Zohran Mamdani’s a bluff, a hope, a whimsy, a rumor of a man who has no knowledge of anything, no experience running so much as a halal hot-dog stand and nothing to offer except vibes.
When Zohran Mamdani was in high school, he tried to seize the reins of (student) government power the usual way: By promising the voters free stuff. At the Bronx HS of Science he ran for student veep on a fruit-juice giveaway platform. Yep, we’re looking at a career founded on tempting kids with sweets. He lost anyway.
So he amped up his proposals by a few billion dollars, and now he looks like he’s going to promise his way right into City Hall.
A mere decade and a half later — yes, we’re about to have a mayor who was in high school until 2010 — Mamdani is wowing the party that never stops saying “What an intriguing idea!” when told it can help itself to things paid for by somebody else.
Step up to the Golden Corral buffet of social services, folks! Don’t worry about the costs.
Zo is somehow going to make the buses both free (meaning lots more passengers, many of them homeless) and faster (sure, bud). Buses are already pay-optional, of course: 48% of riders are fare beaters. But making the buses free is going to blow an $800 million hole in the budget. Never mind, Zo has got this.Harsh reality
Mamdani is too young to remember the dot-com boom — hell, he’s barely old enough to remember 9/11 — but he’s the Kozmo.com of pols, the company whose business model was “build brand loyalty by giving customers enormously expensive yet free one-hour delivery.” After bleeding a quarter of a billion dollars of red ink, it died. Its last recorded remark was, “Oops!”
When Andrew Cuomo’s dad, Mario, was running for mayor in 1977 against closeted Ed Koch, some of his supporters muttered, “Vote Cuomo not the homo.” Today Andrew’s reality-acquainted backers are essentially saying “Vote Cuomey not the Commie.”
But Mamdani isn’t really a communist, nor even a socialist (despite compelling evidence to the contrary, such as him constantly saying “I’m a socialist”). Socialists want government to take over all of the major industries, but if Mamdani’s army of Bowdoinians had to wait in line at the iDMV the next time they wanted to upgrade their phones, Zohran would be as popular in this town as botulism or JD Vance.
Mamdani is not Vladimir Lenin. He’s something much more recognizable: our own Bowdoin Beto of the Boroughs. He’s a bluff, a hope, a whimsy, a rumor of a man who has no knowledge of anything, no experience running so much as a halal hot-dog stand and nothing to offer except vibes.
His stock answer to everything, when he even pretends to answer, is to smile charmingly and leave the details to the future.
We’re living through a multicultural real-life reenactment of “Being There,” in which a total moron is mistaken for a Solon because people want to believe things that can’t be.
Mamdani shouts, “Affordability!” and people go, “Dang, the kid’s got some good ideas!”
Andrew Cuomo may be a grabby jerk, but having been governor for 10 years, and a close-up observer of executive power when his dad was governor for another 12, at least he has some understanding of real-world governance.
Like the rest of us, he couldn’t believe that Mamdani wouldn’t say whether he backed the three ballot proposals meant to speed up home building, largely by taking the human roadblocks known as the City Council out of the process. At the debates, the imbalance of knowledge was such that Cuomo came across like a physics professor who had to explain to a pesky 6-year-old why he can’t have a fountain of Snapple and a pet dragon.
