Copyright dailymail
There really is something worse in Donald Trump's book than a Democrat - and one of them is about to run his hometown. 'It's really a question of whether I'd rather have a Democrat or a communist, and I would rather have a Democrat,' the president said from the White House on Tuesday. 'I looked at the polls and looks like we're going to have a communist as the mayor of New York... I just can't believe this is happening' he concluded, sounding like he'd just heard that Godzilla was wading up the East River. That, at least, was the president's gloomy prediction when he was asked about the political prospects of Zohran Mamdani, the Democratic nominee in the New York City mayoral race. 'It'll be very interesting,' Trump went on. 'But here's the good news: he's got to go through the White House, everything goes through the White House. At least this White House, it does.' As New Yorkers watch the final mayoral debate on Wednesday - in which Mamdani takes on former New York Governor and Independent candidate Andrew Cuomo, and Republican nominee Curtis Sliwa - it's not hard to see why Trump might view the prospect of Mamdani taking over the city with some despondency. An obscure member of the New York state assembly for four years before he ran for mayor, Mamdani - a 34-year-old darling of the Left - has had a double-digit lead in the polls over second-placed Cuomo for months. Of Muslim Indian extraction but born in Uganda (he could never run for president), Mamdani moved to New York with his parents when he was seven after his father became a professor at Columbia University. When his ambitions turned to politics and running for mayor, he proved an adept user of social media. His campaign benefited considerably from his talent for making clever, humorous videos, earning him the title of 'a TikTok savant.' Support from celebrity fans such as supermodel Emily Ratajkowski and Sex And The City actress Cynthia Nixon also helped. The model proved particularly useful when she and other young women put on 'Hot Girls For Zohran' t-shirts to keep the pro-Mamdani excitement at fever pitch online. And it really was fever pitch. Handsome and charming, Mamdani has been compared to Barack Obama. His pin-up reputation was only slightly marred by the knowledge that he was already spoken for - he's married to Syrian artist Rama Duwaji who he met on dating app Hinge. He sounds perfect, right, for a party desperate to bask once more in those sun-drenched Obama glory days? Well, not exactly. Although some have reluctantly endorsed him at the eleventh hour, his victory in this year's mayoral primary went down like a lead balloon with senior Democrats and their top allies - including Senate minority leader Chuck Schumer, New York Governor Kathy Hochul (who eventually came to endorse him) and the New York Times. Many ordinary Democrats - generally of the older, wealthier variety and many Jewish New Yorkers - were similarly downhearted. For that there is a string of reasons of which the most indisputable is that, having never run any large organization, he has virtually no relevant experience. And then there are his policies to tackle what he has identified as the biggest issue - affordability. His long list of promises (many of which would need Gov Hochul's approval) includes free buses, freezing stabilized rents (covering two million people), free college tuition, universal free child care and a $60 million scheme to set up government-run grocery stores that he says will be exempt from paying rent or property taxes and so lower food costs. Mamdani - who describes himself as a 'democratic socialist' - called for a subsidized housing building program that alone would cost $100 billion over 10 years. Crime has long worried many New Yorkers and a good many were even more worried after hearing Mamdani's ideas. Even the ultra-liberal New York Times this summer accused him of showing 'little concern about the disorder of the past decade, even though its costs have fallen hardest on the city's working-class and poor residents.' Regarding undocumented migrants, of which New York City has an estimated 550,000, Mamdani has said federal ICE agents 'have no interest in following the laws of this city and have solely an interest in cruelty.' And he's suggested legalizing prostitution. Having previously endorsed plans to 'defund the police' amid the Black Lives Matter protests, Mamdani (who has called violence an 'artificial construction' and implied opponents of cannabis legalization are racist) proposes a civilian-led Department of Community Safety that would send mental health teams out to respond to 911 calls. He claims this would free up police to handle other situations. Critics say these mental health teams would be prohibitively costly - along with so much