2 hours ago
2
I did not vote for Zohran Mamdani.
Call me crazy — but a socialist who, until five minutes ago, was gleefully tweeting to defund the police and who refuses to condemn the phrase “globalize the intifada” is not my ideal steward for this glittering center of progress.
But that doesn’t mean I’m going anywhere.
On social media, there’s a relentless schadenfreude chorus of “You deserve what you vote for” from out-of-towners who don’t seem to understand that massive swathes of New Yorkers did not, in fact, vote for Mamdani.
And I also hear from people saying I need to flee while I can. According to one survey, there are nearly 800,000 New Yorkers eyeing an exodus as Mamdani takes City Hall.
Screw that.
And it’s not just because, unlike Rosie O’Donnell, I am no moneybags who has the luxury of moving to a foreign land where I can spend all day melting down on Tiktok.
I work here — and for a great New York City publication. Dispatches on subway safety and city life don’t work as well from, say, a couch in West Virginia. (AI told me they have the cheapest housing prices.)
The Big Apple is my home.
I spent much of my childhood here and have lived in Manhattan for more than two decades. Most of my immediate and extended family are here. Every Sunday we gather in my aunt’s downtown apartment for family dinner.
I don’t fly home for Thanksgiving or Christmas. I take the F train to my cousin’s house in Brooklyn.
My family has been here for generations. Heck, my paternal grandmother was even stabbed here in 1961. (She survived, thankfully, and moved to a safer neighborhood in The Bronx. But you get the point: This isn’t a casual relationship.)
Many tourists might see the city as merely a backdrop to film social media content or catch a Broadway show. But it’s also a place to maintain roots and raise families. And, yes, struggle to survive.
I truly worry that, under Mamdani, our city — which is still emerging from its pandemic stupor — will be pulled back into an abyss of chaos and crime. I fret that businesses which no longer need to be here to remain competitive will leave and take loads of tax dollars — and jobs — with them.
I also pray that Albany will spoil Mamdani’s plans for grabbing other people’s money.
If all the sensible people flee, we are just handing over the keys to Mamdani — the pretty face of an ugly movement. He is a Trojan horse for the Democratic Socialists of America and their pernicious anti-Western agenda. His very dark victory speech, in which he lectured us on Islamophobia and boasted about big government, was chilling.
Data shows loads of young, educated transplants voted for Mamdani — because of his pie-in-the-sky promises to freeze rents and deliver them all the trappings of success for a discounted price.
If you believe that, I have a bridge to sell.
If common-sense folks don’t stay, we have no firewall to slow this terrible ideology. During the pandemic, we saw so many pragmatic New Yorkers leave because of crime, filth and a zealous devotion to masking. Their absence was greatly felt in this election.
But here’s a warning to folks laughing at us from other states: Unaffordability doesn’t only plague New York.
Go food shopping in Helena, Montana, or Nashville — the prices are comparable to here. A night at the Jersey Shore isn’t the bargain that it used to be. Never mind the housing market in the Garden State. Or anywhere else.
And because of that, you schadenfreude slingers might just have a DSA darling coming to a town near you.
Both Democrats and Republicans need to have a reckoning with issues of affordable housing — yes, our new mayor has a point about that — to ensure that citizens can still pursue the American dream.
But back to New York City: This place has taken beatings from fiscal mismanagement, rampant crime, disorder, feckless politicians, pandemics and Islamic terrorists.
Now we have another foe: a smiling socialist.
We must proceed boldly, with common sense and grit. And not cede this great city out of fear.
English (US)