{"id":155012,"date":"2025-08-18T06:12:24","date_gmt":"2025-08-18T06:12:24","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/155012\/"},"modified":"2025-08-18T06:12:24","modified_gmt":"2025-08-18T06:12:24","slug":"new-york-now-needs-conservative-action","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/155012\/","title":{"rendered":"New York now needs conservative action"},"content":{"rendered":"

Zohran Mamdani\u2019s Democratic primary victory<\/a> will strike many conservatives as confirmation of a long-held belief: that the New York built by hard-working immigrants and business ingenuity is gone. In its place stands a socialist enclave whose unraveling has only just begun.<\/p>\n

As a lifelong New Yorker who has seen this city at its worst and best, I see Mamdani\u2019s win not as a total defeat, but as a wake-up call \u2014 to fight for the city New York can still become. That fight doesn\u2019t require grandiose ideologies or MAGA slogans. It requires a compassionate conservative vision rooted in New York\u2019s promise and opportunity. This vision must draw on the moral center that has shaped the city\u2019s social infrastructure and embrace principles of dignity, safety, innovation, and, above all, competence.<\/p>\n

Law and order are the foundation of any compassionate society. In New York, when chaos reigns, it is the working-class, elderly, and marginalized who suffer most. Recent surges in public crime \u2014 from subway stabbings to organized retail theft \u2014 have eroded the dignity of those who rely on public spaces and services the most.<\/p>\n

Each new headline or report makes this descent seem unprecedented, but New York has been here before. In the 1990s, then-Mayor Rudy Giuliani and his police commissioner, Bill Bratton, revived a crime-ridden city by prioritizing the dignity of all citizens in policing<\/a> \u2014 not just leniency for criminals.<\/p>\n

Today, we have leaders like NYPD Commissioner Jessica Tisch<\/a>, who share the fundamental belief that law and order is the foundation for a dignified thriving society. She has been a vocal advocate of re-establishing cash bail, after a grave policy mistake that has allowed criminals to walk free and continue to offend. Eliminating cash bail is the worst, but far from the only, example in which criminal justice reform has not only made our streets less safe but has increased rates of recidivism.<\/p>\n

New Yorkers are tired of performative politics. Local leaders have treated public office as an opportunity to grandstand without delivering the changes citizens have demanded. Public housing remains mismanaged, with $80 billion in unmet capital needs<\/a>. Amid this dysfunction, Mamdani promises 200,000 new public housing units while gutting much of the city\u2019s revenue. His ideas are not only unworkable \u2014 they alienate the business community that forms New York\u2019s economic backbone.<\/p>\n

Mamdani treats the city\u2019s tax revenue like Monopoly money he can spend and raise at will, ignoring that it represents a sacred trust with businesses and individual taxpayers. The solution to New York\u2019s housing crisis is not found in doubling down on a failed system of rent regulation, but in incentivizing the free market to work as it should.<\/p>\n

Rent regulation laws strengthened during the de Blasio administration have strangled the free market investment in housing for all New Yorkers. By framing prosperity as a zero-sum game, Mamdani\u2019s tax policy will alienate communities who feel targeted not for wrongdoing, but for success. A path forward for all New Yorkers requires policies that lift everyone through economic growth, not by creating division.<\/p>\n

Right now, business \u2014 big and small \u2014 is being crushed by the weight of taxes, fines, and mandates. We must recognize that economic growth is the most effective form of social welfare. It creates sustainable jobs, revitalizes neighborhoods, and lifts communities.<\/p>\n

Consider the public housing accomplishment of Mayor Adams\u2019 administration. Under Adams, NYCHA has utilized the private-public PACT program<\/a> to raise $1.7 billion in capital investments and build or update more than 50,000 public housing units. The PACT program does not alienate private partners but instead utilizes their expertise and capital to improve public services. That\u2019s the kind of conservative governance New York needs \u2014 not big government, but smart government.<\/p>\n

New York doesn\u2019t need more ideology, it needs solutions. We must stop treating New York\u2019s decline as inevitable and writing off its citizens based on the vocal minority. The universal dignity conservatism is based on demands that we recognize the opportunity New York provides for real change. The time has come to rebuild New York \u2014 not with ideology or slogans, but with competence, compassion, and a whole lot of work.<\/p>\n

Scharf is co-managing partner of New York law firm Morrison Cohen<\/a>. The views and opinions expressed in this article are solely those of the author and do not reflect the official policy or position of the firm.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Zohran Mamdani\u2019s Democratic primary victory will strike many conservatives as confirmation of a long-held belief: that the New…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":155013,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5122],"tags":[5229,405,403,5226,5225,5228,5227,1269,67,586,132,5230,68,2969],"class_list":{"0":"post-155012","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-new-york","8":"tag-america","9":"tag-new-york","10":"tag-new-york-city","11":"tag-newyork","12":"tag-newyorkcity","13":"tag-ny","14":"tag-nyc","15":"tag-opinion","16":"tag-united-states","17":"tag-united-states-of-america","18":"tag-unitedstates","19":"tag-unitedstatesofamerica","20":"tag-us","21":"tag-usa"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@us\/115048297624714479","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/155012","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=155012"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/155012\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/155013"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=155012"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=155012"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=155012"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}