After shocking Democrat primary win in NYC this week, Zohran Mamdani's anti-Israel stance and promised socialist policies could still be defeated in November
AOC-backed NYC mayoral primary victor Mamdani connected with the ‘young’ and ‘working class,’ says former Biden White House chief of staff and press office adviser.
Yemisi Egbewole and Kaylee McGhee White discuss NYC mayoral Democratic candidate Zohran Mamdani's victory, the concession of Andrew Cuomo and the future of New York on ‘America Reports’.
New Yorkers awakened Wednesday to a grim reality: Zohran Mamdani, who just won the Democrat primary, could become mayor of our nation’s greatest city in November. Why is that grim? Because the upstart 33-year-old from Uganda is an avowed socialist who is promising free childcare, free bus transportation, rent freezes, city-run grocery stores and other unworkable policies of the sort that drove Venezuela, Argentina and other one-time great nations into financial ruin. He is also a proud backer of the Intifada, and unrepentant antisemite.
But, college-educated young people, especially, think Mamdani’s program is wonderful; just don’t ask them who will pay for it.
Even my staunchly anti-Trump Democrat friends are outraged. My Jewish friends even more so. They cannot imagine how their party has lurched so hard left. But… they did nothing to stop it. Most do not engage in local politics; most have no idea who represents them on the city council, or in the state legislature, or even when the local elections take place. Ask them; you’ll be shocked.
Republicans, meanwhile, are inert and defeatist. They are running Curtis Sliwa, founder of the Guardian Angels and an all-round Good Guy as their candidate; they know he has as much chance of winning as I do. In 2021, when he went up against Eric Adams, who was not an especially strong candidate, he won less than 28% of the vote. Republican energy and leadership have disappeared in New York; the party does not even field candidates in many races. It is a disgrace.
But the shocking win by Zohran and defeat of former Gov. Andrew Cuomo, a scandal-plagued candidate who ran a miserable campaign, has many authors. Jews failed to organize their community to rally around candidate Cuomo, whose early lead proved deceptive and evaporated just weeks before the primary. Jews were not paying attention to the young anti-Zionist Muslim who advocates for "globalizing the Intifada," does not recognize Israel’s right to exist and has threatened to arrest Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu if he sets foot in the Big Apple.
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Mostly, though, Mamdani’s upset victory can be traced to the subversion of our education system, which has infused generation after generation of gullible young people indoctrinated with Leftist claptrap, teaching them that capitalism is evil and exploitative and that socialism is the better path.
Democratic mayoral candidate Zohran Mamdani takes the stage at his primary election party on Wednesday, June 25, 2025 in New York. (AP Photo/Heather Khalifa)
The liberal elites who lead and fund our academic institutions have, for decades, cheered on the progressive professors who convinced America’s youth that our country is systemically racist and that "social justice" demands the toppling of our economy.
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They have allowed achievement and meritocracy to be maligned as watchwords for white supremacy rather than America’s core values that allow everyone to get ahead. Where were their voices as Martin Luther King’s "equality" dream was junked from curriculums (as in California) in favor of some fanciful notion of "equity" where everyone, regardless of talent or effort, ends up at the same place?
As the leaders of our banks, real estate businesses and media companies virtue signaled by adopting unpopular and unproductive DEI programs, did anyone raise their hand to say: this is wrong? As they endorsed leftist candidates to assuage their white liberal guilt, did not anyone see the end game?
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Proud Ivy League alums sent checks to their alma maters year after year, hoping to vault their offspring into those hallowed halls, ignoring what their kids were learning. When The Crimson reported that 82% of Harvard’s faculty self-identified as liberal or "very liberal," and less than 2% conservative, were they concerned that their kids might hear only one side of the story?
Did they know that Karl Marx’s "Communist Manifesto" was one of the most frequently assigned texts in our colleges?
Americans have ignored for decades the leftward drift of our schools and the decline in scholastic standards. Both are contributing to the creation of a generation truly ignorant of how the economy works, the history of failed socialist regimes and the founding, enduring principles of the United States.
Here is what must happen now: New Yorkers of all sorts must coalesce around one candidate. Either Andrew Cuomo or Eric Adams – both of whom are likely to run as independents -- should be convinced to bow out of the race, as well as Curtis Sliwa. As Cuomo said after the primary: "There are about 5 million voters in New York City, there are about 8 million people in New York City, and about 1 million people vote in the Democratic primary. So, it's not, necessarily, representative of the city at large." He’s right. Mamdani could lose in November.
The right-leaning Chicago Tribune recently ran an editorial titled, "New Yorkers, take it from Chicago — we’ve seen this movie before, and the ending isn’t pretty." The paper wrote: "Most of Mamdani’s ideas are shared (at least in principle) by Mayor Brandon Johnson, and many of them are popular in blue cities. But experience has taught us here that far-left candidates do not make for effective or popular municipal executives in today’s stressful economy."
Zohran Mamdani, New York City mayoral candidate, during an election night event in New York, US, early on Wednesday, June 25, 2025. More than 930,000 New Yorkers cast their ballots in the city's Democratic primary, with more than half withstanding record temperatures to vote at polling stations on Tuesday. (Christian Monterrosa/Bloomberg via Getty Images)
Fox Business’ Larry Kudlow believes that winning the primary will be the high-water mark for Mamdani; he thinks that as voters learn more about him and his dangerous policies, they will reject him. It is notable that Google searches in New York for "socialism" soared after the vote. People, and especially young people, do not even seem to know what the term means.
I hope Kudlow is right, but for that to happen, New Yorkers must become engaged. Historically, we have not been good at that. Perhaps the threat posed by Mamdani will change that.
