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Mayor Adams Drops Out: What Comes Next?
00:50:02
What does Eric Adams’s exit from the 2025 mayoral race mean for New York City’s political future? Rob Henderson, Nicole Gelinas, John Ketcham, and Rafael Mangual assess how the sitting mayor's withdrawal reshapes the race for City Hall and analyze...
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- [00:09]
A
Okay. Welcome to another episode of the City Journal podcast. My name is Rafael Mangual, and I'll be your host for the day. And I am joined by my brilliant colleagues, John Ketchum, Rob Henderson, and Nicole Jelinas. It is Monday morning in New York City, which means that we have a little bit of breaking news from over the weekend, which is that Mayor Eric Adams has officially announced his suspension of his mayoral campaign, leaving Zohra Mamdani, Andrew Cuomo, Curtis Lewa, sort of the main players left in the field. I'd like to just start with what you all make of that. I mean, this is a. This is a pretty big deal, Nicole.
- [00:47]
B
Yeah, it's a big deal. It's been a long time coming. Adams is pulling in the single digits actually behind their Republican candidate, Curtis Leroy, which is a pretty big deal in such a heavily five, six to one Democratic city. And, you know, this is. Adams has always been a weird person, but his principles, not necessarily his personal principles, I'm sure we'll get into some of the corruption issues, but his public political principles that he ran and won on four years ago. Reducing crime after the big crime spike that we saw in 2020 and 2021, reducing public disorder and pushing for personal and family responsibility. You know, he spent much of his dropping out speech thanking his mother for instilling values of personal responsibility. These are values that broadly the public holds. There's a reason that Adams won four years ago. It's just that he could never get out of his own way of very bad personal habits that he developed in a long time in Brooklyn politics. And he could never execute these ideas. So he's actually not that far away from what the public has long wanted. And the real question is him having failed to deliver that, did he leave a vacuum for something that comes next? And we don't quite know what that is yet.
- [02:13]
A
Yeah, John, I mean, I want to get your sort of take on this as well, because you're kind of a New York City politics expert. I mean, I think the main question that everyone's kind of grappling with right now is does this make a difference? I think Zoram Hamdani came out yesterday and said very forcefully condemning Mayor Adams decision to drop out, couching it as some kind of coordinated effort against him, which he might be right about. But is he, though? I mean, that presupposes that this is going to cause some major shift in the ultimate electoral outcome.
- [02:52]
C
What do you think? This is the most significant development since the late June primary. But it's been remarkably quiet since then.
- [02:59]
D
Right.
- [03:00]
C
If you had asked me back in late June, right after the primary, how would the environment be, I would have thought that people would have gotten their act together in opposing Mamdani. And there might be lots of moderates and institutional types with their hair on fire saying, we've got to stop this and we have to consolidate the opposition. Adams is doing that as the first step towards that. But it's coming at a very late hour. We are less than a month away from early voting begins on October 25th. Adams is still on the ballot. He's got to inform his supporters that he will no longer be an active participant in this election. Not a viable candidate, but some voters, some small share voters will continue to support him on the ballot. And then the question is, well, how much of a bump will Cuomo get?
- [03:54]
D
Right. Right.
- [03:54]
C
Cuomo is probably going to be the primary beneficiary of this because he and Mayor Adams share, broadly speaking, similar moderate politics and policy, and they share a common base of black and Hispanic voters.
- [04:10]
D
Right.
- [04:10]
C
But even If Cuomo gets 10% of more support, as Nicole said, Adams was polling in the high single digits. So let's be generous and say Cuomo gets a 10% bump, he's still going to be about 10% away from catching Mamdani.
- [04:28]
A
10 percentage points, you mean?
- [04:29]
C
Still 10 percentage points from catching Mamdani? Because right now Mandani is polling at about 45% and Cuomo at about 25%. So even with a 10% bump, Cuomo needs another 10%. And where is that going to come from? Well, if you peel away half of Sliwa's supporters, you'll probably get within striking distance. That's a big ask because many, many of Sliwa's supporters are committed to him personally.
- [04:54]
A
And Sliwa seems pretty committed to staying in the race. Right. I mean, he hasn't really shown any indication that he plans on getting out, which kind of undermines the whole idea that this is sort of a coordinated consolidation effort, because coordination requires coordination. There may not actually be any.
- [05:12]
C
Interesting that Mamdani has praised Sliwa for his position of not getting out.
- [05:17]
A
Right, right.
- [05:19]
C
You know, among Adams, Cuomo and Sliwa, I would trust Sliwa.
- [05:24]
D
Right.
- [05:25]
A
So, yeah, he does play that game pretty well. I. I wonder what your your read on that is, Grav. It seems like he. He kind of understands what buttons to press and how to press them and when.
