The Keystone State is calling.<\/p>\n
That\u2019s the message Republican Sen. Dave McCormick sent to New Yorkers on Monday night in the wake of state Assemblyman Zohran Mamdani\u2019s decisive win in last week\u2019s high-profile mayoral race in New York City.<\/p>\n
Insinuating the Big Apple isn\u2019t as welcoming as Pennsylvania in terms of patriotism, freedom, faith \u2014 or good football \u2014 Mr. McCormick suggested residents of the city that elected its first Muslim mayor last Tuesday would find open arms if they traveled west on Interstate 80.<\/p>\n
\u201cForget about the high taxes, the socialists, the losing football teams,\u201d the senator said in a post on X standing in front of the image of a \u201cPennsylvania Welcomes You\u201d road sign.<\/p>\n
Former governor and failed mayoral candidate Andrew Cuomo claimed that wealthy New Yorkers would flee if the progressive Mr. Mamdani \u2014 who has pledged to freeze rents and build more affordable housing, improve public transit and fund free child care \u2014 was elected.<\/p>\n
While the number of millionaires in New York City has nearly doubled between 2010 and 2025, officials in several states including Florida and Texas encouraged New Yorkers to migrate out of the city after Mr. Mamdani beat Mr. Cuomo by more than 181,000 votes, a nearly 9-percentage-point margin.<\/p>\n
Mr. McCormick, a freshman senator, suggested that New Yorkers worried about their future under Mr. Mamdani should check out the state \u201cwhere America was born.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cWe\u2019ve got mountains, winning football teams, world-class universities, and no one is going to make you feel unwelcome for loving America, loving freedom and loving your god,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
The senator went on to tout his native state\u2019s steel, life sciences, artificial intelligence, energy and shipbuilding industries.<\/p>\n
Mr. Mamdani, whose campaign team did not respond to a request for comment, is no doubt aware of Pennsylvania\u2019s strong higher education system.<\/p>\n
Earlier this year, the 34-year-old told the First Baptist Church of Crown Heights that his father, a Ugandan immigrant, won one of 23 U.S. scholarships and attended the University of Pittsburgh to study electrical engineering in the 1960s.<\/p>\n
Mr. Mamdani, a Democratic socialist, said he was inspired by his father\u2019s time as a student, when he traveled to, and was jailed in, Alabama in support of the Civil Rights movement. And the mayor-elect tied that fight to his overall campaign message around affordability.<\/p>\n
\u201cI was raised in that sense that freedom and the fight for it are interconnected,\u201d he said. \u201cFreedom is only as good as our ability to exercise it. I remember the words of Dr. [ Martin Luther] King Jr., who said, \u2018What good is having the right to sit at a lunch counter if you can\u2019t afford a hamburger?\u2019 What good is the right to live in New York City if you can\u2019t afford the rent? If you can\u2019t afford your Metro card? If you can\u2019t afford your child care? If you can\u2019t afford your groceries?\u201d<\/p>\n
Mr. Mamdani, who accused Mr. Cuomo and opponents of Islamophobia during the race, received more than 1 million votes \u2014 the most by a New York City mayoral candidate in more than 50 years.<\/p>\n
The win came as part of a Democratic rout of Republicans in multiple states and in Pennsylvania, where Democrats maintained a 5-2 majority on the state Supreme Court and won a range of local and court races in counties won by President Donald Trump last year.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The Keystone State is calling. That\u2019s the message Republican Sen. Dave McCormick sent to New Yorkers on Monday…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":31461,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[5179,10650,19965,238,28,30,29,50,382,66],"class_list":{"0":"post-31460","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-pennsylvania","8":"tag-american-politicians","9":"tag-andrew-cuomo","10":"tag-civil-rights-movement","11":"tag-new-york-city","12":"tag-pennsylvania","13":"tag-pennsylvania-headlines","14":"tag-pennsylvania-news","15":"tag-politics","16":"tag-politics-of-the-united-states","17":"tag-united-states"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/31460","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=31460"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/31460\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/31461"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=31460"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=31460"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=31460"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}