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🌊 The Socialist Vs. The Creeper
Which will run America’s largest city?
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By Max Frost
The leading candidate was pressured out of office after being accused of sexual harassment; the close second is a self-proclaimed socialist who wants to open government-run supermarkets, make public buses free, and set a $30 minimum wage.
The winner won’t just become New York City’s next mayor – they may well determine the Democrats’ path in the years ahead.
Life in a One-Party City
New York City is overwhelmingly Democratic: In the last three mayoral elections, Democrats won 73%-24%, 66%-28%, and 67%-28%, respectively. The city’s one-sidedness means that whoever wins the Democratic primary effectively wins the mayorship, as they are virtually assured of winning the general election in November.
Yet New York has closed primaries, meaning only registered party members can vote in that party’s primary. In New York City, this means that only Democrats can vote in the Democratic primary, giving independents and Republicans effectively no voice in choosing their mayor.
New York City also now has ranked-choice voting, where voters rank their top five candidates. All first-choice votes are then counted. If a candidate receives more than 50% of first-choice votes, that candidate wins; if no candidate earns 50%, counting continues in rounds. At the end of each round, the last-place candidate is eliminated and voters who chose that candidate have their vote counted for their next (second-ranked) choice.
Ranked choice voting is a generally progressive proposal intended to give voters a wider range of options and therefore produce a more representative candidate. In this primary, though, it’s essentially produced a race between two candidates on either end of the Democratic spectrum: Andrew Cuomo and Zohran Mamdani.
Establishment v. Socialist
The pair’s backgrounds could scarcely be more different: Cuomo’s father, Mario, was a three-term governor of New York and titan of state politics. Andrew followed in his footsteps, first chairing New York City’s homeless commission, then serving as President Clinton’s secretary of housing and urban development, then as New York’s state attorney general, and, from 2011 to 2021, New York’s governor. Like Donald Trump, he was born in the borough of Queens and attended New York City’s Fordham University. From 1990 until 2005, he was married to Kerry Kennedy, daughter of Senator Robert F. Kennedy (and sister of RFK Jr.).
Mamdani, by contrast, is a socialist Muslim immigrant from Africa.
Born in Uganda to well-off Indian parents, his family…
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Editor’s Note
New Yorkers: Who would you rather be the mayor? For those who oppose Cuomo, do you worry that Zohran could drive businesses and residents away? For those who oppose Zohran, do you believe Cuomo can make the city more affordable? Let us know by replying to this email.
And in case you missed this week’s stories, find them here:
Lots of replies to yesterday’s story. Many people praised Greg’s pro-intervention reply:
C wrote:
Can u publish Greg’s response so that it reaches more readers? I feel like it is the best apolitical and intelligent explanation that I have read.
Jerry wrote:
Whoever Greg is, ROCA should hire him!!!
But there were also a few like Wyatt’s, below:
I hope to see better. I really do. This was one of the few platforms I would freely tell people they need to tune into for unbiased reporting. But this makes me question this as a whole.
Editor’s Reply: As always, we don’t run replies to support a position – we run the most articulate ones that represent a school of thought. Yesterday’s from Greg was well-written and interesting. We’d just as eagerly run one that opposed intervention, had someone sent one in. Thankfully, yesterday, Brian from Chicago did:
The best argument against intervening in Iran is not that we need to put “America first,” or that we’d only intervene because Israel wants us to. No – it’s that the pro-intervention camp is not answering the questions of what comes next. It is the same situation as with Libya or Iraq: Intervene with no plan for the future.
Let’s consider the possibilities. The US joins Israel and bombs Iran/Fordow…
1: Iran capitulates and agrees to stop enriching uranium, supporting terrorism, etc., etc.. Everything works out perfectly. Okay, that is one possibility.
2: Iran retaliates with terror attacks in Europe/missile attacks on American bases or Middle Eastern oil infrastructure. This turns into a regional war with untold consequences for the world.
3: The Iranian regime crumbles; anarchy breaks out in Iran. Civil war breaks out between the various factions; 90M people – 13 TIMES THE POPULATION OF LIBYA – living in chaos. A crisis of proportions we haven’t seen in the modern era.
4: The Iranian regime survives, barely, and decides its only path forward is to sprint to a rough nuclear bomb. You then have a weak, isolated, angry Iranian regime armed with nuclear weapons.
I could go on. The point is that intervention could bring about a neat, clean solution – but much more likely is that it does not. That’s a risk we should not be willing to take.
That’s all for today. If you’ve made it this far, thanks for reading.
–Max and Max