{"id":17395,"date":"2025-10-26T16:18:19","date_gmt":"2025-10-26T16:18:19","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/17395\/"},"modified":"2025-10-26T16:18:19","modified_gmt":"2025-10-26T16:18:19","slug":"would-hochul-have-the-guts-to-boot-mamdani-if-he-wrecks-nyc","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/17395\/","title":{"rendered":"Would Hochul have the guts to boot Mamdani if he wrecks NYC?"},"content":{"rendered":"

If Zohran Mamdani <\/a>is elected mayor and implements the changes he promises, expect the city\u2019s financial condition and public safety to deteriorate rapidly.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Think criminal bedlam, antisemitic rioters allowed full rein and cutbacks to basic city services. \u00a0<\/p>\n

In such a crisis, desperate New Yorkers will look to Albany \u2014 because under state law, the governor has virtually unlimited power to curb the mayor\u2019s authority, or even remove him, even if no crime has been committed.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s a safety valve, if a governor has enough backbone to use it.<\/p>\n

The law requires the governor to present grievances against the mayor at a formal hearing before actually removing him from office.<\/p>\n

Even so, the governor\u2019s decision is final, not subject to review by any court. The New York State Supreme Court calls\u00a0it \u201cthe naked power of removal.\u201d<\/p>\n

In the event a mayor is removed, a special election must be held within 80 days. Until then, the Public Advocate acts as mayor.<\/p>\n

The question is: Would Gov. Kathy Hochul <\/a>have the guts to use her authority to protect the city, or would she sacrifice New Yorkers by pandering to the socialist flank of her party?<\/p>\n

Expect this to be a major issue in the 2026 gubernatorial election, when a Republican contender is likely to insist on an answer.<\/p>\n

Right now, Hochul is cozying up to Mamdani, praising him as\u00a0\u201ceminently\u00a0reasonable\u201d<\/a> and hinting she\u2019ll find $10 billion in the state budget to fund his long list of promised freebies.<\/p>\n

That\u2019s happy talk.\u00a0<\/p>\n

The state faces a $10 billion annual deficit itself, and Budget Director Blake\u00a0Washington is calling for belt-tightening\u00a0across the board.\u00a0<\/p>\n

And why should the rest of the state pick up the tab for city voters\u2019 poor decisions?\u00a0<\/p>\n

Mamdani has promised to close Rikers Island, dumping\u00a0thousands of violent inmates on the streets.<\/p>\n

Meanwhile, cops will be quitting in droves, former NYPD Commissioners Bill Bratton and Ray Kelly predict. \u00a0<\/p>\n

While crime spikes, fiscal mismanagement will force the city to curtail essential services like sanitation and what\u2019s left of police protection.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Mamdani is promising $6 billion a year in child care and $652 million a year in free bus service \u2014 yet the city is already facing a $17.1 billion deficit during what would be Mamdani\u2019s first three years at City Hall\u00a0without the added fairytale freebies,\u00a0says state Comptroller Thomas DiNapoli. \u00a0<\/p>\n

For half a century, ever since New York City\u2019s financial debacle in 1975, New Yorkers have taken comfort in knowing that a state-run Financial Control Board is in place to prevent the city from overspending and plunging into financial ruin.<\/p>\n

But the guardrails have turned into tissue paper under Albany\u2019s one-party rule.<\/p>\n

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Reactivating the Financial Control Board requires the consent of the Legislature.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Good luck. The top legislative leaders, all Democrats, have endorsed Mamdani.<\/p>\n

So at this point there is nothing to prevent the city from going bankrupt or spiraling into criminal chaos \u2014 except a governor\u2019s constitutional removal power.<\/p>\n

That power was invoked in 1932, when then-Gov. Franklin Delano Roosevelt called for a hearing to remove New York City\u2019s corrupt Tammany Hall Mayor Jimmy Walker.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Walker challenged FDR\u2019s effort in court, and lost.<\/p>\n

The court ruled that the governor\u2019s authority is \u201cunlimited.\u201d It is the\u00a0\u201cnaked power of removal\u201d<\/a> under the state Constitution, the judges said.<\/p>\n

The case was so open-and-shut that Walker didn\u2019t bother to appeal. Seeing he was about to be ousted, he resigned and fled to Europe.<\/p>\n

Several recent governors have cited the law without actually following through.<\/p>\n

In 2020, when Mayor Bill de Blasio allowed anti-police rioters to take over the streets, then-Gov. Andrew Cuomo said, \u201cTechnically the governor could remove the mayor\u201d \u2014 but added he wasn\u2019t ready to take that step.<\/p>\n

Hochul herself considered using the removal power following the indictment of Mayor Eric Adams<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Michigan and Florida also empower their governors to remove mayors for negligence or improper governance, not just illegal acts.<\/p>\n

Ousting a democratically elected official is serious business, but almost every state has some constitutional mechanism to remove an incompetent or unfit mayor.<\/p>\n

Some states prefer recall, and others empower the legislature to make the decision.<\/p>\n

As long as removal is followed promptly by another election, voters have the ultimate say.<\/p>\n

Citizens Union, a nonpartisan NYC good-government group, sees the \u201cpotential democratic harm of ousting a duly elected official who represents over 8 million people,\u201d but concludes that a governor\u2019s removal power is essential.<\/p>\n

The\u00a0organization proposes an\u00a0amendment guaranteeing that the mayor has a due process right to be heard, and that the hearing occur within seven days.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Even so, the final decision would still belong to the governor.<\/p>\n

The Democratic Party in New York has been hijacked by the Democratic Socialists of America, largely with out-of state money and manpower.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Mamdani\u2019s\u00a0extreme anti-capitalist, anti-cop and antisemitic promises, if implemented, threaten the survival of the city\u2019s economy and the safety of its residents, particularly Jewish New Yorkers.<\/p>\n

The governor\u2019s removal power was created for such rare circumstances. <\/p>\n

It\u2019s vital that Hochul \u2014 or her successor \u2014 has the courage to use it when the need arises.<\/p>\n

Betsy McCaughey is a former lieutenant governor of New York and co-founder of SAVENYC.org<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"If Zohran Mamdani is elected mayor and implements the changes he promises, expect the city\u2019s financial condition and…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":17396,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[3862,12131,303,862,426,1092,9,56,63,65,64,299,12132,10739,10448,82],"class_list":{"0":"post-17395","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-new-york-city","8":"tag-antisemitism","9":"tag-bill-bratton","10":"tag-crime","11":"tag-governor","12":"tag-kathy-hochul","13":"tag-mayor","14":"tag-new-york","15":"tag-ny","16":"tag-nyc","17":"tag-nyc-headlines","18":"tag-nyc-news","19":"tag-opinion","20":"tag-ray-kelly","21":"tag-rikers","22":"tag-thomas-dinapoli","23":"tag-zohran-mamdani"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17395","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=17395"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17395\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/17396"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=17395"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=17395"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=17395"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}