Tipsheet

NYT Warns Voters: This Leading Candidate Is Too Left Wing, Even for Us

Guy Benson
Guy Benson  |  June 17, 2025 12:35 PM

New York City's primary election is one week from today, and there appears to be a real risk that a hardcore leftist could capture the Democratic Party's nomination, putting him on a glide path to running the nation's largest city.  Under a 'ranked choice' voting scheme, voters will list multiple candidates, in order of preference. This makes messaging and tactics somewhat complex.  What isn't complicated is the radical agenda of leading candidate Zohran Mamdani, whose worldview falls within the Socialist-to-Communist realm.  His ideas are so destructive that even the famously leftist New York Times editorial board has come out strongly against him.  It's hard to misconstrue deeply unpleasant facts about Mamdani as right-wing lies when they're being recited by the Times.  This urgent warning to voters via editorial began with a condemnation of former Mayor Bill DeBlasio's record, and a reference to other deep blue cities that have shot themselves in the foot by falling off the leftist ledge:

He bears significant responsibility for the city’s problems. He did not take disorder seriously enough, and he set back the city’s K-12 school system. His main legacy is to have contributed to the city’s recent decline...Other cities have endured similar experiences. In Chicago, Mayor Brandon Johnson, a de Blasio-like politician who took office two years ago, now has an approval rating below 20 percent. On the West Coast, residents of San Francisco, Seattle and Portland, Ore., have come to regret their leaders’ blasé attitudes toward crime and drug use...

Then comes the indictment of Mamdani, whose policies bear a striking resemblance to those of Chicago's wildly unpopular, leftist mayor:

Unfortunately, Mr. Mamdani is running on an agenda uniquely unsuited to the city’s challenges. He is a democratic socialist who too often ignores the unavoidable trade-offs of governance. He favors rent freezes that could restrict housing supply and make it harder for younger New Yorkers and new arrivals to afford housing. He wants the government to operate grocery stores, as if customer service and retail sales were strengths of the public sector. He minimizes the importance of policing. Most worrisome, he shows 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. Mr. Mamdani, who has called Mr. de Blasio the best New York mayor of his lifetime, offers an agenda that remains alluring among elite progressives but has proved damaging to city life.

Not only would Mamdani fail to stand up to the crazy excesses of nihilistic left-wing theater kid protest culture, he's very much part of it himself: 

Mr. Mamdani would also bring less relevant experience than perhaps any mayor in New York history. He has never run a government department or private organization of any size. As a state legislator, he has struggled to execute his own agenda. A telling example came last year. Given an opportunity to expand a pilot program offering free bus rides, one of his signature issues, he instead engaged in a performative protest that doomed the policy, New York magazine reported.    

Mamdani has shown himself to be too extreme even for the lefty voters of New York City. He has attacked capitalism itself as 'theft,' and as the Times editors point out, proposes socializing grocery stores (echoing a failed Brandon Johnson brainstorm):


He is, needless to say, part of the radical pro-illegal immigration fringe, as well:

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Mamdani has an undergraduate degree in Africana Studies from a small progressive college in Maine.  He became a naturalized US citizen in 2018 -- too late to vote for one of his heroes, Bernie Sanders, in the 2016 presidential primary.  For what it's worth, this is how his mother once described her son:


As Mamdani -- a rich kid whose parents are a prominent academic and a film director -- seeks to become New York City's first Muslim mayor, it's notable that he's fanatically anti-Israel.  He doesn't believe in Israel's right to exist as a Jewish state, has endorsed the anti-Semitic BDS ('boycott, divest, sanction') movement, and says he'd arrest the Israeli Prime Minister if he came to town (in accordance with a warrant from an illegitimate, anti-American international court). He's an ally of hate groups CAIR and Students for Justice in Palestine, of which is is a former campus co-founder.  He has an enormous fan in anti-Semitic Congresswoman Rashida Tlaib.  He woke up the day after the Hamas slaughter of 1,200 Israelis and condemned...Israel.  Read all about his record here.  He's one of these people:


The Times editorial expresses concern that this leading candidate for mayor "minimizes the importance of policing," and "shows little concern about the disorder of the past decade."   In reality, he's been an active part of the disorder.  He's been arrested for disorderly conduct, including just days after the October 7 massacre, when he blocked traffic outside Sen. Chuck Schumer's house.  He's now lying about being a 'Defund the Police' zealot, which he absolutely is:


He's called the NYPD "wicked" and called for its dismantlement.  And yes, he's proposed using the city's already-crime-plagued subway system as a network of homeless shelters.  Just look at this.  Yes, it's real:


This man wants to run the largest city in America.  Polling suggests he has a serious chance of winning.  The New York Times editors write that they "do not believe that Mr. Mamdani deserves a spot on New Yorkers’ ballots. His experience is too thin, and his agenda reads like a turbocharged version of Mr. de Blasio’s."  AOC, by contrast, is all in.  She and her fellow Squad members want to see a fellow comrade in charge of New York City.  As much as I loathe Andrew Cuomo -- and for very good reason -- because he's the only person standing between Mamdani and deeply destructive power, I'd vote for him next week if I were a New York City citizen, and I'd leave Mamdani off my ballot.  For once, I'm aligned with the New York Times editorial board, which should offer a clue as to how uniquely terrible this candidate is.