Pals of mine, outstanding gamers within the New York Metropolis enterprise neighborhood, inform me they’re horrified {that a} licensed socialist, Zohran Mamdani, would possibly develop into our subsequent mayor.
Their subsequent step is Florida, or someplace, wherever out of his grasp if Mamdani does develop into mayor because the polls recommend may occur — even with the extra reasonable, albeit flawed, Andrew Cuomo, the previous governor, seemingly within the lead for the Democratic nomination. On this one-party city, that normally means a ticket into Gracie Mansion.
“We need Cuomo to win or we’re doomed,” is how one brand-named, uber-rich New Yorker put it over dinner the opposite evening at Elio’s, the Higher East Facet restaurant frequented by New York’s high enterprise leaders.
Sure, “Mayor Mamdani” is a scary thought. He sees anybody with a heartbeat and a job as a part of the issue, an oppressor class that must be exploited to pay for an ever bigger welfare state.
His positions on Israel are so noxious, they don’t bear repeating.
However his kind has been right here earlier than — and for a very long time, which is why crying over Mamdani is, as they are saying, a bit wealthy when it comes from the wealthy.
New York Metropolis and state have been experiencing large outmigrations of individuals and enterprise for years as a result of the Massive Apple and the Empire State have been run largely by the unconventional left for the higher a part of twenty years.
Our tax base is being decimated by crime and the price of dwelling. Banks are shifting extra of their operations to lower-taxed Texas and Florida. Actual property is sinking.
All of this has picked up steam lately, nevertheless it’s hardly a brand new phenomenon and you’ll blame the now-sweating fat-cat class for permitting it to occur. Their cash may have knowledgeable the general public of town and state’s loss of life spiral and backed wise mayoral candidates, individuals like John Catsimatidis, an entrepreneur and true New Yorker.
The present Republican candidate and Guardian Angels founder Curtis Sliwa is sensible sufficient to nominate individuals who efficiently ran town underneath Rudy Giuliani and Mike Bloomberg. Sliwa additionally ran 4 years in the past, and would have been a much better selection than the ethically challenged Eric Adams.
Talking up too late
As an alternative, town’s enterprise class sat idly by. They acquiesced as a defund-the-police prosecutor, the hapless Alvin Bragg, grew to become Manhattan DA. Solely after a violent-crime spree towards their very own workers perpetrated by criminals allowed to roam the streets due to Bragg’s insurance policies did they are saying a phrase.
The place have been they throughout Comrade Invoice de Blasio’s reign of terror and error? Recall in 2021, Adams ran as mayor promising to handle the crime wave and with enterprise assist. However solely after crime protection by this newspaper did he step up policing by appointing the extremely competent Jessica Tisch as police commissioner.
Likewise, the place’s the outrage over the emergence of Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, the fatuous Bronx and Queens congresswoman?
She comes from related lineage as Mamdani — leftist training, devoid of personal sector expertise, dimwitted when answering powerful coverage questions, although good at social media — the principle {qualifications} for the management in New York’s Democratic Get together, and more and more the nationwide occasion as nicely.
Which brings us to the enterprise neighborhood’s most well-liked selection, Cuomo. They see him as a sensible, moderating affect on the left. Most are unimpressed by the explanations he was pressured out as governor, as they need to be. The sexual-impropriety case mounted by state AG Tish James was at greatest a political hit job from somebody who needed his job and looked for stuff that couldn’t stand authorized scrutiny.
You possibly can criticize him for locking down town throughout COVID, however these have been perilous instances, and confusion from DC on easy methods to react didn’t assist. Depend me as extremely skeptical that he was solely answerable for these nursing house deaths since hospitals have been calling on the state to return the aged as soon as they appeared to clear the virus to make room for others because the pandemic unfold.
My drawback with Cuomo is doubts over whether or not he’ll stand as much as the progressives who’re destroying New York Metropolis and the state basically.
His instincts are reasonable — perhaps even a bit conservative given the leftism that permeates the Democratic Get together. I’ve sat down with him, and he talks a great sport about preserving the enterprise class within the metropolis, how they produce jobs and can produce them elsewhere if he taxes them out of the state.
He understands the necessity for public security, how the economic system is inextricably tied to individuals feeling secure, which makes him an anomaly in New York’s Dem Get together. Housing values improve while you’re not anxious about them getting robbed. If individuals can’t take the subway to work, they will now work at home, depriving small companies of that finish of the wealth impact.
And but, in his later years as governor, he gave in far an excessive amount of to the lefty loons. New York state must be a fracking capital given shale provides upstate. Cuomo blocked that. His bail reform regulation has been a catastrophe. Taxes have been too excessive when he was governor, as they’re now. He made the incompetent Kathy Hochul his No. 2 and now we’re caught together with her working the state in his absence.
That stated, Cuomo’s first time period was decidedly centrist on taxes and much more. His dad, Mario Cuomo, a three-term governor, was among the many best politicians of our time, so Andrew discovered from one of the best.
Will Cuomo 2.0 beat again the misguided assist for Mamdani? The enterprise class — and the way forward for this nice metropolis — are relying on it.
