Zohran Mamdani's win Tuesday should send tremors far beyond New York City. A Mamdani victory will ignite wholesale legislative attacks on property owners, charter schools, law enforcement and businesses all across New York state. From Buffalo to Amagansett, nothing will be spared.
In New York, the big decisions about criminal law, education, rent laws and taxation are legislated at the state level, not locally. Mamdani and the Democratic Socialists of America will be calling the shots in Albany as well as at City Hall. New Yorkers, brace yourselves for crazy laws and huge tax hikes.
Mamdani, a member of the New York State Assembly from Queens until he is sworn in as mayor, gathered endorsements from the state's top legislative leaders and sizable blocks in the Assembly and Senate, including 27 Assembly members and 16 state senators, even before his victory.
His conquest Tuesday elevates him to national stature but also sets him up as the de facto head of the Democratic Party in New York state, far more influential than Gov. Kathy Hochul. Her approval rating is in the basement, and she's fawning desperately over Mamdani to curry favor with the Left.
Mamdani's power at the Capitol means moderate Democrats will fall into line "to enact a lot of his wish list," reports Democratic Assemblyman Jake Blumencranz from Long Island. Blumencranz calls it "a perfect storm" about to hit the entire state.
On the top of the DSA wish list and Mamdani's agenda is decarceration, putting criminals on the streets.
Pro-criminal DSA legislators led the effort to pass the "Less is More" act in 2021. The law allows violent criminals who violate parole — by taking drugs, for example — to stay free. That law explains why Jamel McGriff, walking the streets despite parole violations, was able to allegedly invade the home of an elderly Queens couple in September, torture them to death, and then set their house afire with them in it.
DSA legislators are moving to decriminalize prostitution under a state Senate bill titled "Cecilia's Act for Rights in the Sex Trade" and to eliminate all criminal and civil penalties for possession of illegal drugs under state Senate Bill S3600.
Mamdani ally state Sen. Zellnor Myrie is backing a bill, already passed in the Assembly, to extend youthful offender status to alleged criminals ages 19 to 25, sparing them from a criminal conviction and sealing their arrest record. It's magnifying the mistake made by the Raise the Age legislation passed in 2019, which pushed the age of criminal responsibility from 16 to 18.
New York City Police Department Commissioner Jessica Tisch warns that Raise the Age has led to a quadrupling of homicides committed by juveniles and an 81 percent increase of juveniles being shot. Violent teens under 18 who commit heinous crimes get a slap on the wrist in family court and are back on the playground to offend again. Mamdani's allies in Albany are poised to make it even worse, letting off violent criminals who are in their 20s. It's crazy.
Mamdani and the DSA are sworn enemies of charter schools. They'd prefer to let thousands of low-income and minority students languish in geographically assigned district schools that are nothing more than failure factories.
Decisions about increasing the number of charter schools are made in Albany jointly by the State University of New York trustees, who generally favor them, and the SUNY Board of Regents, who are appointed by the legislature and generally reflect the Democratic Party's slavish acquiescence to the teachers unions. State Senate Bill 6800, sponsored by Mamdani ally Assemblywoman Rodneyse Bichotte Hermelyn of Brooklyn, would strip the SUNY trustees of their charter powers, leaving charters at the mercy of the hostile Board of Regents. Students will be the losers.
Property owners are in the DSA's crosshairs. The party is aiming to take rent regulation — which has doomed New York City to shortage and dilapidated housing — statewide with state Senate Bill 4659, then extend it to commercial properties like stores with state Senate Bill 8319.
Candidate Mamdani promised free bus rides, free child care and other freebies, and he wants everyone in the state to foot the bill. His campaign has proposed hiking the state's corporate tax rate by almost half, to 11.5 percent. Mamdani ally state Sen. Brad Hoylman-Sigal has already introduced a bill to hike corporate taxes though by slightly less.
Corporate taxes ultimately get passed on to employees and customers, not just owners. And sink economic growth.
New York state already ranks dead last, 50th out of 50, in economic outlook, thanks largely to high taxes. How much worse can it get? Mamdani's money-hungry mayoralty will suck the state dry.
Now is the time to mobilize a statewide counteroffensive to prevent a socialist takeover of state government. Do not wait for next year's statewide elections. Leaders from the nonprofit sector, including the Business Council, the Chamber of Commerce of Greater New York, and the New York State Bar Association, need to flood the state legislature with warnings and provide reinforcements for the vastly outnumbered Republicans and beleaguered moderate Democrats.
Mamdani won in New York City, but the battle now moves to Albany.
Betsy McCaughey is a former Lt. Governor of New York State and Chairman & Founder of the Committee to Reduce Infection Deaths at www.hospitalinfection.org. Follow her on Twitter @Betsy_McCaughey.