Zohran Mamdani's anti-billionaires declaration is anti-New York City and so many of the things that make it great
'I don't think that we should have billionaires, frankly,' the Dem mayoral primary winner told Kristen Welker on NBC's 'Meet the Press' Sunday.
That's a bold statement from a man vying to become the mayor of New York City and not some quaint hippie commune in the Pacific Northwest.
6 Zohran Mamdani told Kristen Welker on 'Meet the Press' that we should not have billionaires.
NBC/Meet the Press
Does he think the city's billionaires are all hoarding their cash and swimming in their vaults like Scrooge McDuck?
How naive is this guy?
Wealthy New Yorkers have helped the city retain its spot as a cultural capital with world-class museums, beautiful public spaces and top hospitals, among other things we can all enjoy.
But according to the Dem's eat-the-rich candidate, billionaires can go scratch — all 123 of them who call the Big Apple home, making us the city with the most in the world. (We'll remind the ultra progressives of that the next time they enthusiastically partake in a 'No Kings' march funded by, you guessed it, billionaires.)
Perhaps Mamdani the democratic socialist wants to make them extinct by redistributing their money to the poor via taxes, until they become mere millionaires. But then what happens when millionaires become problematic for having too much?
6 Former Mayor Michael Bloomberg, a self-made millionaire, has given heaps of money to many causes in New York City including charter schools.
Getty Images for Bloomberg Philanthropies
In a world without billionaires, do we cap innovation? Cap earnings and incentives to create great things that change all our lives for the better? What happens when a culture that always thrived on possibility and rewarded ingenuity and grit suddenly says no more?
Mamdani is a theater kid whose mother is a film director and father is a college professor — two sectors heavily supported by the endowments of people who have big Bs next to their names.
I'm guessing the 33-year-old has visited the Met and the Guggenheim, both supported not on the vibes of art lovers but by the scarole of people with loads of it in the bank.
Maybe he's taken a stroll out on Little Island, a park on the west side of Manhattan that was bankrolled mostly by media mogul Barry Diller and his wife, Diane von Furstenberg.
6 Little Island at Pier 55 on the West Side of Manhattan was funded in large part by media mogul Barry Diller and his wife, Diane von Furstenberg.
Paul Martinka
Then there's our great hospitals. Ken Langone, an early investor in Home Depot, has donated millions and millions to NYU, helping turn it into a world-class facility. His generous cash infusion allows medical students to study there for free — something Dr. Ruth Gottesman's billion-dollar donation also ensured at Albert Einstein College of Medicine.
Former Mayor Michael Bloomberg has pledged $750 million to fund charter schools. The late Charles Dolan founded the Lustgarten Foundation for pancreatic cancer research, underwriting administrative costs so all donations go to the mission.
I could go on and on.
Also: Bloomberg's father was a bookkeeper. Langone's, a plumber.
We used to hold up success stories like theirs as proof of the exceptionalism of New York City. If you can dream, you can build it here.
6 Billionaire Ken Langone's philanthropy has helped turned NYU's hospital system into a world-class facility.
AP
Now, Mamdani is saying, if you can build it, we'll be looking for ways to take it from you.
His views are anti-innovation and anti-progress.
Sure, the ultra-rich are not above scrutiny. Just last week, Jeff Bezos and his gauche new wife, Lauren Sánchez, took over Venice with in-your-face displays of wealth. Some of the celeb guests are the same hypocrites who pledge to fight climate change but cruise the oceans in yachts and fly planes like most folks drive cars.
6 Zohran Mamdani has energized a group of previously unengaged voters with his messaging about affordability and free stuff.
Stephen Yang
However, to act like billionaires are a class of useless hogs who aren't taxed and don't contribute to every strata of our society is ludicrous. Especially if you're in the Big Apple. Much of what they support makes it a desirable place to live.
The more we learn from Mamdani's past comments, the clearer the picture gets. He claims to be about making New York affordable, but espouses Marxist values like 'the end goal of seizing the means of production.' Yikes.
