Zohran Mamdani’s victory-lap speech Tuesday night reeked of Vladimir Lenin after Russia’s 1917 communist revolution.
But instead of commanding a Red Army, the mayor-elect should be aware he will be facing lots of red ink.
That’s on top of some very strict and sensible financial rules put in place some 50 years ago — just in case a deranged Marxist ended up running New York City.
Yes, socialism can sound rousing when it’s pitched by a skilled orator.
Mamdani spoke of soaking the rich — failing to mention, of course, that they’re already paying some of the highest taxes in the country.
He ranted how the poor will finally have their day — in a city that already doles out everything from free health care to subsidized housing.
He also dared President Trump, who was in DC undoubtedly watching this spectacle, to “turn up the volume” as he doubled down on his vision: free buses, government groceries, more welfare and free trans medical treatment — even for children.
But NYC — with plenty of welfare statism already on the books — will never go full-on Soviet Union.
That’s because laws must be followed — even by a 34-year old backbench, lefty assemblyman with a degree in “Africana Studies” who visions himself as the second coming of Fidel.
Those laws include something called “The Financial Emergency Act” of 1975.
It was the brainchild of former Gov. Hugh Carey and his outside adviser, the great philanthropist and investment banker Felix Rohatyn.
It was designed to prevent another politician-made catastrophe like the fiscal crisis of the 1970s, when the Big Apple nearly went bankrupt and began to implode, fiscally and socially.
Cops were laid off and garbage piled up because we had no money and no one would lend to us — the budget was such a mess, no one knew if they would get paid back.
The mayor at the time was Abraham Beame but years of bad government, perverse spending and spotty accounting contributed to the mess.
‘Drop dead!’
Gerald Ford, the president while all of this went down, famously told the city there would be no bailout from DC: “Drop Dead” was the headline of the day.
We were on our own, but we had the political infrastructure to create reform: Carey, Rohatyn, civic leaders, bankers and more.
They cobbled together a budgetary infrastructure that, believe it or not, lasts to this day.
New York City spends a lot of money; it has a $119 billion budget and a vast welfare state that includes health care for the indigent and much more. It also has huge amounts of debt to pay for this infrastructure — an amount almost as big as the entire budget itself is owed to bondholders.
Accordingly, it also has high taxes — so high that businesses and high earners were fleeing even before Mamdani’s victory.
And yet we know where all the so-called bodies are buried because of the Financial Emergency Act.
No matter how many freebees Mamdani doles out, how many grocery stores or rent-free apartments he creates, bondholders get first dibs on city tax revenues because Carey & Co. knew that we need them to keep buying debt or the place shuts down.
On top of that, Mamdani must balance his budget based on stringent Generally Accepted Accounting Principles; he cannot end the year with a budget deficit, or something known as the Financial Control Board takes over the city’s fisc.
It’s chaired by Gov. Hochul, who has said she won’t raise taxes over fears of an exodus of the dreaded 1% who pay most of the bills.
Of course the days of Hugh Carey and Felix Rohatyn are long gone.
Hochul claims to be a moderate, but she has been caving to the mini-Mamdanis in the State Legislature for years.
The comptroller is repped on the control board and he’s a leftist.
Mamdani has a seat as well and don’t expect any help from the commissars on the City Council.
The business community is hollowed and politically irrelevant.
But the law is the law.
Our new mayor will face multibillion-dollar budget gaps that will need to be plugged in the next fiscal years.
They will only grow if bank earnings sputter or Jamie Dimon moves more of JPMorgan to lower-tax locales like Texas.
For Mamdani to pass his agenda and balance his budget, he will need a tax increase — and a vicious cycle will begin.
Taxpayers will bolt.
Bond downgrades will follow, heaping even more interest payments on the city.
No cakewalk
The budget deficit will grow, and Control Board oversight looms, over a budget crisis that could make the 1970s look like a cakewalk.
Back then at least, many big businesses outside of banking were still domiciled here; the outer boroughs were populated with stable, middle-class neighborhoods.
But today much of that is gone.
Even the stock exchange is diversifying, with a viable rival starting in Dallas.
Mamdani’s power to run the city like Lenin will be severely diluted unless he wants to cede control to Hochul or ask his pal Donald Trump for a bailout.
When The Donald responds, I have a hunch how the headline will read.
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