- [05:35]
E
Yeah, it seems like the ride next move on the chessboard because it's the least likely to affect his own political numbers and his own supporters are probably aware of what he's doing. You know, he wouldn't praise a Republican in other contexts, but in this way it would make sense for him to do so because that is not his main rival. Interesting thing I wonder is, you know those numbers 45% for mom. Donnie, I Historically young people don't tend to turn out in high numbers for voting and his base is relatively young. So I wonder if that's kind of inflating his perceived or apparent support that a lot of those young people who are wearing the political attire and supporting.
- [06:20]
D
Him.
- [06:22]
E
I mean, actually going to show up and vote for him on election day. Yeah, it'll be interesting to see. Whereas the voters for the supporters of Cuomo tend to be older and probably will shift vote. So some areas of uncertainty we had.
- [06:39]
C
Turnout in the primary, just for context, went from 26.5% in 21 to about 32%. But the denominator did shrink a little bit because we did have some Democratic out migration between 21 and 25 who.
- [06:53]
B
Were probably not Mandani moderate. I did want to ask you, John, can Cuomo increase his turnout the way that Mandani did? Like Henry Olson wrote in the post this morning, focusing on older voters who don't vote but may be concerned about Mandani, Is that a viable strategy?
- [07:16]
C
I think so. He needs a two prong strategy. One to go into Cuomo friendly neighborhoods, Orthodox Jewish communities, heavily black communities, low income neighborhoods, the Upper east side and just barnstored. And I suspect that he would be able to pick up a decent share of the incremental vote in those areas. And the other thing he has to do is really focus on taking Mandani's numbers down a few number a few points. He's clearly out of step with a broad swath of New York's voting sensibilities. And Cuomo has I think, missed the mark on certain attack strategies.
- [08:04]
D
Right.
- [08:05]
C
The fact that Mamdani lives in a ren stabilized apartment and makes a decent salary as an assemblyman, you know, it didn't really land that strong, you know.
- [08:15]
A
I think because a lot of New Yorkers are probably a lot better than higher salary.
- [08:19]
D
Right.
- [08:19]
C
And so something has to be a little bit more pointed and direct. And it's hard because Mamdani is a likable, charismatic personality.
- [08:29]
D
Right.
- [08:30]
C
And Cuomo has his baggage, he has his history. He's not quite as liked. You know, that might be an understatement.
- [08:37]
D
Yeah.
- [08:38]
C
And so but I do Think that it's possible for him to pick up some additional votes through a robust get out the vote drive between now and when early voting starts.
- [08:51]
A
Simon, when you're thinking about though, you know, get out the vote drive, right, you got to motivate people. I think the question is, is what's motivating people, you know, to get involved in the race who aren't already sort of bought into one candidate or the other. So I thought maybe we could just go around and just highlight the one, two, maybe even three issues that you think are really kind of the key drivers of decision making within the framework of this campaign. Nicole, I'll start with you.
- [09:16]
B
Cuomo really needs to square his support as governor for the moves toward criminal justice leniency that have made it difficult for Adams to keep or push crime down in New York City. You know, the bail reform to raise the age. We had the 13 year old boy shot and killed last week by allegedly by a 16 year old underage suspect. We had three violent attacks on subways in the past two weeks, all by people recently released on violent crime charges on bail and discovery reform. He just sort of wants to glide away from these things. But the problem is people who are worried about crime and who pay attention to these things, they are going, some of them are going to vote for Sleeva. He can't get away forever with just sort of trying to pretend that these things didn't cause problems. It would be okay for him to say he made a mistake or he thought it did. His vetoing these legislative bills from 2017 to 2019 wouldn't make any difference. They would have passed anyway. Made them a little less worse than they would have been, you know, whatever his argument would be. But just pretending that they didn't exist just seems increasingly untenable.
- [10:38]
C
Well, that's significant because if Cuomo wants to win, he needs to woo over slew of voters and conservatives in places like Staten Island, Right. If he doesn't offer conservatives something constructive on criminal justice rollbacks, I don't think he's going to get many over to his camp. They're already disinclined. So in my mind, a dangerous standard is something that is a reasonable measure. Every other state has it.
- [11:08]
A
And for those of you listening don't know what this is, right. New York State is the only state in the union that disallows judges from considering the dangerousness of a given defendant to the public when making a release decision. I mean, this is really and truly, I mean, puts New York state on an island by itself. I mean, in most parts of the country, in at least some criminal cases, judges can say, hey, we are extremely confident that you are going to go ahead and re offend, so we're going to remand you to pretrial detention while your case runs its course to the system. In New York State, judges are legally prohibited from actually considering that they've been legally prohibited from considering that for a long time. But pre reform, our bail laws were such that you could kind of work around that really easy way. The 2020 reform basically maintained that prohibition while making the rest of the legal environment significantly stricter so that judges couldn't and run that prohibition. So yeah, I mean, I agree with you, John. I think that kind of focusing on that is important. And Nicole, I mean, you mentioned just right off the top of your head, a handful of stories. Another one that came to mind was the decision by the Manhattan DA's office not to to follow through on the prosecution of an assault against a pro life journalist who was doing on the street interviews and was punched in the face and beaten and cut open on camera. And yet the case was dropped. And when I think about just sort of my perspective on this, I don't see Cuomo or even Sleetwood for that matter, really kind of jumping on these incidents and publicizing them and sort of making the case that, hey, these are the issues that we're going to kind of get behind. And Rob, you're going to get new to New York City, right? I mean, so as a new city resident, I mean, what are, what are the issues that you're thinking about? What are, you know, what's your experience like in, in your first few months here?
