Friends of mine, prominent players in the New York City business community, tell me they are horrified that a certified socialist, Zohran Mamdani, might become our next mayor.
Their next step is Florida, or somewhere, anywhere out of his grasp if Mamdani does become mayor as the polls suggest could happen — even with the more moderate, albeit flawed, Andrew Cuomo, the former governor, seemingly in the lead for the Democratic nomination. In this one-party town, that usually means a ticket into Gracie Mansion.
“We need Cuomo to win or we’re doomed,” is how one brand-named, uber-rich New Yorker put it over dinner the other night at Elio’s, the Upper East Side restaurant frequented by New York’s top business leaders.
Yes, “Mayor Mamdani” is a scary thought. He sees anyone with a heartbeat and a job as part of the problem, an oppressor class that needs to be exploited to pay for an ever larger welfare state.
His positions on Israel are so noxious, they don’t bear repeating.
But his type has been here before — and for a long time, which is why crying over Mamdani is, as they say, a bit rich when it comes from the rich.
New York City and state have been experiencing massive outmigrations of people and business for years because the Big Apple and the Empire State have been run largely by the radical left for the better part of two decades.
Our tax base is being decimated by crime and the cost of living. Banks are moving more of their operations to lower-taxed Texas and Florida. Real estate is sinking.
All of this has picked up steam in recent years, but it’s hardly a new phenomenon and you can blame the now-sweating fat-cat class for allowing it to happen. Their money could have informed the public of the city and state’s death spiral and backed sensible mayoral candidates, people like John Catsimatidis, an entrepreneur and true New Yorker.
The current Republican candidate and Guardian Angels founder Curtis Sliwa is smart enough to appoint people who successfully ran the city under Rudy Giuliani and Mike Bloomberg. Sliwa also ran four years ago, and would have been a far better choice than the ethically challenged Eric Adams.
Speaking up too late
Instead, the city’s business class sat idly by. They acquiesced as a defund-the-police prosecutor, the hapless Alvin Bragg, became Manhattan DA. Only after a violent-crime spree against their own employees perpetrated by criminals allowed to roam the streets because of Bragg’s policies did they say a word.
Where were they during Comrade Bill de Blasio’s reign of terror and error? Recall in 2021, Adams ran as mayor promising to address the crime wave and with business support. But only after crime coverage by this newspaper did he step up policing by appointing the highly competent Jessica Tisch as police commissioner.
Likewise, where’s the outrage over the emergence of Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, the fatuous Bronx and Queens congresswoman?
She comes from similar lineage as Mamdani — leftist education, devoid of private sector experience, dimwitted when answering tough policy questions, though good at social media — the main qualifications for the leadership in New York’s Democratic Party, and increasingly the national party as well.
Which brings us to the business community’s preferred choice, Cuomo. They see him as a smart, moderating influence on the left. Most are unimpressed by the reasons he was forced out as governor, as they should be. The sexual-impropriety case mounted by state AG Tish James was at best a political hit job from someone who wanted his job and searched for stuff that couldn’t stand legal scrutiny.
You can criticize him for locking down the city during COVID, but those were perilous times, and confusion from DC on how to react didn’t help. Count me as highly skeptical that he was solely responsible for those nursing home deaths since hospitals were calling on the state to return the elderly once they appeared to clear the virus to make room for others as the pandemic spread.
My problem with Cuomo is doubts over whether he will stand up to the progressives who are destroying New York City and the state in general.
His instincts are moderate — maybe even a bit conservative given the leftism that permeates the Democratic Party. I’ve sat down with him, and he talks a good game about preserving the business class in the city, how they produce jobs and will produce them elsewhere if he taxes them out of the state.
He understands the need for public safety, how the economy is inextricably tied to people feeling safe, which makes him an anomaly in New York’s Dem Party. Housing values increase when you’re not worried about them getting robbed. If people can’t take the subway to work, they can now work from home, depriving small businesses of that end of the wealth effect.
And yet, in his later years as governor, he gave in far too much to the lefty loons. New York state should be a fracking capital given shale supplies upstate. Cuomo blocked that. His bail reform law has been a disaster. Taxes were too high when he was governor, as they are now. He made the incompetent Kathy Hochul his No. 2 and now we’re stuck with her running the state in his absence.
That said, Cuomo’s first term was decidedly centrist on taxes and a lot more. His dad, Mario Cuomo, a three-term governor, was among the greatest politicians of our time, so Andrew learned from the best.
Will Cuomo 2.0 beat back the misguided support for Mamdani? The business class — and the future of this great city — are depending on it.
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