How New York City’s next speaker, Julie Menin, can counter Mayor Zohran Mamdani’s radicalism

Dear Councilwoman Julie Menin,

Congratulations on securing enough votes to become the next New York City Council speaker.

It’s a significant achievement, one many New Yorkers welcomed with a sigh of relief given your rival’s progressivism.

Most Gothamites did not sign up for the radicalism apparent in Mayor-elect Zohran Mamdani’s transition team and are craving not sweeping social change but a moderating force to counter the policies that have already left our streets and subways less safe, our city more expensive, our schools less effective and our communities more divided. 

As a candidate for City Council and Manhattan district attorney and as a Community Education Council president, I have talked to people for years about their actual concerns.

New Yorkers throw in the towel and leave our great city when they lack real safety, business-friendly laws, good jobs, affordable rent, excellent schools and improved quality of life. 

Let’s start with public safety.

Just last week, we’ve seen a young NYU student stalked and assaulted on Sixth Avenue by a serial attacker of young women, a Soho boutique robbed of $1 million worth of merchandise and a Molotov cocktail tossed in a West Village shop.

You must recognize and publicly support the urgent need to repeal bail reform, maintain the NYPD gang database and stop the proposed Department of Community Safety. 

As speaker, you’ll have the platform to make a forceful case to Albany legislators and the governor to finally end bail reform.

It’s past time to repeal law that puts recidivists on our streets again and again.

You can also rally your council colleagues and build a coalition to demand the NYPD gang database remain in place.

And Mamdani’s ludicrous Department of Community Safety, which is an unconvincing fig leaf for another attempt to “Defund the Police,” is a nonstarter. 

Reject Mamdani’s green initiatives. Congestion pricing is a tax and not a panacea for cleaner air or crowded streets.

Stop taxing working-class New Yorkers while pushing us towards less safe, less clean, less reliable subways. 

Likewise, Mamdani’s education plan needs to be checked.

His transition team is rife with warmed-over Bill de Blasio educrats who want equity over excellence and progressive lip service over meaningful results.

As a mom of a New York City public-school graduate and three current students, I’ve seen firsthand how the push to eliminate and water down gifted programs, end specialized-high-school entrance exams and oppose any meritocratic program degrades our schools and harms bright students from all backgrounds, especially those from low-income families who rely on merit to climb the ladder.

Instead, champion policies that reward hard work and excellence and reject the equity-at-all-costs mantra.

You are also not a moderate if you bow down to the gender cult.

You co-signed a scathing May 20, 2024, letter with some of the city’s most radical politicians accusing me and other public-school parents of being “hateful and discriminatory” merely for asking the public-school system to review the 2019 gender guidelines that allow boys to participate in girls’ sports and enter girls’ locker rooms and bathrooms.

We asked elected leaders to listen to “female student athletes” while reviewing policy that directly affects them.

That is neither hateful nor discriminatory, but ignoring and silencing girls is.

Finally, you must stand firm against Hamas sympathizers who’ve infiltrated progressive politics and whose Jew hatred Mamdani is normalizing and platforming before he even takes office. 

Park East Jews could not get into their synagogue because they are Jews.

Your bland statement saying “congregants” need access to their “house of worship,” noting, “Protests must have reasonable time, place, and manner restrictions,” followed the Mamdani playbook of never saying “Jew” or “antisemitism.”

That’s inexcusable. 

Most recently you’ve been silent about a Holocaust survivor who was told he wasn’t welcome to speak to Brooklyn middle schoolers because of his supposed “views” on Palestine.

You need to make it clear all students everywhere would benefit from hearing from a Holocaust survivor in 2025.

Your silence helps those who want to silence Jewish perspectives and rewrite history.

Your speakership is an opportunity to steer the council and the city toward a more sensible path.

But moderation isn’t a label; nor is it a relative term.

It’s a commitment to policies that work for the majority, not the extremes.

I urge you to rise to the occasion. The city is watching.

Sincerely,

Maud Maron