- [13:05]
E
Yeah, public safety issue is prominent. You know, I've visited New York on and off for the last, I guess, kind of nine or ten years. Lived here for almost a year now. And seeing that there has been a market change, especially sort of pre and post Covid, pre and post blm and all of the political upheavals. And it does seem like there's, especially after dark, this kind of sense of potential violence, danger in the air. People are very careful with, you know, when they walk through the cities and through the subways and so on. And yeah, in many ways it's surprising. You know, the poll numbers don't seem to reflect, you know, what we're seeing in the sense of hostility and, you know, unwillingness to hold criminals to account. And yeah, this is, it's just shocking to me that, you know, people are willing to support someone seems relatively unconcerned with that particular issue. And then more broadly, the very people who are turning out in support of Mom Donnie, they themselves are relatively well off, unbothered by this. And they, you know, seem to hold two ideas in mind. Where whenever you bring up the issue of crime and public disorder, they will deny that it's happening. But then when there are actual undeniable incidents of it reported in the media, they'll downplay it or say that these are one off issues or that, you know, the real issue here is the presence of police that cause these issues rather than the absence of them.
- [14:46]
D
Right.
- [14:46]
C
But it also is critical that Cuomo develop a message around affordability that can go toe to toe with Mamdani. That's lacking. And Mamdani's strength is that he can condense his policy proposals in very short form. Freeze the rent. Everybody knows it, everybody remembers it. Free buses.
- [15:04]
D
Right.
- [15:06]
C
There are some things that Cuomo might be able to propose that counteract that. When I was growing up, there were sales tax holidays. Whatever happened to those?
- [15:15]
D
Right.
- [15:15]
C
Like we can both.
- [15:17]
D
Right. Yeah.
- [15:17]
A
They would bring all our school clothes. Absolutely.
- [15:20]
C
And tourism can benefit from that as well. So there are short term avenues to increase affordability. Things like the water bill fund. Donnie's talk something about this, but homeowners have been really hurt by increased rates for water and sewer bills.
- [15:39]
D
Right.
- [15:39]
C
Maybe some relief on that front could juice Cuomo's numbers a bit.
- [15:44]
D
Right.
- [15:46]
C
Even if we say, look, the city budget is, you know, set at a certain amount every year if we get more revenues than expected. So if the city grows more than expected, we'll give the surplus to parks. Everybody likes parks. The department is very small relative to the city budget. It'll be a tangible benefit for all New Yorkers. They'll see parks improvements with any additional monies that come in with the city.
- [16:16]
D
Right.
- [16:16]
C
Something like that. So just to incentivize people, you know, backing growth rather than backing price controls that will hamper growth.
- [16:27]
D
Right.
- [16:28]
C
We want this virtuous cycle.
- [16:30]
A
Yeah. I mean, but that raises an interesting question, too, which is like, you know, is anyone going to play the role of the adult in the room?
- [16:37]
D
Right.
- [16:37]
A
When they hear about these affordability proposals? What I hear is like pie in the sky. I mean, channeling Hayek here, it's like, what makes you think that you're going to be able to sort of pull the strings on one of the most complex municipal economies in the world to say that, you know, this policy lever is going to guaranteed lead to this result with no possible downside. There doesn't seem to be an adult in the room on these issues.
- [17:02]
B
The people concerned about the city budget and Mandani's proposal to increase state taxes on the city by $9 billion a year, the hope is that the governor and the legislature will rein him in. That he needs. He needs Albany. Yeah, exactly. He needs Albanese permission to raise these two taxes. The income taxes on city on wealthier earners and the business tax on New York City. But like you said, Hochul just endorsed him. She was very vague about what, which parts of his program she was endorsing. She has said before she doesn't want to raise taxes, but she also herself just raised taxes on downstate businesses earlier this year. So it's. That's not very much to hinge your hopes on that they will all suddenly be more afraid of the center right next year than they will be afraid of the left. Considering that if he does win, she's up for her own reelection next year, she will be concerned about facing a primary challenge from the left. Now, none has materialized yet, but it's still early. Mamdani victory could make more people think, hey, I can jump in here and I can be the governor. With high turnout in New York City.
- [18:31]
C
And Hochul has repeatedly promised not to raise taxes. Now she's done so in a veiled way with a payroll mobility tax, which nobody sees on their payroll.
- [18:41]
D
Right.
- [18:42]
A
But let's explain how this is a pay.
- [18:45]
C
This is a tax on downstate payrolls that employers pay to support the mta.
- [18:51]
A
Got it.
