Zohran Mamdani’s New York Will Crash and Burn

A pro-Palestine, socialist ex-rapper has just been handed the keys to one of the world’s most important cities. With 50.4% of the vote, Zohran Mamdani beat out his independent opponent, Andrew Cuomo, who won 41.6%. At just 34 years old, this makes Mamdani the city’s youngest-ever mayor. He is also its first Muslim mayor. 

Mamdani went from being a relatively unknown candidate to a frontrunner in a relatively short span of time. His social-media-savvy campaign propelled him to virality and popularity, especially among younger New Yorkers—78% of 18-29-year-olds voted for Mamdani, as did 66% of 30-44-year-olds. This demographic will be most familiar with Mamdani for his progressive stances on the war in Gaza, LGBT rights, racial identity politics, and anti-Donald-Trump rhetoric. The fact that he also has an attractive, socially conscious, fashion-forward wife couldn’t have hurt, either. 

Mamdani’s election as mayor will come as a surprise to no one. After all, he was long pegged as the favourite to win. But his policies will come as a shock to the system for New Yorkers. His promises are both sweeping and ludicrous. He wants to freeze rents, make bus travel free, offer free universal childcare, introduce a $30 minimum wage, and even open a state-run grocery store in all five boroughs. Many of these promises will be difficult, if not impossible, to fulfil, because Mamdani doesn’t actually have the powers to enact them. If he tries, he will no doubt face legal challenges and threats from the president to defund the city. But half of New Yorkers still voted for Mamdani’s student-style, progressive platitudes without really understanding just how devastating they would be. 

One of Mamdani’s most appealing pledges revolves around making New York affordable again. This is a fair complaint—the city is considered one of the most expensive places to live in the world. Those wanting to live in areas not overrun by criminals and crazies are forced to shell out thousands of dollars each month for studio apartments that, in many other American cities, would barely be considered habitable. The solution to this, according to Mamdani, is rent control. Mamdani comes from the school of thought that eye-watering rents are caused not by high demand and low supply, but by the insatiable greed of landlords and property developers. As such, he proposes to introduce a four-year rent freeze, which would apply to almost half of rental properties in the city. This would mean that New York rent would be decided not by the market, but by a ‘Rent Guidelines Board.’ This will invariably disincentivise landlords from carrying out repairs, as the cost of maintenance outpaces their income. Over time, that means fewer liveable homes in a city that already has as many as 60,000 abandoned units.

If rent controls are a misguided, if understandable, idea, then Mamdani’s approach to crime is pure insanity. He has recently attempted to distance himself from his previous ‘defund the police’ stance, but let’s not forget that just five years ago, he declared that the New York Police Department is “racist, anti-queer and a major threat to public safety.” Then, in 2022, he demanded that the NYPD be reduced by another 1,300 officers, writing: “We can’t reform our way out of a racist police system that’s working exactly as designed—as a means of control over black and brown New Yorkers.” In any case, his position today is not much better. As mayor, Mamdani intends to introduce ‘community-based’ alternatives to policing, reallocating $600 million from the NYPD’s patrol operations to a new $1.1 billion Department of Community Safety. This horde of social workers will apparently fight crime by focussing on “inequality, exploitation, and disinvestment.” Meanwhile, police officers will be prohibited from making arrests for what Mamdani refers to as “non-serious crimes.” This will no doubt embolden criminals, “serious” or not, while law-abiding New Yorkers will be made to suffer. 

There are plenty more nonsense causes that Mamdani intends to throw taxpayer money at. Free bus travel—even though almost half of journeys are already ‘free,’ due to passengers fare-dodging. He wants city-operated grocery stores to fight “food insecurity,” even though obesity rates are a more pressing concern, and shoplifting continues to threaten to put private shops out of business (a crime that will no doubt be considered “not serious” enough to police). He wants to pour money into New York’s already bloated anti-homeless agencies, but refuses to give police powers to forcibly commit reluctant drug-addicted or mentally unwell homeless people. 

Of course, none of this matters much to Mamdani’s supporters. What’s important is that he has the right woke credentials and makes the correct progressive noises. But that performative activism conflicts with his biography. Like many fellow modern leftists, Mamdani is no working-class hero himself. His father was a professor of post-colonial studies at Columbia University and his mother was a filmmaker. He attended the private, leafy Bowdoin College in Maine, and wrote his thesis on Jean-Jacques Rousseau’s influence on Frantz Fanon. Not that there is anything inherently wrong with being born into privilege—but it certainly grates when one is play-acting as a champion of the working classes. 

In this way, too, Mamdani is the embodiment of the modern-day Left. He is out of touch with the people who actually rent, ride the subway, and have to live with the consequences of progressive politics. His policies are fuelled by resentment and entitlement, demanding that wealthy New Yorkers—who already make up almost half of the city’s tax contributions—hand over yet more of their hard-earned money to fund his crackpot schemes. His politics are nothing more than a lifestyle brand, barely distinguishable from that of a college undergraduate. He won this election based on viral moments and right-on rhetoric. But what sounds cool and radical on X and TikTok will collapse as soon as it comes into contact with reality. 

This is the tough lesson that many New Yorkers will have to learn. In a best-case scenario, New York will act as a warning to other young, Left-curious voters across the world. Politics today is filled with Mamdanis—young, woke leftists, who get their ideas exclusively from university and the internet. The U.S. has plenty more examples within the Democratic Socialists, such as Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Ilhan Omar. In the UK, this comes in the form of Zack Polanski of the Green Party (a gay, Jewish man who believes he can enlarge women’s breasts through the power of hypnosis) and Zarah Sultana of Your Party (a pro-Palestine, pro-trans Muslim woman whose politics, in her own words, amounts to “We’re taking the fucking lot.”). In Germany, die Linke leader Heidi Reichinnek fills that same niche, cementing the party’s turn away from working-class concerns in favour of purely woke issues. 

Mamdani’s win in New York sets an example for these progressive rising stars at home and abroad—that victory is within reach. Clearly, young voters are buying into what the Left is selling. We can only hope that the inevitable consequences of these policies become clear before any Mamdani copycats get into power in the rest of the Western world.