A new era of class warfare has begun in New York, and no one is more excited than Generalissimo Zohran Mamdani. Witness the mayor-elect’s change of character since his Tuesday election victory.
Mamdani ran an upbeat campaign, with a nice-guy demeanor and perpetual smile papering over a long history of divisive and demagogic statements. New Yorkers periodically checking in on politics could understandably believe that he simply wanted to bring the city together and make it more affordable. That interpretation became much harder after his victory speech.
Across 23 angry minutes laced with identity politics and seething with resentment, Mamdani abandoned his cool disposition and made clear that his view of politics isn’t about unity. It isn’t about letting people build better lives for themselves. It is about identifying class enemies — from landlords who take advantage of tenants to “the bosses” who exploit workers — and then crushing them. His goal is not to increase wealth but to dole it out to favored groups. The word “growth” didn’t appear in the speech, but President Donald Trump garnered eight mentions.
People’s lives, in Mamdani’s world, can be improved only by government: “We will prove that there is no problem too large for government to solve, and no concern too small for it to care about.” The crowd cheered, of course, but a thinking person might wonder whether it’s good for the institution that has a monopoly on violence to insist that nothing is beyond its purview.
Such crass appeals have real support in New York, where overpriced housing is a real problem. But it’s important to recognize that high rents are a function of too much government rather than too little. Temporary relief because of the rent freeze he promised for 2 million housing units will inevitably lead to less investment, driving up costs in the long run.
In the days since winning, Mamdani’s favorite word has become “mandate.” He won decisively and now wants to pursue his agenda, from the rent freeze to “free” child care and buses. Yet as mayor of New York, his control over taxes and transportation is limited. He needs approval from the state to raise taxes. His transition team includes several New York political insiders who understand how to pull the levers of power, as well as diehard ideologues such as Lina Khan, the former Federal Trade Commission chair.
Mamdani was the first New York mayoral candidate to garner more than 1 million votes since John Lindsay in 1969. One reason he will be so constrained is that Lindsay’s mayoralty was such a disaster for the city’s finances that the state imposed these financial controls to make sure it wouldn’t happen again.
More interesting will be how Mamdani interprets class struggle in the context of law enforcement and public education, where his powers are more sweeping. He says he wants to keep Police Commissioner Jessica S. Tisch, who is respected by officers and competent at fighting crime. Will he give her deference? Will he order that prostitution laws stop being enforced, as he has suggested? Will subway stations become dangerous social experiments where vagrants are welcomed in to receive services?
On schools, Mamdani has done nothing to suggest he’ll take the side of children over union bosses when their interests conflict. New York schools make it too difficult to discipline misbehaving kids, which makes classrooms less safe and hurts everyone. Mamdani has also said he wants to phase out gifted-and-talented programs for elementary students.
Exit polls showed that the New Yorkers most skeptical of these utopian promises are those who were born in the city and don’t have college degrees. Mamdani fared best among newcomers and people with advanced degrees. Apparently, living in New York for decades — and witnessing what does and doesn’t work when it comes to running a city — offers more wisdom than grad school.
