Mamdani being elected NYC mayor could risk the city of Gotham returning to dark times

As a young reporter at The New York Times, I had the good fortune of working with an experienced political editor named Sheldon Binn. 

A wounded veteran of World War II, he explained the simple yardstick he used to judge politicians.

“The only thing I ask is that they don’t make things worse,” I recall him saying.

“That’s the best you can hope for.” 

As a wide-eyed idealist, I found his standard shockingly low and cynical.

But these days, Binn’s rule makes more sense to me than ever. 

Exhibit A is the New York mayoral race, where the Democrats’ nominee, Zohran Mamdani, is pushing a sweepingly radical agenda. 

If voters are foolish enough to elect him Tuesday, his tenure wouldn’t just make things slightly worse.

His policies would inflict major damage in myriad ways, from declining public safety to out-of-control spending. 

Schools would be further dumbed down and his pledge to hike taxes would drive away businesses, families and jobs.

His antisemitic attacks on Israel make him unfit to lead the Jewish capital of America.

Mamdani also vows to close Rikers Island, with no place to put the 7,000 inmates. 

The result would be a rapid decline in the quality of life for the city’s remaining residents, workers and visitors. 

And not just for a short time.

Gotham’s history is chock full of lessons on how the actions of a mayor, good or bad, can have an outsized impact for years and even decades beyond his tenure. 

In addition to actual policies, a mayor helps shape the broader civic culture, including the role of nonprofits and private philanthropy. 

In Mamdani’s case, a long, sour decline is guaranteed because his promise of free this and free that, combined with an expansion of government control over private housing and some supermarkets, would require punishingly higher taxes. 

His agenda is a carbon copy of failed socialist governments around the world and throughout history.

Cuba and Venezuela are two clear and close examples: Huge portions of their populations have fled to other countries, and they didn’t run to nearby socialist outposts. 

They voted with their feet by aiming for New York and other cities in America.

If socialism is good and capitalism is evil, why is it that nobody, including Trump-hating celebrities, quits America to live in Cuba or Venezuela? 

That dynamic gets to the heart of why I am voting for former Gov. Andrew Cuomo and why it is essential that Mamdani and his snake oil never sets foot in City Hall. 

Cuomo is far from perfect, but under the Binn test, the fact that he would do less harm makes him the right choice.

The damage the untested 34-year-old Mamdani would do would not be easily corrected, even if he were booted after a single term. 

Failed experiment 

Four years is enough time to dig New York into a hole that it might not escape for years. 

History shows the pattern.

Consider the relevance of events 50 years ago this week, when a famous headline summed up Gotham’s fiscal nightmare.

“Ford to City, Drop Dead,” shouted the Daily News after President Ford vowed to veto any federal effort to bail out the city from its financial mess. 

For years, New York had lived well beyond its means.

So much so that banks took the drastic step of cutting off their lines of credit. 

The mountain of debts wasn’t built overnight.

The eight-year tenure of Republican Mayor John Lindsay that started in 1966 featured a nonstop spend-a-thon and a breakdown of law-and-order.

The number of murders exploded, with the total in his final year three times higher than in his first year. 

The city comptroller at the time, Democrat Abe Beame, never blew the whistle on the chaos, but the Dem machine still got him elected mayor in ’73. 

His move to City Hall sped up deficit spending, and it was fitting that the banks stopped the grift on his watch.

It is also understandable that Ford was reluctant to help unless the city started to clean up its own act. 

Beame lost his bid for re-election in part because the budget cuts needed to balance the books fell heavily on the NYPD.

The city became a filthy crime capital and the quality of life went to hell. 

Over a few years, nearly 1 million people fled, most to the suburbs or Florida. 

Ed Koch was the next mayor up, and his bold plans to reduce spending while also shoring up public safety were just what the doctor ordered. Koch’s popularity soared, and as Sen. Daniel Patrick Moynihan told me several years later, Koch’s great triumph was that he showed New Yorkers, Washington and the banks that finally, “somebody is in charge.” 

Although the city had a new bounce in its step, the problems didn’t melt away and crime continued to grow as the outgunned NYPD couldn’t keep up. 

It wasn’t until 1990, when Koch’s beleaguered successor, David Dinkins, worked with Council Speaker Peter Vallone to develop a plan that called for hiring 10,000 more cops.

But with a slow roll-out, murders hit an all time high, with about 2,000 a year recorded during Dinkins’ term. 

Golden Age of NYC 

It was only after Rudy Giuliani became mayor in 1994 that the police force was fully funded and smartly used.

Giuliani and his team, including top cop Bill Bratton, used the new officers in targeted enforcement campaigns under the revolutionary “broken windows” theory of policing. 

The results came fast and were dramatic.

Within four years, the number of murders fell by 60%, with huge declines in other crimes, too. 

The pattern continued through Giuliani’s second term and all through Mike Bloomberg’s subsequent three terms as Bloomberg and his top cop, Ray Kelly, kept the same policies and extended and improved them. 

The result was a 20-year Golden Age of public safety and economic expansion that transformed New York into the safest big city in America and the world capital of capital. 

Jobs and population booms followed, with the city gaining even more people than it had lost. 

As I wrote at the time, an elderly friend who had spent his entire life in New York said he had never seen it shine as it did at the end of Bloomberg’s tenure. 

Unfortunately, he was followed by Bill de Blasio, the worst mayor since Beame.

Anti-cop to the core and a lazy, anti-business leftist, Mayor Putz left with crime on the rise and the quality of life in decline. 

It is telling — and scary — that Mamdani calls him his favorite mayor.

As if to underscore the idiocy, he pledges to shrink the NYPD. 

Reports that de Blasio is advising Mamdani and that there is overlap in their inner circles completes the horror scenario. 

Polls showing Mamdani leading the race recall a definition of insanity: “Doing the same thing over and over again and expecting a different outcome.” 

Don’t do it, New York.