- [18:52]
C
It's a big generator of revenue. It's something like one and a half billion dollars or so a year. So if you think congestion pricing is a lot of money, that's slated to come in at around $600 million or so this year with the lower amount that was instituted in January relative to what was projected last year. But, you know, $1.5 billion on jobs in the downstate region. If you add up the taxes that New York City corporations pay to the state and the city, the top rate is about 17.4%. Mamdani is proposing to increase the state tax so that it goes from seven and a quarter percent to eleven and a half percent to supposedly match New Jersey. But that ignores the fact that we have this local tax. That brings us up to about 17.4%.
- [19:47]
D
Yeah.
- [19:48]
C
So if we really wanted to match New Jersey, we should be cutting taxes by about 6%. But Mandani's proposals, if enacted in their totality would raise corporate taxes to about 22%.
- [19:58]
D
Yeah.
- [19:59]
A
There's someone whose future in the city was, I think, drastically affected by Adams's announcement over the weekend, and we haven't spoken about it yet, and that's Police Commissioner Jessica Tisch, who was appointed by Mayor Adams, has been very loyal to him. They seem to have a really good working relationship. Her future, and by extension, the future of the NYPD now is in jeopardy. Right. I mean, you know, so. So one question I just wanted to put to you all is, I mean, what do you. I personally think she's done a great job. What do you make of the job that she's done? And, I mean, is this the end of her. Her reign at the. At the head of the NYPD if. If either Cuomo or Mamdani win this race.
- [20:42]
B
Yeah. I mean, if. If Mamdani is. If he wins and if he is acting out of rational self interest, which is sometimes asking a lot of people. I mean, we're losing a mayor because he did not act out of rational self interest. Mamdani would think about keeping Commissioner Tish because she could serve as an effective shield against what? For him to kind of stick up to his own side, in a way. I mean, he. She provides him with somewhat of a fiction that anything she has to do that the DSA doesn't like, he could say, that's the police department. I am busy focusing on my free groceries and my child care and all this other stuff. She's doing what she's doing, and so if you don't like it, go bother her. So that would be an important signal, and it would be good for him and good for the city. But again, you know, you don't. If he comes in here thinking rationally, he would think the worst thing that could happen is that crime soars again on my watch. That will make it very hard for me to be reelected. And the rational thing for me to do here is to make sure that that does not happen. Meaning listening to people who have succeeded in cutting crime. But that is a lot to hope for.
- [22:09]
A
There's a model for that.
- [22:10]
D
Right.
- [22:10]
A
And his predecessor, de Blasio, choosing to stick with Commissioner Bratton in 2014, which I think was a pick that took everyone by surprise, didn't really buy de Blasio much credit with the rank and file, just as I suspect keeping Jessica Tischon, you know, wouldn't buy Mamdani much credit. But, yeah, I mean, that could work. I also, I just. Someone mentioned a poll earlier. I forget which one of you it was that cited a 45% support figure from Mamdani. I saw a poll recently that had him at 51%, which is, I think, you know, surprising for a lot of people given where he started when this entire campaign kicked off. I mean, he was bowling at the low single digits for, you know, a good part of the primary campaign. And so, I mean, one question that, you know, I think a lot of people are sort of, you know, rattling around their head is, you know, what makes them so popular? I mean, this is a 33 year old non native New Yorker with no real political experience, right? I mean, he's served one term as a New York State assemblyman, hasn't done anything particularly remarkable in that role. Going up against real heavy hitters with incredible name recognition. I mean, you know, and say what you will about the Red Beret, but everyone recognizes it, right? I mean, Curtis Lee was a guy who's been in the middle of New York City politics since before I was born. And yet Mamdani's star has risen. What do we attribute that to?
- [23:46]
E
Well, I think some of the things you just mentioned, that he's a fresh face, he's unfamiliar to like people who we perceive as being uncontaminated by politics and who's, you know, young and, and we see them as idealistic. I also wonder if on some level, you know, as you were speaking, Nicole, I wonder if it was the fact that he may actually be less principled than, than people think. You know, there was that interview of him, you know, he was asked, you know, what do you think? Should billionaires not exist? And he said, I don't think we should have them, but I'm willing to work with them. And now he's sort of tap dancing around his policies around law enforcement and policing and maybe the fact that he's kind of a shapeshifter also people can see what they want to see in him. Anti police people can think he is on their side. The pro police people may think, well, he's just saying the anti police thing to win over segments of the far left. But he's a sensible guy. And so, you know, I think it's sort of a vibes based campaign and people are hoping that he agrees with them. You know, secretly, whatever he may say in public, that yeah, the shape shifting may work in his favor.
- [24:56]
A
Yeah, the shape shifting also, I think, you know, is probably read by some people as just an indicator of intelligence. You know, both emotional intelligence and just, you know, high iq. I mean, he's clearly a very Smart, brilliant guy. He reads runes incredibly well and he's relatively quick on his feet. I didn't think so after the first primary debate. But actually, you know, just, just watching him on speak to the media in particular, I think, I do think he's gifted.