Mamdani says just that in a 2021 video for the Young Democratic Socialists of America, while posed against a background showing outer space — appropriate because his ideas are so at odds with a world where gravity exists. He adds that we must 'ensure that we are unapologetic about our socialism.'
6 In a 2021 video for the Young Democratic Socialists of America, Mamdani said the 'end goal is seizing hte means of production.'
@AGHamilton29/X
Mission accomplished.
That should send a shiver down spines. But by tapping into the affordability crisis crippling many people, he's become a star. He ran a very savvy modern campaign — meeting New Yorkers on the streets and flooding social media with zippy ads and promises of free stuff.
But don't be fooled by his charisma. Implementing socialism and taxing billionaires out of existence is not the answer. They'll simply leave New York City for more hospitable waters and take their moolah with them.
Then we'll really be up a creek.
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Atlantic
39 minutes ago
- Atlantic
New Yorkers May Soon Be Grocery Guinea Pigs
New York City—where takeout is a food group and ovens are for storing clothes —may soon get into the grocery business. If he wins the general election this November, Zohran Mamdani, the new Democratic nominee for mayor, has said he will build a network of municipally owned, affordable grocery stores, one in each of the city's five boroughs. According to Mamdani, the city could help pay for the stores' rent and operating costs by taxing the wealthy, and the stores won't seek to turn a profit, enabling them to sell food at wholesale cost. In the vision Mamdani laid out in a campaign video, the stores' mission would be combating 'price gouging' by offering lower prices than corporate grocery stores. If Mamdani is able to pull this off—a huge if, given the economic considerations, as critics are quick to point out—it will be the first time in American history that a city of New York's size has commanded its own grocery stores. New Yorkers are in favor of the idea: Two-thirds of them, including 54 percent of Republicans, support public groceries, according to a March poll by the Climate and Community Institute, a progressive think tank. But because nothing exactly like Mamdani's plan has ever been tried before in a large city, no one can be certain whether it will really be able to sell more affordable food, let alone help address food insecurity and health disparities in the city. What Mamdani has proposed is a $60 million experiment, with New Yorkers as test subjects. A couple of other large American cities are trying out similar plans, but what little real precedent exists for Mamdani's plan comes mostly from rural America. A handful of towns have opened municipally owned groceries, mostly because they had no choice: Small towns once relied on mom-and-pop shops, but these are vanishing as dollar stores proliferate and big-box retailers in larger rural cities monopolize the wholesale supply. Without a supermarket, residents have to either drive out of town for food or rely on convenience stores and dollar stores, which don't stock many healthy options. In 2018, the town of Baldwin, Florida (current population 1,366), lost its only grocery when the local IGA closed. It became a food desert: The next-closest supermarket was 10 miles away—not a simple trip for older adults who don't drive or for people without a car. The mayor proposed a municipally owned store, which opened the next year. In Kansas, the cities of St. Paul (population 603) and Erie (population 1,019) started their own grocery stores in 2008 and 2021, respectively. St. Paul had not had a supermarket since 1985. The fates of these stores and their hometowns have varied. Baldwin Market became a lifeline for many residents, particularly during the pandemic. But it struggled to break even and closed in 2024. Now the town largely relies on a handful of convenience stores and a Dollar General as it awaits the rumored opening of a new private grocery. Erie Market similarly struggled to balance its books. Operations were a challenge; the store sometimes stocked expired food, and its refrigerated section lost power after a thunderstorm. Last year, the city leased it to a private owner, who has yet to reopen the store. By contrast, St. Paul Supermarket has operated as a fully municipally owned grocery since 2013 (before that, it was funded by a community-development group) and shows no signs of closing. Its success has been attributed to community buy-in. Locals were motivated by the desire to preserve their city, fearing that the lack of a grocery store would drive away current residents and scare off potential new ones. 