Copyright smh
“Mamdani is not the right mayor because he is a socialist with no experience running anything,” Ackman said on X. “Rent freezes won’t reduce the cost of living for all but a select few New Yorkers and only temporarily. City-run supermarkets will have empty shelves. Free buses will become homeless shelters. And his anti-business policies, including higher corporate taxes, will kill NYC jobs and cause companies to flee.” But it’s not just the top end of town. Indeed, Mamdani has struggled in the Bronx, New York’s poorest borough. In the primary, Cuomo smashed Mamdani by 18 points in the Bronx (the same margin by which Mamdani beat Cuomo in Brooklyn). On a rainy weekday morning, I meet educational consultant Selma Bartholomew at a Panera Bread bakery in a sprawling JCPenney outdoor shopping mall in Co-op City. Far from the glamour of Manhattan, this co-operative housing development at the north-east end of the Bronx was completed in the 1970s, and it feels like little has changed since. Bartholomew was on the ballot for the Democratic primary but received only a handful of votes. She is critical of Mamdani for what she sees as his populist giveaways rather than a serious attempt to solve the problems facing New York’s most disadvantaged. “Nothing is free. People pay taxes,” she says. “He’s using the rhetoric of affordability. He figured out that in this system, if you tell the biggest lies, you get the attention of the media.” When Bartholomew looks at Mamdani, she sees not an authentic grassroots candidate rising from the suburbs, but the son of a wealthy Ugandan family who is just as much a part of the Democratic “boys’ club” as anyone else (New York has had 110 mayors since 1665; none have been women). That boys’ club attitude is partly why Cait Camelia and Kaif Kabir founded Hot Girls 4 Zohran, the campaign group that held the Halloween party in Bushwick. The group holds frequent events – make-your-own-merch sessions, debate watch parties, a Mamdani lookalike competition, queer networking socials – in addition to hitting the streets to canvass for votes. Such is the pulse of this election that many campaign groups such as this have sprung up. Venture capitalist Erica Wenger said 500 people showed up to an event last week for Cool Girls For Capitalism, a group she started with business owner Danielle Goldman to support Cuomo. “I don’t support antisemitism or socialism, so that makes my vote easy,” Wenger says. Mamdani’s all-but-guaranteed victory means New Yorkers are set to put their city government on a collision course with Washington – as well as potentially the state administration in Albany. Hochul, the Democratic governor, has endorsed Mamdani but opposes tax increases on the top 1.5 per cent, fearing that an exodus of the city’s wealthiest would force her to raise taxes on the middle class to fill a budget black hole. Meanwhile, Trump could select New York as the next site for his crackdown on undocumented migrants and crime, and make good on his threats to withhold federal funding. Ross Barkan, an author, journalist and Mamdani associate (Mamdani managed his state Senate campaign in 2018), says New York voters won’t be afraid to make enemies with the powers-that-be elsewhere. “This is, in every sense, a change election, and New Yorkers are largely excited to see what comes next,” he recently wrote on his blog, Political Currents. “We need fresh energy in this town.” Get a note directly from our foreign correspondents on what’s making headlines around the world. Sign up for our weekly What in the World newsletter.