- [25:26]
B
Yeah. And I think it's not to discount his own hard work here. I mean, the sort of conspiracy of how is he winning? Well, he, he built this turnout operation and some of it is just that he has run the best campaign for more than a year now, and there's a lesson to learn from that. But I think also he's benefiting from who his opponents are and that Cuomo is in this sort of weird position of almost running as an incumbent with all of the baggage that an incumbent has. You know, he was governor for nearly three terms. When you get to your third term as governor, even if you're doing a really good job, your welcome has just sort of worn out. I mean, we saw that with George Pataki a generation before that. People just got sort of tired of him, even though he wasn't doing anything wrong and wanted something new. And so if you're unhappy with things in New York City and you're not quite sure why you're unhappy, you're voting almost for an incumbent in Cuomo versus something new in Mandani. And you know, even Sleeva is kind of. He's been on the scene for so long, he's almost an incumbent too. So if you want something entirely different and new and you're just not quite sure what that is, you would pick Mandani out of the four, and now out of the three?
- [26:48]
D
Yeah.
- [26:48]
C
Mandani is speaking to a group of young, disillusioned, college educated people who were promised a comfortable, relatively easy life after they got their IB plus degree and moved to a place like New York. It's harder than they expected to pay their rent, to have a social life, to go out to eat.
- [27:13]
D
Right.
- [27:13]
C
Everything is very expensive, and they're looking to him to provide some relief. You could say it's welfare for young, upper middle class, educated professionals. It's a white collar welfare. You know, we traditionally didn't think that this group of workers would need government assistance, but they are looking to government to maintain them in a standard of living and comfort that they expected to receive by this time. It just hasn't materialized in part maybe because many of them study humanities and those jobs are just not as rewarding financially and they're competing against lots of people in finance and tech. That is Just out competing them. So they're looking for government to keep them at a certain level. You know, the, the sad flip side of that is that your rent stabilized apartment's never going to get better.
- [28:12]
D
Right.
- [28:13]
C
You're not going to strive for an improvement in your standard of living. You're just going to be staying where you are. And New York has always been a place where strivers can make something of their dreams.
- [28:25]
D
Right.
- [28:25]
C
And so we're seeing a paradigm shift, a real reorientation towards security and away from ambition and opportunity. The other thing that Mandani offers is participation in a great campaign, in a, in a crusade of swords.
- [28:44]
D
Right.
- [28:44]
C
Against the billionaires, against the structures of oppression.
- [28:49]
D
Right.
- [28:50]
A
And you can Zionist.
- [28:51]
C
Absolutely.
- [28:52]
A
And absolutely.
- [28:53]
C
And you can join this without any real cost to yourself.
- [28:56]
D
Sure.
- [28:57]
C
Because you're not going to be on the hook for the tax increases.
- [29:00]
D
Right.
- [29:02]
C
We're going to stick it on anyone earning $1 million or more and we'll stick it on corporations. Now some of these folks might ultimately rue some of these policies when they see the city not able to thrive in a way that they are.
- [29:16]
A
Which one? Don't loop the agents.
- [29:18]
B
That's interesting too, because Steve and I'd, in an article in an upcoming City Journal made the point that if he was pushing European style socialism, he would be saying everybody should pay higher taxes. So we would go from a little bit less than 9% sales tax, say, to maybe a 15% sales tax and everybody could pay more, but share in the greater benefits that he is supposedly providing. That's how European socialism works. But he is saying only rich people and rich businesses should pay more. You are not going to lose anything and these businesses aren't going to stop investing in New York. So it's basically free. There's no cost at all. And you don't. He's not really asking people for any stake in how well this works out either, because he's not asking them to pay for it. I mean, if he raises taxes on the rich and he tries to do this childcare program and it doesn't work out so well in the execution, a lot of his voters won't even notice that they don't have a stake in that system.
- [30:24]
A
No, I think that's exactly right. I mean, you know, I think a lot of of his support base is just driven by good old fashioned Gleed, although we don't really understand it in that way. I mean, these are people who don't really need a hand asking for a hand and demanding to not have to Pay a cent for the additional help that they're going to get at the expense of people who are going to bear the brunt of the fallout. Whether it's crime and, you know, the public safety decay, which is going to fall disproportionately on the shoulders of low income minority communities, or it's, you know, the affordability crunch that's going to come as a result of these policies backfiring. I mean, you know, it's like there you, you can't find an economist worth assault to tell you the rent control is a good idea and yet, you know, here, here we have price control.
- [31:08]
E
As Don was speaking, it occurred to me that, you know, but kind of prototypical Mamdani supporter, you were kind of describing Mamdani himself.
- [31:16]
D
Yeah.