'It's a retention strategy, but it's also a recruitment strategy,' Rial Carver, the program leader at Kansas State University's Rural Grocery Initiative, told me. The primary goal of a municipally owned store is to get food to people who need it. But the city will have to decide which food to stock and, inevitably, will face questions about how those choices influence the diet or health of potential customers. (Imagine the criticism a Mamdani administration might face for subsidizing Cheetos—or, for that matter, organic, gluten-free cheese puffs.) Theoretically, getting people better access to any sort of food can have health benefits, Craig Willingham, the managing director of CUNY's Urban Food Policy Institute, told me. But so few examples of successful municipal grocery stores exist that there is virtually no research on their health effects. Research on the health impact of opening a privately owned grocery in a food desert has had mixed results. An ongoing study of a food-desert neighborhood in Pittsburgh has found that after a supermarket opened, residents consumed fewer calories overall—less added sugar, but also fewer whole grains, fruits, and vegetables. A 2018 study set in a Bronx neighborhood with few grocery stores linked the opening of a new supermarket to residents eating more vegetables and fruit and consuming fewer soft drinks, salty snacks, and pastries, but their spending on unhealthy foods increased along with their purchases of healthy ones. A new grocery alone won't change food habits, according to a 2019 study led by Hunt Allcott, an economist at Stanford. 'People shop at the new store, but they buy the same kinds of groceries they had been buying before,' Allcott told me. What does help nudge people toward buying healthier foods, he said, is making those foods affordable—while also taxing unhealthy items such as soda. With so little background information to go on, there's no telling how Mamdani's experiment will play out in a big city—or whether it will even get off the ground. New York differs from the sites of other municipal-grocery experiments not only in its size and density but also in its general abundance of grocery stores. Proximity isn't the major reason people can't get food, healthy or otherwise, Allcott said—cost is. From 2013 to 2023, the amount of money New Yorkers spent on groceries rose nearly 66 percent —far higher than the national average. The city's poverty rate—a metric based on the price of a minimal diet—is nearly twice that of the national average; from 2020 to 2023, one in three New Yorkers used food pantries. In Chelsea, a Manhattan neighborhood that is known for its luxury high-rises and is also home to a large housing project, some residents would rather take the train into New Jersey to buy groceries than shop at the expensive local supermarkets, Willingham said. Grocery stores are tough business. Profit margins are as slim as 1 to 3 percent, and prices are largely determined by suppliers, who tend to privilege volume. A single grocer (or the small network that Mamdani envisions) won't get as good a deal as a large chain. And running a store is hard, Carver told me: A manager needs to be nimble and adjust to customer demands, skills that municipal bodies are not exactly known for. In New York, at least, there's reason to expect that public groceries wouldn't actually be cheaper. Mamdani (whose campaign did not respond to a request for comment) has acknowledged that New York's city government might not be cut out for stocking shelves. If the pilot plan doesn't work, he said on the podcast Plain English last week, he won't try to scale it up. Yet he believes that it's worth trying. 'This is a proposal of reasonable policy experimentation,' he said. National grocery costs are expected to increase 2.2 percent this year, according to the USDA. Price hikes will hit poor Americans even harder if Congress passes President Donald Trump's megabill, which includes cuts to federal food-assistance programs such as SNAP. Among such threats to food affordability, the mere possibility of change could justify a trial of something new. Other large cities, too, are signing up as guinea pigs: Madison, Wisconsin, is in the process of opening a municipally owned store. Last year, Atlanta addressed food insecurity among public-school students and their families by opening a free grocery store—it functions like a food pantry but is stocked like a supermarket—funded by a public-private partnership. Its impact on health hasn't yet been studied, but demand is high. 'We do slots for appointments, and they're immediately gone,' Chelsea Montgomery, the adviser to operations of Atlanta Public Schools, told me. Mamdani's proposal is hardly the first unorthodox policy experiment New York has considered. The city took a chance on congestion pricing to reduce traffic and fund public transit, on universal pre-K to guarantee access to early childhood education, and on supervised injection sites to curb the overdose crisis. All have achieved their objectives. Perhaps, in a decade, millions of New Yorkers will get their organic, gluten-free cheese puffs on the cheap at a city-owned market. Or perhaps the whole project will go the way of the city's failed attempt to end poverty by offering cash in exchange for efforts to build healthy habits. The point of experimentation is to find out.
