You know JUST what Albany means by ‘no tax hikes in an election year’

Mayor Zohran Mamdani’s effort to hold New York City’s working and middle classes hostage unless Albany gives him his income-tax hike prompted horrified cries of “It’s an election year!” from Democratic lawmakers — which tells you exactly what to expect once the election is safely over.

Seriously: They may not fall for the mayor’s property-tax-hike threat now, but history shows their true colors.

Including Gov. Kathy Hochul, who has rejected Mamdani’s hike for now, sputtering, “I’m the one who’s trying to cut taxes.”

No one should forget 2024, when she made a huge deal of suspending the “congestion” tolls in Manhattan before that year’s elections, only to bring them back afterward — even daring to claim she was saving New Yorkers money because she was “only” imposing a $9 hit (at first).

We guess you can give Assemblyman Michael Benedetto (D-Bronx) some credit for honesty in saying on the record, “I’m not enthusiastic about raising taxes in an election year,” but it really is a confession.

Of course, plenty of state “leaders” like Speaker Carl Heastie are pretty much always in favor of tax hikes, but pols who hem and haw in the months before Election Day aren’t much better.

After they win, it’s gouge, gouge, gouge and gouge again.

Will Mamdani follow through on his property-tax gambit?

We’ll see: City Council Speaker Julie Menin plainly opposes it, politely calling the mayor’s ultimatum merely part of “the budget dance”; perhaps Mamdani just wants to be able to blame to council for making the spending cuts needed to balance the budget.

At the very least, he’s proved that Democratic Socialists can lie just as well as regular Democrats: On the campaign trail, Zoh vowed to hike taxes only on the wealthy — with no caveats about unless I really want more money to spend.

You can trust Democrats on just one thing: One way or another, sooner or later, their hands will always be back reaching ever-deeper into your wallet.