- [31:17]
E
With an elite college degree, is, you know, at least at his relatively young age, isn't doing quite as well as his parents and feels, you know, possibly that he's slipping down the rungs and that, you know, it's time to flip the, you know, the game board over and start completely anew. Because I don't feel like I've been owed what I believe I should get it and I believe I've received what I. What I've been owed. And so then the next move. And this is kind of a pattern that Peter Turchin has described a complexity scientist, as he describes entirely conflict that eventually those disillusioned elites start to raid the state poffers to fund their own lifestyle because they themselves aren't able to do it on their own. It was periods of instability. And there's something interesting there that he himself is following that pattern and then his supporters also see that as well and are supporting him.
- [32:09]
C
It goes to the bigger idea of what does success look like and how are we going to measure a young person's success.
- [32:18]
D
Right.
- [32:19]
C
It's just a topic of a bigger conversation. The other interesting part of his coalition are South Asian voters, particularly Muslim voters who are engaged in a way like never. Yeah, I mean, he registered 37 in his campaign and all of his, you know, DSA volunteers registered. In the two weeks prior to the primary deadline for registration, he registered 37,000 new voters. That's 12 times the comparable figure from 21. Oh, you know, and those people went and voted for him also.
- [32:54]
D
Yeah.
- [32:54]
B
How much of that is just like normal ethnic affinity? Like Irish Americans have always voted for the Irish guy. Or at least they used to. You know, Italian Americans proud to have an Italian mayor. Like, it's not policy. People just say, you know, hey, we've made it in New York City.
- [33:12]
A
Yeah. I mean, the black vote. Yeah.
- [33:15]
B
Got a lot of Chinese Americans that surprised some people because he wasn't. He was almost trying to push for the same Mamdani voter base and didn't quite get there.
- [33:25]
D
Right.
- [33:26]
C
So a young college educated voter and the Muslim New Yorker voter, they're both seeing something in Mamdani.
- [33:33]
D
Right.
- [33:34]
E
And there are pieces of himself that they can identify with being kind of the downwardly mobile young person with an elite degree who's not doing as well as his parents. And then, yeah, the ethnic religious component as well. And so, yeah, it's fascinating to see this because he's, you know, he has the. His challengers, his rivals have much more experience than him, but it's almost his lack of experience is the lack of knowledge of who he.
- [34:00]
A
Right. That's.
- [34:03]
E
Yeah.
- [34:04]
A
So, I mean, there's kind of the self interested story.
- [34:06]
D
Right.
- [34:06]
A
Of. Of Mamdani support, but there's also, I think, an ideological component. And I want to kind of highlight that to transition to our next topic for today, which is that, you know, Mamdani is a member of the dsa, a proud member of the Democratic Socialists of America. And over the weekend, there was an announcement in the news of the passing of Assata Shakur, who in 1973 was convicted of murdering a New Jersey state trooper, Werner Foster, who left a wife and a child at the young age of 34. She was incarcerated, at which point she escaped and fled to Cuba, where she died, apparently of old age. And the DSA put out a statement honoring her. And they were not the only ones. The Chicago Teachers Union put out a statement honoring a shah to sucruse Shakur. You had, even here in the city, Jumani Williams, also honoring her in a public statement. And it just, it made me think, especially in the wake of several episodes of political violence. I mean, where does that come from? Where are we getting this affinity for people who do the thing that we all agree in a democratic society, you're not supposed to do? Right. That is the ultimate faux pas in a democratic society. You're supposed to have ideas, battle ideas. It's supposed to start and end. There never are you supposed to use violence to get your way. And yet here we have someone who was convicted by a jury of her peers and is celebrated. Why?
- [35:42]
C
Where did it come from? How much time you got?
- [35:44]
A
Yeah, let's dig into it.
- [35:45]
C
I mean, to my mind, Isaiah Berlin's To Concepts of Liberty is instructive here, where Berlin sets out Negative liberty, which is the type that many Americans would instinctively identify with. It's the freedom from external pressures, freedom from coercion, freedom from government censorship and involvement.
- [36:09]
A
Congress shall make no law.
- [36:11]
C
Absolutely right. That's negative liberty. And then positive liberty is a freedom for, for some ultimate end or good, right? Freedom could be to become one's greatest and best self. So the freedom to self actualize. But that freedom can also be collectivized towards a societal goal. And that goal can be a dangerous one, like on the left, overthrowing the structures of oppression so that we are liberated and to become our true selves. And that was, going back to the French Revolution, part of the goal of overthrowing everything that had been in the Western civilization and starting anew. I mean, they created a new calendar based on 10 days, right? That impulse to just wipe away everything, it can get to a point very easily where the ends justify the means, including murder. And that is why Berlin, and I agree with him, discouraged the idea of positive liberty in a democratic society because it's ultimately going to lead to some kind of form of collective totalitarianism.