Fox News
an hour ago
- Fox News
NY Dems who have yet to endorse Mamdani unite in his defense against Trump
New York Democrats, who have been reluctant to endorse socialist candidate Zohran Mamdani after he secured the Democratic nomination for mayor of New York City, united to defend him Tuesday when President Donald Trump threatened to arrest him if he didn't comply with federal immigration officials. "I don't care if you're the president of the United States, if you threaten to unlawfully go after one of our neighbors, you're picking a fight with 20 million New Yorkers — starting with me," Gov. Kathy Hochul, D-N.Y., fired back at Trump on Tuesday evening. The New York governor has sparred with Trump since he returned to the White House this year on issues like education, abortion and immigration. More than a week after Mamdani declared victory in the Democratic primary, Hochul has yet to endorse the socialist mayoral candidate. New York Democratic Rep. Ritchie Torres, who endorsed former Gov. Andrew Cuomo in the primary and has yet to endorse Mamdani in the general, said on Wednesday, "For a sitting president to causally threaten to arrest and deport a US citizen who won a major-party nomination is disgraceful. Free societies do not arrest, deport, and otherwise weaponize government against their political opponents." Mamdani also hit back in a statement on Wednesday, responding to Trump's comments. "His statements don't just represent an attack on our democracy, but an attempt to send a message to every New Yorker who refuses to hide in the shadows: if you speak up, they will come for you. We will not accept this intimidation," Mamdani said. Veteran Democratic strategist Joe Caiazzo told Fox News Digital, "The only people that matter in this election are the people of New York." "Trump's rhetoric will only serve to solidify support for Mamdani in the city. Trump is trying to nationalize the New York City mayoral race in an attempt to distract from the horrific policies he is peddling in Washington," Caiazzo added. "Look, we don't need a Communist in this country, but if we have one, I'm going to be watching over them very carefully on behalf of the nation," Trump said Tuesday, as he expressed willingness to arrest him. Trump doubled down on his disdain for Mamdani in a Truth Social post Wednesday, vowing to "save New York City." "As President of the United States, I'm not going to let this Communist Lunatic destroy New York. Rest assured, I hold all the levers, and have all the cards," Trump said. Trump's jabs at Mamdani are the latest from Republicans working to paint him as the poster boy of far-left politics. Following his primary victory last week, Republicans instantly attacked Mamdani's platform, which calls for free rides on city buses, freezing the rent on rent-stabilized apartments, offering free early childcare and setting up city-owned grocery stores. The president went as far as to call Mamdani a "100% Communist Lunatic." Mandani has also been targeted for his criticism of Israel and over his age and inexperience at just 33 years old. Mamdani surged to a primary victory thanks to an energetic campaign that put a major focus on affordability and New York City's high cost of living. Endorsements by Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, the progressive rock star and New York City's most prominent leader on the left, and by Sen. Bernie Sanders of Vermont, the progressive champion and two-time Democratic presidential nominee runner-up, helped Mamdani consolidate support on the left. Mamdani made smart use of social media platforms, including TikTok, as he engaged low-propensity voters. He proposed eliminating fares to ride New York City's vast bus system, making CUNY (City University of New York) "tuition-free," freezing rents on municipal housing, offering "free childcare" for children up to age 5, and setting up government-run grocery stores.
