The radicals are now in charge of NYC. Mayor-elect Zohran Mamdani has unveiled his transition team and voters who agreed with his diagnosis that \u201ceverything is too expensive\u201d will now have to live with the anti-police activists, anti-merit educrats and anti-Zionist radicals running the show. The moderate center is in for a shock.<\/p>\n
Take Alex Vitale, Mamdani\u2019s \u201csafety advisor\u201d and author of The End of Policing<\/a>, who seeks to abolish police departments, viewing them as \u201ca tool of white supremacy.\u201d Vitale will collaborate with convicted armed robber Mysonne Linen on Mamdani\u2019s public safety plan. They support Mamdani\u2019s plan to replace the NYPD with a \u201cDepartment of Community Safety\u201d for a range of police calls. They also reject federal law enforcement assistance \u2013 presumably including the successful efforts that recently cleared rival drug gangs from Washington Square Park and the ICE raids that cleaned up Canal Street.<\/p>\n The education committee includes retreads from the Bill de Blasio era, such as former Deputy Chancellors Josh Wallack and Karin Goldmark, a Park Slope resident who promoted de Blasio\u2019s signature diversity plan in Brooklyn\u2019s District 15 \u2013 yet sent his own son to Manhattan\u2019s District 2 screened schools, despite his intense criticism of their merit-based admissions. Goldmark played politics with Yeshiva students\u2019 education by delaying a report that showed students were not receiving the \u201csubstantially equivalent\u201d education the law required in 39 schools, and got caught red-handed. Both promise a return to raw politics over quality education for public school families. Equity advocates are also returning, including Zakiyah Shaakir-Ansari, who serves on the Youth and Education Transition Advisory Committee, and admires convicted cop-killer Assata Shakur and supported every effort to rid NYC public schools of meritocracy and educational excellence.<\/p>\n Mamdani\u2019s true North lies in his \u201canti-Zionism\u201d allies, many of whom offer little of the plausible deniability he employs to frame their views as anything other than outright \u201cfrom the river to the sea\u201d anti-Semitism. Familiar figures include Linda \u201cNothing is creepier than Zionism\u201d Sarsour, who shares Mamdani\u2019s unbridled animus towards Israel\u2019s right to exist as a Jewish state. The BDS contingent is particularly strong: Waleed Shahid, a \u201cpolitical strategist\u201d who portrays Zionism as a capitalist conspiracy; Tamika Mallory, \u201cequity committee co-chair\u201d and defender of Holocaust denier Louis Farrakhan; Hassaan Chaudhary, a communications aide who celebrates anti-Israel violence and promotes classic antisemitic tropes; and Nerdeen Kiswani and Yasmin Bawa of Within Our Lifetime (WOL), known for disruptive protests, bridge occupations, and calls for \u201cglobal intifada,\u201d both serving on the public safety transition committee.<\/p>\n Mamdani won the election and earned the right to assemble his team. His campaign was nearly flawless, propelling him from relative obscurity to mayor of one of the world\u2019s most important cities, but his radicalism will have a cost \u2013 and presents a unique opportunity for Republicans<\/a> in NYC. <\/p>\n Millions were spent trying to defeat him, and consequently more than a million voters \u2013 mostly Democrats and independents \u2013 did not vote for him. Andrew Cuomo\u2019s independent \u201cFight and Deliver\u201d line effectively served as an \u201cAnyone But Mamdani\u201d option, drawing Democrats, Republicans and independents, many of whom held their noses to vote for Cuomo, primarily to block Mamdani.<\/p>\n Those voters \u2013 many lifelong Democrats who habitually support the party \u2013 represent a tremendous opportunity for Republicans in New York City and statewide, if the GOP awakens to their discontent and offers a platform and candidates that can speak to the Mamdani-era politically homeless voters \u2013 who just had a practice run voting off of the Democrat line. More New Yorkers voted for Cuomo than for past mayors like Giuliani, de Blasio, or Adams and though he lost, Cuomo demonstrated the depth of opposition to Mamdani\u2019s vision. New York is better than rich-kid socialism and intersectional grievance studies as a governing philosophy and many New Yorkers know it. <\/p>\n One clear voting divide was between longtime residents and recent arrivals: the longer one has lived in New York, the more likely they were to support Cuomo; newcomers (five years or less) overwhelmingly backed Mamdani. The long term native New Yorkers are the voters a revitalized GOP needs to court. <\/p>\n