I spent election day in New York City. It\u2019s a habit of mine: I have \u201cworked the polls\u201d in NYC for three governors\u2019 races (for Pataki)\u00a0and two mayor\u2019s contests (for Bloomberg).\u00a0Election day in the five boroughs is a glorious thing\u2014so many people of different backgrounds participating in our democracy.\u00a0This year, more than two million New Yorkers cast ballots in the mayoral race.<\/p>\n
Without the responsibilities of handing out leaflets or checking turnout numbers with election officials, I tried to pay attention to the voters and the atmosphere of the city. Zohran Mamdani\u2019s socialism and anti-Zionism have rightly attracted the lion\u2019s share of attention and criticism, but I was surprised to see that his message and appeal to New Yorkers was less ideological than you might think. More than anything, the city\u2019s residents are eager to take a chance on youth and energy against an old and tired Democratic machine. And Mamdani played into this by downplaying the left\u2019s worn out rhetoric about the \u201cforgotten poor\u201d\u2014as if their cause was the only one that mattered. Instead, he focused his message on middle-class concerns: better public transportation, lower rents, free child care\u2014all aspirations designed to help\u00a0working\u00a0people do a little better in a city that has gotten too expensive. He emphasized the importance of work in\u00a0his victory speech<\/a>:\u00a0<\/p>\n For as long as we can remember, the working people of New York have been told by the wealthy and the well-connected that power does not belong in their hands. Fingers bruised from lifting boxes on the warehouse floor, palms calloused from delivery bike handlebars, knuckles scarred with kitchen burns: these are not hands that have been allowed to hold power.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n Don\u2019t get me wrong\u2014I\u2019m betting that once in office he will retreat to Democrats\u2019 same-old, failed handout policies\u2014because that is really all they know how to do. And I\u2019m deeply concerned about the broader effects of his radical rhetoric on the city\u2019s Jewish population. But at least during the campaign, Mamdani spoke to the concerns of people who work hard and still struggle\u2014people who make up most of the city.\u00a0<\/p>\n Now that he has to govern, he will find that beyond the cost of living, the most important issue for these voters is public safety. So I\u2019m gratified to hear that Mamdani is willing to keep Jessica Tisch on as police commissioner. Her leadership has earned the respect of NYPD officers and brought crime down across the city. If Tisch stays, she will exemplify the well-tested adage that ideology doesn\u2019t run the city, managers do.\u00a0<\/p>\n Looking to the specifics of the voting patterns in New York City, but also in the gubernatorial elections in New Jersey and Virginia, one trend is especially clear that could have deep reverberations in 2026 and 2028: The gains Republicans have made with Hispanic-Americans have vanished. According to New Jersey exit polls,\u00a0Mikie Sherrill won Hispanic voters by 37 points<\/a>, after Kamala Harris only won Hispanic voters by nine points in the state. In Virginia,\u00a0Abigail Spanberger won Hispanic voters by 24 points<\/a>. And\u00a0in New York, Hispanics also swung left<\/a>, as Mamdani was able to win the Hispanic-majority Bronx after losing it to Cuomo in the primary.<\/p>\n Could it be that many of these voters, who were originally drawn to President Trump because of bread-and-butter concerns and cultural issues, including his opposition to illegal immigration, are unhappy\u2014even outraged\u2014by ICE tactics\u00a0that increasingly target those with legal status<\/a>\u00a0and have even\u00a0detained US citizens<\/a>?<\/p>\n During the presidential campaign, Trump went out of his way to say\u00a0he supported more legal immigration<\/a>. But since the election, his administration\u2019s actions have done just the opposite and suggest a broader hostility to our country\u2019s diversity. The efforts of some of Trump\u2019s allies to remake American identity as a matter of\u00a0exclusionary heritage<\/a>\u00a0is fundamentally at odds with American history and American character. We are a diverse country, and we always have been. There is no path to electoral success for a candidate pursuing a whiter America. Nowhere is that diversity more apparent than New York City, where whites make up less than a third of the city (31.3 percent according to the most recent data<\/a>).<\/p>\n So if Republicans want to have an electoral future, to win back their 2024 supporters and expand their coalition in the future, they need\u00a0to make sure voters from all backgrounds feel welcome in the party.\u00a0We know foreign-born American citizens and their children are attracted to Republicans\u2019 perspective on work, family, faith, and country. But they won\u2019t abide racism. They want practical solutions to day-to-day problems for all Americans.<\/p>\n The same goes for Mamdani. My sense is New Yorkers don\u2019t want radical rhetoric\u2014they want results. Will crime continue to come down? Will student achievement rise? Will labor force participation increase? Will working families be able to afford housing? If he falls back on the same old failed progressive policies, crime will increase, the wealthy will leave, tourists will grow scarce, and none of his aspirations to make the city more affordable will happen.<\/p>\n On the morning after election day, I took the 2 train from 34th street in Manhattan to East Flatbush, a working-class neighborhood in the middle of Brooklyn. It\u2019s a 40-minute trip, and like all early-morning subway rides, I saw the workers of New York\u2014the nurses, construction workers, security guards, retail employees. I didn\u2019t see any celebration or new pride\u2014just people going about their day focused on the job right in front of them.<\/p>\n My destination was the middle school where my daughter teaches. I hadn\u2019t been there before, and I wanted to get there as the kids were arriving\u2014all of mine are grown now, and I miss the morning rituals and rush. Julie teaches 8th grade English in a Success Academy Charter school. Before 7:30, there was already a line of 40 children in their uniforms waiting for the door to open. There were a few watchful parents with the happy, rambunctious group. As my daughter was busy, she directed me to a Bodega across the street where she said the man behind the counter was nice. He was patiently selling some last-minute snacks to a crowd of middle schoolers. When it was my turn, I told him my daughter taught in the school across the street and had told me he was a nice man. As he made my change, he smiled and said, \u201cWell you know, I have kids.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"I spent election day in New York City. It\u2019s a habit of mine: I have \u201cworked the polls\u201d…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":362812,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5122],"tags":[5229,154108,392,90,409,405,403,154110,5226,5225,5228,5227,175937,67,586,132,5230,68,2969],"class_list":{"0":"post-362811","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-new-york","8":"tag-america","9":"tag-civic-life","10":"tag-culture","11":"tag-elections","12":"tag-immigration","13":"tag-new-york","14":"tag-new-york-city","15":"tag-new-york-city-nyc","16":"tag-newyork","17":"tag-newyorkcity","18":"tag-ny","19":"tag-nyc","20":"tag-republican-party-gop","21":"tag-united-states","22":"tag-united-states-of-america","23":"tag-unitedstates","24":"tag-unitedstatesofamerica","25":"tag-us","26":"tag-usa"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@us\/115509988110591814","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/362811","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=362811"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/362811\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/362812"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=362811"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=362811"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=362811"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}\n