party dominance always bends toward authoritarianism. In political science it’s called the Horseshoe Theory, the idea that no matter how far apart two parties may be ideologically, the more power they accrue and centralize the more they behave the same. 

For a more recent example of this trend, one need only look at the machinations in Sacramento last week by which the Democrat supermajority, along with Governor Gavin Newsom, used flagrantly undemocratic methods to gut California’s signature environmental protection law. It was the most significant change to how California approaches environmental protection in 55 years, and the Dems did it entirely in the literal backroom, and literally under cover of darkness. I wrote about this shameful episode last week.

In contrast, a two- or multi-party system tends to push all parties toward the center, because most people are political centrists. In a sense, and at least at the local level, there is a semblance of the two party system even in Democratic supermajority states. Hochman was a Republican until he decided to run for D.A. Ditto Rick Caruso, the billionaire real estate developer who ran against Karen Bass for L.A. Mayor in 2022, and may yet again in ‘26. By San Francisco standards Lurie is a moderate.

Still, it’s all within the Democratic Party, which means eventually, inevitably, here and there a wingnut is still going to break through. Zohran Mamdani is Exhibit A. He’s straight out of the Marxist-Leninist playbook not just for his politics, but for how he politics. At just 33 he’s young, charismatic, fervently idealistic, and full of boundless energy. He preaches with the conviction of a born-again evangelical. Like Marx he comes from privilege (his father is a Columbia University political science professor and his mother is an Oscar-nominated director), and like Lenin he’s never had much work experience outside politics. He speaks with the cool assurance of someone who doesn’t have to worry about defending a track record. For that matter, he talks like someone who’s never much worried about the real world.

It’s difficult to conjure any 33-year-old who would be ready to take on one of the most challenging jobs in the country, if not the world. And Mamdani doesn’t just want to be mayor, he wants to use the office to radically and fundamentally transform New York City into a socialist Utopia. The more likely outcome is an Escape from New York situation in which those who are able flee to other parts of the state and to other states. The exodus would include a big part of the wealthy tax base Mamdani is counting on to realize his Utopia.

From afar there’s something comical about his campaign, and his promises. He’s promising New Yorkers everything from free mass transit to free, universal pre-K education. He’s even promising free maternity baskets for expectant mothers (or rather, in democratic socialist parlance, “birthing people”). He wants to freeze rent and borrow up to $100 billion to fund affordable housing. He’s specifically wants to increase taxes on wealthy white people. Of course he wants to defund the police, divest from Israel, and arrest Benjamin Netanyahu. He has a track record of inflammatory statements that he’s refused to retract or even address. He claims that “globalize the intifada” doesn’t mean “globalize the intifada.”

For now, Mamdani has the wind squarely at his back. His opponents are former New York State Governor Andrew Cuomo and current New York City Mayor Eric Adams. The former is tainted by sex scandals that forced his resignation from Albany in 2021 and also by his decision to force tens of thousands of elderly New Yorkers back into close quarters living facilities at the height of COVID, a decision that cost many thousands of lives. Adams similarly languishes under a cloud of scandal, having been pardoned by President Donald Trump. Also, both men are much older than the millennial Mamdani.

Just when it seemed like the country was over its latest flirtations with The Worst Idea in Political History, it’s making a comeback. In our biggest city of all places. If Mamdani wins, the silver lining is that socialism’s failures and flaws will be on display for the world to see (not unlike how L.A.’s soft experiments will be on display during the 2027 World Cup and 2028 Olympics). That could lead to its final demise in this country, which would make the experiment worth it.

Sadly, the only question is how many people will have to suffer to prove the point.