else he has promised. It's undeniable that New York has become ferociously expensive for people on low or average incomes but, given Mamdani has pledged so much spending, the question has to be asked how he'll pay for it. Higher taxes on both businesses and wealthier New Yorkers, replies Mamdani to the delight of progressives. Although he'll need the support of state politicians, he has said he plans to 'shift the tax burden' to 'richer, whiter neighborhoods' - a particularly, poorly-chosen remark that saw him accused of racism. Contrary to Trump's assertions, Mamdani insists he's not a communist, but previous remarks suggest otherwise: a video of him at a 2021 leftwing political conference showed him talking enthusiastically about 'seizing the means of production' - a favorite phrase of Karl Marx. And like Marx, Mamdani has also described capitalism as 'theft'. He insists he's changed but, chorus critics, judge the politician by what he says when he's not [itals] running for office rather than when he is. Of course, younger, more cash-strapped New Yorkers applaud his promises to supply so many things for free. Who wouldn't, they ask. But others - especially those who can remember when New York almost went bankrupt in the 1970s - say Mamdani's plans could bring the city to its knees. Of all the arguments that have been made against Mamdani, the most contentious is that his mayorality would leave New York's more than one million Jews fearing for their safety. The man who may become New York's first Muslim mayor insists he's not antisemitic but, after years of obsessive and strident activism, can hardly deny he isn't anti-Israel. As a student, he broke with a college campaign group because it supported Israel as a 'democratic homeland for the Jewish people.' In 2017, he wrote a rap song, called Salaam, in which he sent his 'love' to a group convicted of funneling money to Hamas. Mamdani has also questioned Israel's existence as a Jewish state and, controversially, has repeatedly refused to condemn the phrase 'globalize the intifada' which many Jews believe is an incitement to antisemitic violence. Then earlier this month, two retired FBI agents who investigated the 1993 World Trade Center terror bombing branded Mamdani as 'foolish' for campaigning with an imam linked to the attack's mastermind. He posed in a photo in Brooklyn with Siraj Wahhaj, who served as a character witness for the mastermind of the bombing and has been a longtime defender of convicted terrorists, helping to raise money for their legal costs. Wahhaj has also been a fierce opponent of homosexuality and Mamdani had a few months earlier posed for another photo with a Ugandan official who has supported criminalizing homosexuality. So much for Mamdani's professed solidarity with the LGBT community, snorted opponents. Some who have been most pessimistic about what Mamdani and his ultra-progressive policies mean for New York have pointed to London under its mayor, Labour's Sir Sadiq Khan, as a warning. Khan, like Mamdani a charismatic self-promoter and wily political operator, was one of several left-wing mayors that the New Yorker contacted for advice after winning the primary earlier this year. Although Khan is significantly more centrist politically than Mamdani, he has similarly been accused of being worryingly soft on crime leading to a rise in knife attacks and a recent explosion in cell phone thefts. Conservative MPs have accused his party of cherry-picking statistics to make it look like London was getting safer. Only this week, Khan was accused by child safety campaigners and politicians of helping to cover up sexual abuse of young girls by London grooming gangs. He denied the claim. And again, like Mamdani, Khan has been accused of being anti-Jewish. Earlier this month, he sparked controversy for suggesting that the controversial chant 'from the river to the sea' at pro-Palestinian marches wasn't inherently antisemitic although critics say it calls for the destruction of the Jewish state. And similarly, Khan has attracted Trump's ire. The President has called the London mayor 'terrible' and a 'stone-cold loser'. He's also previously described Mamdani as a 'total nut job' and '100 percent communist lunatic'. It doesn't bode well, then, for relations between NYC and Washington DC if Mamdani wins the mayoral election on November 4. New York Governor Kathy Hochul, a moderate Democrat, has managed to maintain a fragile working relationship with Trump which some fear will be shredded if Mamdani becomes NYC mayor and she is forced to pick sides. Trump, meanwhile, has made it clear that he and the 'communist' will have to deal with each other on his terms. For a thrusting young idealist catapulted to power in what would be a historic victory, that is surely too much to expect.
