If you think a Mayor Mamdani couldn\u2019t bring us worse horrors than those already inflicted upon us by the \u201cprogressive\u201d brigade of former Gov. Andrew Cuomo, former Mayor Bill de Blasio, Manhattan DA Alvin Bragg, Brooklyn DA Eric Gonzalez, state Assembly Speaker Carl Heastie, state Senate Majority Leader Andrea Stewart-Cousins, at least a dozen woke City Council members and innumerable looney-left judges \u2014 you are profoundly in error.<\/p>\n
Some\u00a0of my wealthy acquaintances in high-end commercial real estate say of Mamdani<\/a>, \u201cYes, he\u2019s an antisemitic, dopey dilettante who would impose a Soviet-style rule over us if he could, but, hey! The state, not the city, really has the\u00a0power! The mayor is a paper tiger! Remember how de Blasio said he\u2019d get rid of carriage horses on Day One!\u201d<\/p>\n Take no comfort in that.<\/p>\n Naysayers repeatedly speculate about the horrors awaiting New York City if Zohran Mamdani is elected. AP<\/p>\n It\u2019s mercifully true\u00a0that Mamdani couldn\u2019t make the buses free and thereby\u00a0accelerate the MTA\u2019s fiscal tailspin (perhaps he\u2019ll have time to learn between now and Election Day that such a step would be up to the MTA, a state body over which the mayor has very limited influence). <\/p>\n Nor should his pipe dream of city-run grocery stores panic supermarket and bodega\u00a0owners, given the city\u2019s comically inept and corrupt record with such crucial tasks as making NYCHA apartments liveable.<\/p>\n Yet, despite the mayoralty\u2019s tightly circumscribed authority, Mamdani could wreak havoc in two realms where significant progress in recent years has been made. The one most vital to New Yorkers on a day-to-day basis is crime. After an up-and-down start, Mayor Adams seems to have tamed the beast. Under NYPD commissioner Jessica Tisch, major crime is\u00a0dramatically down<\/a>.\u00a0If the trend holds up, murders this year will total under 300, the holy-grail figure not seen since before the pandemic.<\/p>\n Mamdani could undo all of that in a flash. Although he now denies he\u2019d attempt to defund the NYPD despite having once proposed precisely that\u00a0imbecilic notion, it would take only the appointment of a new top cop more committed to protecting criminals\u2019 \u201crights\u201d than to public order to kick-start the tailspin.<\/p>\n The\u00a0 administrations of Adams,\u00a0Bill de Blasio (yes, de Blasio) and Bloomberg did their best to alleviate the \u201chousing crisis.\u201d After all, this is far more the fault of state and earlier city laws than to \u201chomelessness\u201d largely due to mental illness and drug addiction. <\/p>\n Mamdani wants to make public transport free, along with taking an anti-police platform. Christopher Sadowski<\/p>\n All three mayors promoted or approved rezonings that both opened up more districts to residential development, and enabled construction of \u201caffordable\u201d units within those districts \u2014 the latter by requiring their inclusion for the size bonuses developers need to make projects economically viable.<\/p>\n For elected officials and urbanologists who apparently prefer a North Korea-style housing program (free, government-assigned apartments for everyone in horrible buildings), no amount or percentage of affordable units is ever enough. But Bloomberg, de Blasio and Adams, in different ways,\u00a0relied on a real-world approach.<\/p>\n A \u201cMayor\u201d Mamdani would have the power to replace newish NYPD Commissioner Jessica Tisch, who has made inroads against violent crime. Luiz Rampelotto\/ZUMA \/ SplashNews.com<\/p>\n Variances to existing rules needed approvals under the city\u2019s Uniform Land Use Review Procedure, or ULURP.\u00a0The often contentious, seven-month slog sometimes included compromises, but the result was creation of tens of thousands of new units from the Gowanus Canal\u00a0in Brooklyn to Morris Park in The Bronx.\u00a0<\/p>\n Kiss such progress goodbye if Mamdani wins. His animus toward upper- and middle-class New Yorkers is well known. The loyalties of a man who wants to freeze all stabilized rents clearly are not with developers and landlords upon whom the city must rely to create and maintain sound housing.<\/p>\n Former council member Kristin Richardson Jordan, who took an anti-development and anti-\u201cgentrification\u201d stance, derailed a large-scale Harlem housing development that would have delivered low-cost homes to her district. LightRocket via Getty Images<\/p>\n He\u2019d more likely take his cue from anti-development and anti-\u201cgentrification\u201d zealots such as former council member Kristin Richardson Jordan, who single-handedly torpedoed a big Harlem project<\/a> that would have brought 1,000 new rental homes to Malcolm X Boulevard and West 145th Street, half of which were to be priced below market.<\/p>\n The ability of a single council member to block even projects supported by his or her\u00a0entire community \u2014 a veto power called \u201cmember deference\u201d \u2014 has been so abused, Adams wants to put measures on the November ballot that would turn approval authority over to the City Planning Commission.<\/p>\n The site under consideration was \u2014 and remains \u2014 an empty lot. Stephen Yang<\/p>\n Yet, even if voters show more common sense than Democratic primary voters last week and support the change, a mayor Mamdani could still \u2014 and almost surely will \u2014 stop any housing development in its tracks that doesn\u2019t impossibly make new apartments free or almost free.<\/p>\n That\u2019s because ultimately, the mayor must sign off on any\u00a0plan that passes ULURP muster. If you doubt he\u2019d put the kibosh on new-housing proposals desired by just about everybody, just listen to him \u2014 and tremble.<\/p>\n