Zohran Mamdani’s platform will destroy New Yorkers’ happiness with ‘counterfeit happiness’ says successful former small town mayor

Memphis, Michigan, is a town exactly one square mile in size and home to about 1,200 people — very different from New York City.

Yet, as the former mayor of Memphis, I have advice for the candidates for mayor of New York City.

When I took office in 2009, the recession had gutted our community. Nine of our 13 downtown buildings were vacant, and the idea of community seemed dead. By the time I left, most buildings were full, we had the first new commercial construction since 1957, and we were debt-free.

More importantly, there was a rebirth of idealism. This is not what candidates like Zohran Mamdani are offering.

As a new mayor, I thought my duty was to give the people everything they wanted. But I quickly discovered how dangerous that mindset can become.

Behind the ego boost for me lay a trap for the citizens: the accompanying belief that government’s role is to provide, rather than to empower. I found out that my goal should never be to “give” people success, security or satisfaction, but to create an atmosphere that fosters and encourages their ability to create their own successes.

We know when government provides “solutions,” often ineptly, it doesn’t help people live their most fulfilled life. It prevents them from ever understanding their true potential.

Everything tangible the government gives comes with an intangible cost to its citizens. Often, the exchange includes the quiet surrender of individual freedom, self-reliance and dignity.

While I was mayor, my administration modernized the town’s master plan and systems, recodified all laws, eliminated inefficiencies, retired all debt and empowered volunteerism over bureaucracy. These policies put my community in the driver’s seat, not me.

As humans, our species has something special, our drive to seek individual purpose in life. We often have the feeling that there is something unique we individually are meant to build, overcome or contribute to this world. This is fundamental to every human, if not pushed out by culture or upbringing. It is why we have celebrated cities like New York!

Modern progressive politics doesn’t trust that spark. It treats human beings not as souls with purpose, but as problems to be managed. And in doing so, it blocks the very path by which people discover meaning.

This political approach is a two-edged sword, destroying happiness with counterfeit comfort.

The first edge feeds on our instinct to care for the weak, to protect the vulnerable and to lift others up.

The second feeds into the worst characteristics of men (laziness, envy, entitlement) by telling us we are owed happiness without the effort required to achieve it.

And in the end, those who are cut by the first blade have their labor taxed, ambition stifled and success vilified as privilege — and those cut by the second blade are gutted of the ability to feel the joy of contribution, the dignity of success through labor or the pride that only comes from overcoming challenges of life.

What’s lost on both sides is something far greater than comfort or equity; it’s our connection to purpose itself, our connection to our own human nature.

As Benjamin Franklin put it, “The Constitution only guarantees the American people the right to pursue happiness. You have to catch it yourself.”

Mamdani’s platform, and all others like it, attempt to replace “pursuit” with “provide” and, in doing so, strip us of the human cycle that makes happiness possible: struggle, goal, success and gratitude.

The Mamdani agenda is rife with soul-killing proposals. Government-controlled housing that guarantees shortages and poor maintenance by punishing ownership and investment. A “Community Safety” program that replaces police with “crisis teams” and administrative enforcement, while keeping every law that required police in the first place. That will produce less safety, more chaos and zero accountability.

Mamdani’s LGBTQIA+ platform is not “inclusion” through the delicate process of community building and acceptance, but compelled speech and punishment of dissent. His green schools/”climate justice” proposal would spend more on infrastructure while letting administrative bloat go unaddressed. With delivery app regulation, Mamdani wants to turn the growing gig economy into something rigid, overregulated and slow.

It is welcome that Mamdani proposes cutting red tape on small business — but he layers in equity mandates.

The candidate explicitly calls for shifting the property tax away from “black and Latino neighborhoods” and onto “white and wealthy” ones. “Trump-Proofing NYC” is a hollow, emotionally charged slogan with no real policy substance.

People do not grow and thrive through government programs that teach them disempowerment.