- [37:33]
A
I think that's right. I think that's right. I also think there's something afoot here that's basically akin to a kind of ignorance of history. I was in a back and forth on, on X the other day and I was complaining about a protest that had shut down Columbus Circle here in the city and, you know, saying, you know, people shouldn't be able to block traffic. This, you know, inconveniences the entire city. This is not peaceful protest, but violence. And, and someone snarkily asked, yeah, but did they, you know, but has the left ever, you know, invaded the Capitol? And it was one of the most intense ratios I've ever seen on an expost. Because about 2,000 people, including myself, replied, you know, with the 1983 cloakroom bombing at the Capitol, the 1971 bombing at the Capitol, the, you know, 1954 FALN mass shooting from the balcony on the House floor, wounding five Congressmen. But it seems like there is a kind of historical ignorance of the role that political violence has played in even our recent history. I mean, New York City, the Francis Tavern bombing, you know, various FALN bombings. I mean, the FALN was a Puerto Rican nationalist group. You had the Black Liberation army, which Asada Shakur was affiliated with, is part of the lionization of this. Just a function of the fact that people don't really know how ugly that history was caught with Ethan.
- [39:01]
B
I think that's a Generous spin on it. I mean, our hope is that people are just ignorant of how willfully violent some of these episodes are. Including Kathy Boudin in upstate New York, also involved in killing law enforcement and was eventually paroled by New York State by Columbia University.
- [39:27]
A
Yeah, I mean, things are a fawning statement when she died.
- [39:30]
B
Yeah. These are tend to be romanticized, you know, these are outlaws and freedom fighters and they're robbing banks and they're, you know, renegades. And if people really understood no, they're just killing, you know, family people trying to make a living and protect society and cold blood that, that, that these supporters were to turn away from it. But these facts are not hidden. I mean, it's pretty clear what happened. There's just a disinterest or a disinclination to, to actually know what happens because then, you know, hopefully it would be harder to support.
- [40:12]
C
If these everyday workers are perpetuating a fundamentally unjust structure, then they deserve it.
- [40:21]
D
Right? Right.
- [40:21]
C
I mean, unfortunately, that is the twisted logic about this.
- [40:24]
D
Right.
- [40:25]
C
And make an omelet, you got to break a few eggs.
- [40:29]
D
Right.
- [40:29]
E
Something from false consciousness.
- [40:31]
C
Right. We will force you to be free and like for your own good. And in order to bring about that, we need to overthrow these oppressive structures that are holding you back.
- [40:43]
E
Holding us all back.
- [40:44]
A
What undergirds that.
- [40:45]
E
Well, as you were speaking, Rafa, you know, you said, you know, we're supposed to live in this democratic society, these norms against violence and so on. And then you listed many, many instances environment. And that is in a society where we generally agree we shouldn't use it. And this to me also connects to your point about history, is that violence has long been the norm. Warring factions, political conflicts, civil wars, internal conflicts and so on. And it's only through luck and effort and happenstance and so on that we've managed to create a relatively peaceful society where we generally condemn political violence. But that can very quickly be undone. Again, just look at history that this is. We're living in a sort of deviation from the historical norm where we generally agree we shouldn't, we shouldn't use violence, that we should settle disagreements with words rather than with, with bullets and physical confrontations. And yeah, this celebrating, you know, people who have committed murder, acts of terror and so on. This can lead people who can change perceptions around norms of the exception acceptability of violence that okay, well, this person committed murder. But you're seeing these, you know, well known political organizations and others say that this was a martyr or a hero or something that well, this can introduce doubt into people's minds about, well, it is sometimes acceptable. And then you get more. More dead bodies.
- [42:15]
A
Yeah. I mean, I just want to kind of run through a few examples. We already mentioned Kathy Boudin, who was not only convicted in a terrible case, but was hired by Columbia University and then honored after she passed uic. The University of Illinois at Chicago hired and gave tenure to Bill Ayers, another convicted member of the Weather Underground, a left wing terrorist group. He actually won Chicago Citizen of the year in 1997. I did not know that Barack Obama commuted the sentence of Oscar Lopez Rivera, who was a member of the faln, which had committed several bombing attacks, including the Francis Tavern bombing here in New York City. President Clinton granted clemency to Sue Evans, who had participated in the, the, the bombing of the Capitol. I mean, I don't know if you're sensing a trend here, but there is a lot of sort of, you know, Democratic politicians and institutions excusing or explicitly celebrating people who have done the unthinkable and given them status. The question I have is like, is that going to do any long term damage to the left's brand? Especially as they, like, try to, you know, sort of paint the right as the fascist party, as the party of violence, as, you know, do they have a lot to stand?
- [43:35]
B
Well, in. In the past, these types of episodes have reminded voters why they prefer the center and the center right. I mean, the 1960s created Richard Nixon. The 1970s created the Reagan and the Thatcher revolutions. We saw this with blm, you know, when peaceful protests became violent riots in the summer of 2020. This sticks in the memory of voters and that, you see that now, you know, Portland failed to secure public safety in order in key public spaces. You know, whether that means Trump should take over. You know, one can agree or disagree about that, but to refuse to acknowledge that there was a problem really shores up the center.
- [44:30]
D
Right? Yeah.
