Former liberal climate activist says Mamdani is ‘selling a fantasy'

Independent

7 days ago

A former liberal climate activist who now embraces conservative ideals claimed young New York City voters who cast their ballot for the mayoral Democratic nominee Zohran Mamdani are misguided, and that his policies will make them poorer.
Lucy Biggers, a 35-year-old woman who once heavily advocated for environmental-saving policies but has since abandoned them, is using her social media following to promote her new beliefs that align more closely with Republicans: lower taxes, less regulation, and less government intervention. She has also downplayed the current impact of climate change on weather.
Taking to TikTok, Biggers tried to relate to Mamdani's supporters by saying she, too, would have loved a candidate like Mamdani when she was young, but she now sees his policies as flawed.
Referring to young voters as people with underdeveloped frontal lobes, Biggers said Mamdani appealed to the group of voters by selling them a fantasy that ultimately doesn't work.'
'You're indoctrinated as a young person in America to believe that capitalism is bad and all your problems is because of these evil business owners,' Biggers said in her TikTok video.
'I have to warn young people who are caught up in the Mamdani vibes, the road to hell is paved with good intentions,' Biggers claimed.
Mamdani, who conservatives have portrayed as a radical socialist, has said he wants to implement a freeze on rent-stabilized apartments, expand free fares on city buses, open a city-owned grocery store, and raise taxes on the wealthy and corporations.
His policies seek to create equality in the city, which is widely popular with Democratic voters. Ultimately, he beat the established Andrew Cuomo in the Democratic primary last month.
However, Biggers believes that raising taxes on the wealthy in the largest city in the United States will drive them away, forcing lower- and middle-class taxpayers to foot the bill for government-paid-for policies.
'His policies are not going to be the things that fix our city or our government. The policies that we really, really need is less regulation, less taxes,' Biggers asserted.
The social media personality told the New York Post that young people glorify socialism because 'they don't know what happened in Cuba, Venezuela, the USSR.'
Seeking to relate to people on TikTok, Biggers claimed she 'helped' get Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, a progressive Representative in New York, elected in 2018. At the time, Biggers worked for NowThis, which filmed a video with Ocasio-Cortez that went viral.
However, YouTube channels like The Young Turks had already been profiling Ocasio-Cortez before the NowThis video.
Biggers now works for The Free Press, a right-leaning online media organization that sought investments from David Sacks, Marc Andreessen, Howard Schultz, and more.
However, from the TikTok comments, it appears Biggers has not convinced a major audience of her beliefs. Many cited her place of employment as a major influence on her anti-Mamdani rhetoric.