Mayor Zohran Mamdani just revealed his real top priority: getting reelected. At taxpayer expense.<\/p>\n
Hence the outrageous salaries he says he\u2019ll pay 15 (count \u2019em, 15) comrades to provide agitprop at his newly created, tellingly named Mayor\u2019s Office of Mass Engagement.<\/a><\/p>\n Even as he ignores his day job: Just witness his lack of any serious proposals for closing the city\u2019s multibillion-dollar budget gap.<\/p>\n As The Post\u2019s Craig McCarthy reports, Zo\u2019s Office of Mass Reelection \u2014 er, Engagement \u2014 aims to emulate the Democratic Socialists of America model for mobilizing the public.<\/p>\n \u201cThe Soviet politburo called, they want their job announcement back,\u201d snarked one Democratic strategist.<\/p>\n \t\t\tMore From\t\t\t\t\t\t\tPost Editorial Board<\/p>\n Per city job postings, the staff will build a system of volunteers for campaigns through \u201cco-governance\u201d \u2014 meaning, get activists to noisily demand exactly what you want to do anyway.<\/p>\n One listing details duties echoing a campaign staffer\u2019s: \u201cstrategizing, coordinating, and executing on engagement that reaches the masses of everyday New Yorkers.\u201d<\/p>\n Call it a \u201cDirector of Re-Election Political Get Out the Vote Using Government Money,\u201d another Dem operative quipped.<\/p>\n \t\t\t\t\t\t\tGet opinions and commentary from our columnists\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/p>\n \n\t\t\t\t\t\t\tSubscribe to our daily Post Opinion newsletter!\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/p>\n \t\t\t\t\t\tThanks for signing up!\n\t\t\t\t<\/p>\n The salaries are eye-popping: The office\u2019s commissar, er, commissioner, Tascha Van Auken (previously the Mamdani campaign\u2019s field director), will rake in a whopping $250,000 \u2014 about the same as Gov. Kathy Hochul.<\/p>\n Nine others will make between $100,000 and $150,000, with payroll totaling nearly $2 million.<\/p>\n And that\u2019s just for 15 salaries; who knows how many millions more this \u201ctop priority\u201d office will get?<\/p>\n (Then again, he plainly needs some serious comms help, if his cringe-worthy \u201cCrunchwrap\u201d video<\/a> Tuesday is any indication.)<\/p>\n Meanwhile, Mamdani\u2019s budget<\/a>, which calls for a mere $1.7 billion in savings, would still leave a $5.4 billion hole even if those savings actually materialize.<\/p>\n And he\u2019s gotten almost nowhere getting even those tiny trims: Per Office of Management and Budget Director Sherif Soliman, he\u2019s signed off on just $200 million, or less than 12%, of it.<\/p>\n The Taxi and Limousine Commission will cancel its Slack subscription, \u201csaving nearly $20,000,\u201d a press release boasts; the Sanitation Department will vacate \u201cunderutilized office space,\u201d saving $194,000.<\/p>\n Are they serious? This is just pretend budget-cutting<\/a>.<\/p>\n Instead, Hizzoner is still dreaming of a cash bath<\/a> from the state (on top of the $1.5 billion Hochul has already offered<\/a>) via tax hikes.<\/p>\n But Hochul has nixed those taxes as she runs for re-election, and Mamdani\u2019s given up on his plan for (threat of) a 9.5% property-tax hike.<\/p>\n We get it, Mr. Mayor: It\u2019s natural enough to want to focus on something you know you\u2019re good at, like campaigning.<\/p>\n But the city needs you to get your nose to the grindstone and work at the job the voters hired you to do; if you don\u2019t get cracking, all the \u201cmass engagement\u201d in the world won\u2019t save you from their fury.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Mayor Zohran Mamdani just revealed his real top priority: getting reelected. At taxpayer expense. Hence the outrageous salaries…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":681802,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[5122],"tags":[5229,3232,9642,30303,71957,4691,5371,405,403,5226,5225,5228,5227,5372,1269,102556,67,586,132,5230,68,2969,5301],"class_list":["post-681801","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-new-york","tag-america","tag-budget","tag-campaigns","tag-communism","tag-department-of-sanitation","tag-editorial","tag-kathy-hochul","tag-new-york","tag-new-york-city","tag-newyork","tag-newyorkcity","tag-ny","tag-nyc","tag-nyc-mayoral-election","tag-opinion","tag-taxi-and-limousine-commission","tag-united-states","tag-united-states-of-america","tag-unitedstates","tag-unitedstatesofamerica","tag-us","tag-usa","tag-zohran-mamdani"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@us\/116292374051493005","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/681801","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=681801"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/681801\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/681802"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=681801"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=681801"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=681801"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}