By Robert Hornak

Someone once joked about the sport of hockey saying, “I went to a fight and a hockey game broke out.” This was meant to speak to the rough and tumble nature of the sport even though there is some finesse involved that’s not what the game is known for. 

Politics is much like that. It’s an arena where power is the main currency. But every once in a while a group of people get together and leadership breaks out. That has just happened, and those people founded an organization called “Save Our City” focused on the crises that is currently confronting NYC. 

Led by former Lt. Governor Betsey McCaughey, former NYPD Commissioner Ray Kelly, former Deputy Mayor Joseph Lhota, former U.S Attorney General Michael Mukasey, and a number of business leaders, scholars and journalists who care deeply about America’s greatest city, this recently founded organization is going to take on our biggest challenge– stopping NYC’s decline and its potential return to the chaos and dysfunction of the pre-Giuliani years. 

It’s easy even for those of us who were around when Giuliani became mayor to remember how bad it was and, armed only with a powerful agenda and the force of his will, what a miraculous revolution he initiated.

In the eight years Rudy was mayor the record was astounding. Known for high crime with a record year of over 2000 murders during the Dinkins years, crime declined 56% overall under Giuliani, while FBI crime index reported a decrease of just 16% in the rest of the nation. Murders declined 66%, shootings 72%, rapes 45%, robberies 67%, burglary 68%, auto theft 73%, and so on. 

This was Giuliani’s most visible success. Sales, income and business taxes were dramatically cut, saving the people over $9 billion. Welfare offices were converted to job centers and 640,000 people were moved off public assistance and back into the workforce. The city workforce was cut by 20,000 non-uniformed full-time positions. And with areas like Times Square cleaned up, the dreaded squeegee men were squeezed out, and aggressive beggars and drug addicts were eliminated from public parks and spaces, the quality of life was significantly improved for every New Yorker. 

The success of the Giuliani years and then Mayor Bloomberg brought a feel-good attitude that allowed people to think about other issues. People were told we could afford to try some new ideas to give a break to normally good but socially struggling people who got caught up in the criminal justice system for low-level non-violent, mostly drug use related crimes.

Sadly, our elected representatives in Albany pulled a bait and switch and passed all kinds of criminal justice “reforms” that benefit both non-violent and violent criminals. Working with activist pro-criminal district attorneys, violent felons are now allowed to run free and commit crimes again and again without a second look from Albany.

Enter Save Our City. They are getting started by holding an event called a Public Safety Action Forum with the title “Stopping NYC’s Crime Epidemic” this Thursday, November 21st at the General Society Library at 20 West 44th Street in Manhattan starting at 6pm. 

Moderated by Betsy McCaughey and Ray Kelly with speakers that include Nicole Gelinas from the Manhattan Institute and former Assistant Queens DA James Quinn, it promises to be the beginning of a movement to restore NYC to the greatness it had and only recently lost.

And with any luck thanks to these people and others like them we just may walk into an election next year and see a real fight break out over the future of New York City.

Robert Hornak is a professional political consultant who has previously served as the Deputy Director of the Republican Assembly Leader’s NYC office and as Executive Director of the Queens Republican Party. He can be reached at rahornak@gmail.com and @roberthornak on X.