Political Whisperer
By Robert Hornak
The Mamdani agenda continues to collapse but you’d never know it listening to the Mayor crow over anything he can manage to count as a win. Almost immediately, Mamdani is flip-flopping on a number of his campaign promises. He reversed his position on ending mayoral control of schools.
After the disaster of (surprise) snow in January, he changed his policy on not clearing homeless encampments. His promise to drop Adamsadministration lawsuits against the expansion of city housing voucherslasted as long as it took for him to be sworn in. On policing, he flipped on dismantling the gang database and the NYPD Strategic Response Group, and he essentially gutted his proposal to create a Department of Community Safety.
Those, of course, were choices he made for whatever reason. But his wins, or what heís claiming as wins, expose his real lack of experience. His first claim for a win was having Gov. Hochul dedicate statewide funding for what he announced as an ìunprecedented investmentî in affordable, universal childcare for children under five. This really sounds like a win for Hochul.
The problem is that it only covers 2,000 children starting in the fall, with actual universal care not achieved for a full four years.
Next, Mamdani made a huge announcement for the $70 million plan for city-owned supermarkets he promised. The first one, and only one they are announcing now, will be open sometime in 2027, and for the overblown cost of $30 million for the one location. He promised all five will be open in the next four years, but with no specific plan, no update on cost or explanation of why this one location will eat almost 50% of the total budget.
Mamdani crowed about it as a big win, but once again he terribly underdelivered. Then there was the Mamdani mantra to “tax the rich,” the raison dÍtre of his campaign and his panacea to close the $7 billion gap in his budget and pay for all his giveaways. That was basically scuttled, first by Hochul who informed him that Albany would not be passing an income tax increase, and then by the City Council who knifed his backup plan to raise property taxes.
But, just as Mamdani was about to take a big shot on the chin, Gov Hochul once again came to the rescue and proposed a special tax on people with second homes in NY valued at $5 million and up. According to Jonathan Miller, CEO of appraisal company Miller Samuel, approximately 70% of properties in NYC that sold for $5 million or more are second homes.
With this announcement Mamdani got as giddy as a schoolgirl, posting a video where he was essentially taunting his critics and those he appears to dream about hitting with his taxation scheme. However, once again, this tax is only projected to raise about $500 million, a far cry from the $7 billion shortfall in just the coming fiscal year.
If this was a win at all itís only a win in theory not in practice. Now desperate to claim a win in the hopes of silencing his critics, Mamdani has sunk to bragging about filling 100,000 potholes in his first 100 days, putting out a release that boasts this is “the highest number of potholes filled in the first 100 days of a year in more than a decade” and claiming this “underscores the administration’s commitment to tackling the everyday quality-of-life issues New Yorkers face.”
You know you’ve sunk to a real low when the best you can say is you’re better than Eric Adams and Bill de Blasio at filling potholes.
To paraphrase comedian Chris Rock, this I what youíre supposed to do as mayor of NYC. What do you want, a cookie? You don’t brag because you meet expectations. You only get to brag when you exceed expectations, and the only expectation that Mamdani appears to be exceeding is that he is not up to the job of running the biggest city in America.
Robert Hornak is a veteran political consultant who previously served as 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.