Yahoo
an hour ago
- Yahoo
These Are Obstacles to Zohran Mamdani's Plans for New York City
Last month, The New York Times editorial board urged Democratic voters in New York City against supporting mayoral candidate Zohran Mamdani. With only five years under his belt as a state assemblyman, the board wrote, the 33-year-old would 'bring less relevant experience than perhaps any mayor in New York history.' Then the anti-endorsement took aim at his policy positions, such as rent freezes and city-owned grocery stores. Mamdani, a member of the Democratic Socialists of America, was 'running on an agenda uniquely unsuited to the city's challenges' and 'too often ignores the unavoidable trade-offs of governance.' Voters didn't appear to agree. Mamdani handily won the Democratic nomination for mayor, as the official tabulation of ranked-choice votes confirmed on Tuesday. Now, the question is whether Mamdani can actually implement his campaign promises. In a speech on election night, Mamdani cited the very agenda that the Times editorial board decried as the reason for his success. 'If this campaign has demonstrated anything to the world, it is that our dreams can become reality,' he said. But winning the nomination, while a significant victory, is only the first step in the process of dreams becoming reality. First, Mamdani must win a crowded general election, in which candidates will include current Mayor Eric Adams—who is running as an independent—and potentially former Governor Andrew Cuomo, who came second in the Democratic primary and will remain on the November ballot. Mamdani is still facing skepticism from the state's leading Democratic officials, including Governor Kathy Hochul, and has yet to earn the explicit support of the business community, which largely preferred Cuomo. Mamdani's success is a testament to the coalition he was able to build in his campaign, said Christina Greer, an associate professor of political science at Fordham University, but she added that he 'hasn't been tested as of yet, beyond—I would argue—ten-minute sound bites.' 'We've seen remarkable campaigning, which I think for many people is a signal to the organization and discipline that we could see in governance,' continued Greer. 'But we know that the campaign phase is not the governance space.' Mamdani's policy agenda is largely focused on affordability. He has proposed creating a city-owned grocery store in each borough; making city buses free; instituting free childcare for children between six months and five years old; and freezing rents for New Yorkers living in rent-stabilized apartments. He has also proposed raising the corporate tax rate and taxing the wealthiest 1 percent of New Yorkers an additional 2 percent. While his proposal on freezing rents could be accomplished on a city level by making appointments to the Rent Guidelines Board, other proposals would require approval from the state legislature and governor in Albany. The Rent Guidelines Board, whose current members were appointed by Adams, on Monday approved a hike on rent-stabilized apartments of at least 3 percent, a move Mamdani condemned. Another one of Mamdani's housing-related priorities—building 200,000 units of affordable housing—would mean the city must borrow $70 billion, exceeding its debt limit and requiring a vote from the state legislature. The legislature would also need to pass a measure to raise taxes on corporations and the wealthy, which Hochul would need to sign—and Hochul has expressed disinterest in the plan. 'I'm focused on affordability, and raising taxes on anyone does not accomplish that,' she said in a news conference last week. State legislators would need to approve Mamdani's plan to implement free buses, as the Metropolitan Transportation Authority is a state-run agency. One of Mamdani's signature achievements in the Assembly was a 2023 pilot program that made five bus lines free for one year; however, the legislature did not extend the program. Mamdani has estimated that making all of New York City's bus lines free would cost around $700 million, but his government and Albany would need to negotiate on whether that cost fell on the city or on the MTA. Janno Lieber, the chair of the MTA, had been critical of the pilot program, saying it sent the 'wrong message' when the city was trying to focus on fare evasion. Nonetheless, in an interview with NPR on Monday, Mamdani said that 'the reason that I put forward this agenda is not only because it's urgent, but because it's feasible,' citing the lapsed pilot program. 'It wasn't simply about economic relief. It's also about public safety, the fact that assaults on bus drivers went down by 38.9 percent through this pilot, the fact that we actually saw an increase in riders who had previously been driving a car or taking a taxi, reducing congestion around those same routes,' Mamdani argued. Susan Kang, an associate professor of political science at John Jay College of Criminal Justice and a Mamdani supporter, contended that the nominee's experience as an activist would allow him to mobilize his supporters if he is elected mayor, and they in turn would put pressure on state legislators to approve his priorities. 