Mayor Mamdani arrives

When the witty William F. Buckley, Jr., was asked what he would do if he unexpectedly won his race for mayor of New York City, he responded with a smile: “Demand a recount.”

If only we could do the same waking up to the news that Zohran Mamdani has won the mayoralty of the big apple. Instead, America is about to endure four years of a Democratic Socialist running our country’s signature city.

His platform was no secret from the voters. He ran embracing his “democratic socialism.” His plans start with housing—where he advocates a citywide freeze on rent, along with free city buses and free, universal childcare. These things are, unsurprisingly, not actually free—they cost money—costs he intends to pay for with a surcharge tax on city residents earning over $1 million annually. He also proposes an increase in the corporate income tax, but that is levied by the state and will require legislative approval.

Even if these taxes were enacted, experts doubt they’d raise nearly the money needed to fund his bevy of freebies, and that’s before businesses and their owners flee to friendlier jurisdictions in the suburbs.

Nor did Mamdani run from the label socialist, a term that would have been anathema to a generation raised at any point in the Cold War. Fox 5, a major New York City station, explains for its news readers: “Unlike capitalism, democratic socialists believe that real freedom and equality can only happen in a socialist system where the economy serves the people, not just private profit.” Of course, reality always intervenes to reveal the pipe dream as just that—as the late great Margaret Thatcher once observed, “The problem with socialism is that you eventually run out of other people’s money.” That’s especially true when the people with the money who lose the vote at the ballot box can then vote with their feet by moving out of New York.

Even if Mamdani’s mayoralty is headed toward trouble, his initial victories speak to the depth of change in the Democratic Party in recent years. As conservatives, we often say that Barry Goldwater’s 1964 loss paved the way for Ronald Reagan’s triumphant victory in 1980. The observation finds an echo in Mamdani’s win, which only seems possible in light of U.S. Sen. Bernie Sanders and squad captain and U.S. Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez. Sanders’ quixotic presidential runs and AOC’s dominance of Democratic politics have displaced the traditional elites in the Democratic Party, embodied in this instance by Andrew Cuomo.

Cuomo is a former cabinet secretary for Bill Clinton and former attorney general and governor of New York. To prove his Democratic bona fides, he was also married to (but since divorced) Kerry Kennedy, a daughter of former U.S. Sen. Robert F. Kennedy. And to complete the credentials, his brother is former CNN anchor Chris Cuomo, and his father was legendary New York Gov. Mario Cuomo. Yet a man who defines the Democratic establishment in New York was defeated in the June Democratic primary by Mamdani, 56 to 43. He ran as an independent candidate in the general election and was crushed again yesterday. This is quite literally not your parents’ Democratic Party.

Only 30 years ago, Republicans simultaneously held the governorships of New York, California, and Illinois, and the mayoralties of New York and Los Angeles (George Pataki, Pete Wilson, Jim Edgar, Rudy Giuliani, and Richard Riordan, respectively). They won emphasizing good government, low taxes, and crime, the latter a problem they largely fixed with broken windows theory, CompStat, and the sociological insights of James Q. Wilson. Their success allowed these urban centers to evolve to the blue-state norm that defines their politics today.

But what goes around comes around. Perhaps a troubled term by African American Democrat Eric Adams followed by a mayor more interested in celebrity than success will see New Yorkers reconsider Republicans. Or perhaps not—sometimes voters prefer rhetoric over results, especially when packaged with promises of free everything.