Ramblin’ Mamdani delivers only word salads, empty promises

Self-described “democratic socialist” assemblyman and New York City mayoral frontrunner Zohran Mamdani made the media rounds this weekend, and his answers have pundits scratching their heads about what he meant.

When asked by CBS’s Marcia Kramer what his public safety plan would look like, Mamdani started talking about a “cure violence approach” that he apparently discussed with residents of East Flatbush but offering little in the way of concrete solutions.

He followed up with the “Guns Down Life Up” program, based in the Bronx’s Lincoln Hospital, that supposedly turns injured gangbangers into mentors.

After noting the spike in the number of officers leaving the force each month and being asked whether he’d hire more to make up for these losses, he responded, “I think we have the appropriate number of officers right now, and that I think the key thing is to retain more of them, such that we don’t see this exodus.”

How is it possible to maintain a shrinking headcount without filling vacancies?

In a softball interview, MSNBC host Al Sharpton asked about the risk of higher taxes prompting the city’s high earners to decamp for lower-tax states.

Mamdani said he would get them to stay “in part by showing them that asking them to pay more in taxes would increase even their quality of life.”

The problem with that answer begins with the fact that Mamdani has made no bones about how he wants to increase taxes for the sake of increasing taxes.

Taking Mamdani at his word — that he wants high-earners to stay — means he is ignoring a growing body of evidence that it is the state’s tax policy driving those high earners away.

People rarely move exclusively based on their tax rate, but the financial benefits of moving to a lower-tax locale are undeniable. Taxpayers with homes in other states actively limit their time in the Empire State to avoid being taxed as residents.

The share of millionaires who call New York home has declined from 12.7% in 2010 to 8.7% in 2022, per the Citizens Budget Commission.

The state’s highest earners left New York faster in 2021 (after Albany jacked up taxes to their highest effective rates ever) than they did in 2020 (when many were chased away by the coronavirus).

In return for shouldering an even bigger share of New York’s tax burden, Mamdani is offering hypothetical improvements in quality of life. But those are difficult to take seriously because he seems almost allergic to saying the words “public disorder,” the condition with which New York has struggled in recent years.

His proposals — including to divert over $1 billion from the NYPD on a new “Department of Community Safety” — amount to putting bandages on a bullet wound. Worse, in his 2020 run for Assembly, he supported decriminalizing drug possession and prostitution, eliminating mandatory minimum sentences, and retroactively lowering maximum sentences.

Perhaps the most troubling part of Mamdani’s enthusiasm for taxes is that it dodges the sort of managerial scrutiny that the city needs in a mayor.

New York City government has devolved into a jobs program for unionized public employees that too often puts the public interest second.

If Albany gives Mamdani permission to hike taxes the way he plans, the city’s public-employee unions will scramble to grab more cash from the till before the mayor can spend a penny on new programs, which will naturally be staffed by unionized employees, subject to union work rules.

Some of the biggest “quality of life” improvements will likely happen behind closed doors — in the form of sweeter contracts for the public-employee unions now backing Mamdani’s campaign.

The question that New Yorkers in every tax bracket should be asking is whether they’re getting their money’s worth now and whether they could reasonably expect to the next time they’re asked to pay more.

Ken Girardin is a fellow at the Manhattan Institute. All views expressed are those of the author and not the Manhattan Institute.