{"id":30453,"date":"2025-07-01T17:50:09","date_gmt":"2025-07-01T17:50:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/30453\/"},"modified":"2025-07-01T17:50:09","modified_gmt":"2025-07-01T17:50:09","slug":"no-im-not-running-for-mayor-of-nyc","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/30453\/","title":{"rendered":"No, I\u2019m not running for mayor of NYC"},"content":{"rendered":"

I suppose you might confuse me with Zohran Mamdani, who shocked the political world recently when he defeated former Gov. Andrew Cuomo to win the Democratic nomination for mayor in New York City.<\/p>\n

After all, at first glance, Mamdani and I have a lot in common. But we turned out to be very, very different people.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Mamdani and me<\/strong><\/p>\n

When Mamdani was seven, after he and his parents moved to New York from Africa, he lived on the\u00a0Upper West Side\u00a0of\u00a0Manhattan, according to West Side Rag,<\/a> a Manhattan community news site. I grew up on the Upper West Side as well \u2014 75th street and Central Park West to be specific.<\/p>\n

He graduated from the Bronx High School of Science, while I graduated from the Riverdale Country School, which was located in the Riverdale section of the Bronx.<\/p>\n

Mamdani, 33, graduated from Bowdoin College in Brunswick, Maine, according to his New York State Assembly biography<\/a>. I graduated in 1970 from Colby College in Waterville, Maine. His major was Africana Studies, mine was Government.<\/p>\n

At Bowdoin, Mamdani helped found the college\u2019s chapter of\u00a0Students for Justice in Palestine<\/a>. He joined the Democratic Socialists of America, while I was a conservative who read Thomas Sowell, William F. Buckley, Milton Friedman and Friedrich von Hayek.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Neither of us fit into the majority ethos, though we came from different points of view.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Ultimately, Mamdani ran for office and got elected to the New York State Assembly. I went on to graduate school at the University of Connecticut, taught political science at Bucknell College, and went into political handicapping and journalism.<\/p>\n

That ends our similarities. Mamdani chose elective office, while I became an analyst who spent decades interviewing thousands of candidates for office.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Two similar paths led to very different political destinations.<\/p>\n

While Mamdani has built his mayoral campaign on his socialist views, I have moved significantly toward the political center over the past few decades.\u00a0<\/p>\n

The 2025 mayoral race<\/strong><\/p>\n

Can Mamdani win the mayoral race? I\u2019m inclined to say \u201cno,\u201d but if Donald Trump could get elected president, why rule out the possibility that Mandani could get elected mayor of New York City?<\/p>\n

The assemblyman clearly has substantial appeal to younger, progressive voters, and his strong primary showing demonstrated his rhetorical skills, interpersonal appeal, and ability to connect with many voters; he is smart and well-spoken.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Still, Mamdani looks like an albatross around his party\u2019s national neck.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Even if he wins the New York City\u2019s mayor\u2019s race, his high visibility and extreme views could alienate him from mainstream Democrats and swing voters.<\/p>\n

The New York City electorate isn\u2019t the same as the national electorate, and the assemblyman\u2019s embrace of \u201cdemocratic socialism\u201d isn\u2019t likely to resonate positively with important electoral constituencies.<\/p>\n

Republicans effectively bombarded voters in 2024 with campaign ads calling the Democrats left-wing socialists.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Mamdani\u2019s socialist views, including his support for establishing government grocery stores and his refusal to condemn the phrase \u201cglobalize the intifada,\u201d<\/a> can only make it easier for Republicans to drive home their message across the country.<\/p>\n

The assemblyman also supports raising the minimum wage to $30 per hour, eliminating bus fares and hiking taxes for the rich.<\/p>\n

The bottom line<\/strong><\/p>\n

Of course, the field for the mayoral race is still a bit up in the air. Mayor Eric Adams is running for re-election as an independent, and Cuomo has not ruled out a general election run.<\/p>\n

Democrats need to keep the national focus on Trump and the Republican Party. The best way to do that is to focus on the economy, the GOP\u2019s unpopular \u201cBig, Beautiful Bill\u201d and Trump\u2019s abuses of power.<\/p>\n

Democrats need to find a way to tap the energy that Mamdani\u2019s mayoral candidacy has generated without making him the face of Democrats nationally.<\/p>\n

Changing the focus to Mamdani\u2019s agenda is a terrible idea that would put Democrats on the defensive.\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"I suppose you might confuse me with Zohran Mamdani, who shocked the political world recently when he defeated…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":30454,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5122],"tags":[5229,9642,2738,7774,7033,77,69,79,8988,90,5495,25982,25983,3457,2741,398,25984,1571,405,403,5226,5225,5228,5227,5620,159,618,25985,277,67,586,132,5230,68,2969,19223],"class_list":{"0":"post-30453","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-new-york","8":"tag-america","9":"tag-campaigns","10":"tag-connecticut","11":"tag-conservatives","12":"tag-democrats","13":"tag-donald-j-trump","14":"tag-donald-trump","15":"tag-economy","16":"tag-election","17":"tag-elections","18":"tag-energy","19":"tag-executive-branch","20":"tag-independents","21":"tag-leadership","22":"tag-maine","23":"tag-media","24":"tag-minimum-wage","25":"tag-national","26":"tag-new-york","27":"tag-new-york-city","28":"tag-newyork","29":"tag-newyorkcity","30":"tag-ny","31":"tag-nyc","32":"tag-republicans","33":"tag-science","34":"tag-taxes","35":"tag-taxpayer-advocacy-panel","36":"tag-trump","37":"tag-united-states","38":"tag-united-states-of-america","39":"tag-unitedstates","40":"tag-unitedstatesofamerica","41":"tag-us","42":"tag-usa","43":"tag-wage"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@us\/114779247393416437","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/30453","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=30453"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/30453\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/30454"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=30453"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=30453"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=30453"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}