'Because they have this model—this insider-outsider, grassroots organizing model of politics like the DSA—that would be a continuation of how a future mayor Mamdani would govern. Not just like, 'I'm on high, I'm your decision maker, I'm the mayor,' but rather the whole model of a socialist, which is obviously to bring as many people as possible into the process,' Kang said. This is not dissimilar to an argument Mamdani himself made in the interview with NPR. 'What we've seen is that these policies I'm speaking to you about, they are not just policies that people are voting for, incidentally, while they're voting for me. They're voting for this platform,' he said. This principle would also apply to Mamdani's negotiations with the City Council on the budget, Kang said, adding that she believed Mamdani would not pursue a 'dictatorial' governance model, but instead attempt 'to build strong, majoritarian support among constituents and the residents of New York, so that way City Council will feel that this is the right thing to do.' New York City Council member Justin Brannan argued that Mamdani's success had already helped pave the way for Eric Adams, the current mayor, to reach a deal with the Council on the budget for fiscal year 2026. He told Politico that 'things that the council had been fighting for many years suddenly became more important.' Last week, Adams and City Council Speaker Adrienne Adams (no relation) reached a deal on a $116 billion budget that would include a pilot program to provide free child care for low-income children under age two. But beyond earning support from city and state legislators, perhaps the greatest threat to Mamdani's effectiveness as mayor would come from Washington. On Sunday, President Donald Trump warned that he could cut funding to the city if Mamdani 'doesn't behave himself' should be elected mayor. 'If he does get in, I'm going to be president, and he's going to have to do the right thing, or they're not getting any money. He's got to do the right thing, or they're not getting any money,' Trump said in an interview with Fox News host Maria Bartiromo. The federal government provides more than $100 billion to the city through different institutions like the New York City Housing Authority and benefits like Medicaid, according to a December report by the city comptroller. Nearly 8 percent of the city's operating budget for fiscal year 2025—around $9.6 billion—came from federal funds. Only around 6 percent of Adams's budget proposal for fiscal year 2026 relied on federal spending, but the state comptroller warned in an April report that these funds could be subject to cuts by the Trump administration. On top of that, cuts to benefits like Medicaid, nutrition programs, and education programs like Head Start would devastate the city's low-income residents. Even if Mamdani was able to convince Albany of the efficacy of his ideas, Washington is another matter, said Greer. 'While many of these ideas could possibly work under a Biden administration, we see how the federal government right now is slashing so many different programs to cities especially, [and] how will these really innovative ideas be paid for is the larger question I think a lot of people have,' she said. Moreover, Mamdani may have a limited time to enact his agenda, given that the next statewide elections will occur in 2026, when Republicans could possibly gain either the governorship or one or both chambers of the legislature. GOP candidate Lee Zeldin came within throwing distance of unseating Hochul in the 2022 election, and New York swung towards Trump in the 2024 presidential election, raising the specter of a future state government even more hostile to Mamdani. Mamdani's ambitious agenda bears similarities to that of former New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio, who worked with Albany to implement a universal prekindergarten program. But Greer noted that the state and federal political situation in 2014, when de Blasio entered office, and in subsequent years was not analogous to that of today. 'Even during the first Trump years, there was nothing like what we're experiencing now with the massive gutting of the federal government. So Mamdani is entering into a very different New York City, because he's entering into a very different relationship with the federal government,' said Greer. However, de Blasio had a famously antagonistic relationship with Cuomo, who was governor at the time. But in a February interview with the New York Editorial Board—a group of New York journalists on Substack who interviewed each mayoral candidate—Mamdani noted that despite their mutual distaste, the two were nonetheless able to negotiate issues such as universal pre-K. Similarly, Mamdani said, he was 'not trying to win as one man crossing the finish line,' but instead as a candidate who would use his bully pulpit as mayor to 'every single day make the case as to why our agenda needs to be enacted in Albany.' 'I want people to know that when they vote for me, they're voting for these issues,' Mamdani said. 'So that when elected and I go to Albany, it's clear to everyone that I'm fighting for these things and that the votes that they see across New York City are not necessarily die-hard for Zohran specifically as an individual, but are die hard for freezing the rent, for making buses fast and free, and for bringing universal child care.'