- [44:33]
E
It is fascinating when you go back to, like documentaries about the 1980s that, you know, it's. There is such a large gap to this day between cultural elites and ordinary voters, where Reagan is generally among Americans looked upon relatively fondly. But then among cultural elites, they really, to this day, badmouth him. I watched this documentary recently about boxing in the 1980s of Marvin Hagler and Thomas Hearns. And somehow even the people they interviewed managed to take the swipes that Reagan and I thought we're talking about. But of course, we can also say Reagan was bad, you know, so strange. But then he didn't win like 49 states. Yeah, it was incredibly popular, extremely popular at the time.
- [45:15]
A
And in fact, he gave my favorite political speech of all time, which was a time for choosing, I think, delivered in 1964. So if you haven't seen it, go watch it.
- [45:23]
D
But.
- [45:23]
A
But what do you make of this? I mean, like, here we are, right in a. In a city in which you have prominent, you know, figures and institutions celebrating a cop murderer at a time in which you've got a mayoral election where public safety is sort of one of the key issues. I mean, I just. I find it hard to believe that this hasn't created more of a sort of barrier to be scaled by the left than it actually has.
- [45:50]
C
Well, sadly, with Mamdani's radical positions from the 2020 campaign onwards has certainly none dampened his electoral prospects.
- [46:02]
D
Yeah.
- [46:03]
C
And, you know, again, it's not just him.
- [46:06]
A
It's, you know, it's the entire dsa. It's, you know, Jumani Williams, I'm sure, other members of the, you know, the city council. It really does just strike me as insanely troubling that, you know, we've either forgotten this history or are the other options that we're not only comfortable with it, but potentially hoping to repeat it, in which case, you know, New York City may, and the rest of the country may not be in particularly good hands. So that's a dark sort of way to end a conversation that is quickly running out of time. So I just quickly want to end on something lighter.
- [46:43]
D
Right.
- [46:43]
A
So this weekend was a super fun weekend for me. In addition to all the cool stuff I got to do with my family, the baseball season came down to the very last game in multiple divisions, which was so exciting. Very Rarely does game 162. We play 162 games in the season mean anything, let alone mean almost everything for so many teams as it did this year. I'm a huge sports fan. I was just wondering and tell, like, what. What are your guilty pleasures on the weekend?
- [47:10]
D
Right.
- [47:10]
A
What do Manhattan Institute scholars do when we're not reading books and writing and talking about politics?
- [47:18]
B
Well, I didn't have a good weekend because the Mets lost.
- [47:20]
A
Yeah, they did.
- [47:22]
B
Second half of the season, devising the most frustrating way to lose because they had to win and the Reds had.
- [47:29]
A
To lose and the Reds lost before.
- [47:31]
B
All they had to do and they knew that the Reds lost and the.
- [47:34]
A
Reds lost to a better team game. So the Mets were.
- [47:37]
B
All they had to do was squeeze out five runs in the eighth and ninth inning, and they couldn't do it. So. But that means they should not get Steve Cohen, the Mets owner should not get his casino approved. Casino until you've won three World Series, you know.
- [47:54]
A
All right, Rob, what about you? What's your, what's your weekend? You'll be putting?
- [47:58]
E
You know, we've been talking a lot about the politics, but one great thing about living in New York, there's so many good restaurants here. I don't know if I've ever lived in a city with such good food. And so I don't think I cook for myself at all on the weekends. Thinking back in my, my mentally role and I don't think I cook. Yeah. Saturdays and Sundays I eat at out at too many restaurants. I overpay.
- [48:22]
A
What's your favorite favorite restaurant?
- [48:25]
E
I mean, I like this place called Cote. It's a Korean barbecue place. I tried this Thai place recently. Len Lin and Flatiron. There's a really great other Thai place called Sabai. There's a place called the Greek in Tribeca. And so, yeah, I mean, there's a lot. I pay way too much for out at restaurants.
- [48:45]
C
I spent about 10 hours on Saturday collecting credit card payments from the people coming to the St. Francis of Assisi annual Fall festival. My parish has a fundraiser for the academy that I'm the treasurer of and also for the parish that I've been going to my entire life. Indeed, I was baptized there. So I, I'm in charge of all the credit card payments through the app. And so I had to make sure that everything went off smoothly. It did. We had a beautiful day. We had tons and tons of families attend. The kids had a blast on bouncy house rides.
- [49:20]
A
Oh, awesome.
- [49:21]
C
It was a really wonderful time. And thank God we did well, too.
- [49:25]
A
Amazing. Amazing. All right, well, that's all the time we have, unfortunately. I just want to say thank you to you all the listeners for listening for watching. Please do not forget to, like, comment, subscribe, ring the bell. Do all the things that we need to do to boost us in the algorithm. Let us know what you thought. Let us know if you didn't like something. If you like something, ask a question. Maybe we'll answer it. I want to thank my wonderful panelists. I want to thank our producer, Isabella Rajai. And until next time, you've been watching the City Journal podcast. See you soon.