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The Nuclear Power Revolution Reaches New York

BQE Admin on July 2, 2025

Politcal Whisperer

By Robert Hornak

You know an important election is approaching when elected representatives abandon the long-standing political ideology of their party and actually take actions that many people consider long overdue. 

That very thing just happened. Gov. Kathy Hochul, despite generally strong opposition from democrats, just announced that she has directed The New York Power Authority, the utility owned by the state, to build a new nuclear reactor in upstate NY. This new facility will provide approximately half the energy that the 2.0 GW Indian Point facility provided before it was closed.

The closing of Indian Point is considered by most people to be the perfect storm of policy failure. It was ordered by the Cuomo-Hochul administration with no plan to make up for the loss of 25% of the supply being provided by Indian Point to NYC. The fallout was the loss of 1,000 good-paying jobs at the facility and economic activity at surrounding local businesses. 

Ultimately, three new natural gas fired power plants were built that replaced 1.8 GW of the energy lost. Nevertheless, energy costs in NY have been skyrocketing as demand grows. Rolling blackouts have become a constant summer concern as we just witnessed in south Queens where 300,000 homes lost power during a summer heatwave. 

Meanwhile, other states have embraced the new nuclear revolution and the new technologies that have been created in recent decades that are far superior to the tech used when most of our current nuclear facilities were built over 50 years ago. Just as we’ve witnessed with the space program, nobody is looking to use the old 1950’s tech that Indian Point was created with.

Hochul made sure to drive that point home in her announcement, proclaiming, “This is not your grandparents’ nuclear reactor. You’re not going to see this in a movie starring Jane Fonda,” in a reference to Fonda’s 1970’s movie The China Syndrome that nearly killed the nuclear power industry by fantastically fictionalizing the worst case scenario of a nuclear reactor meltdown. This was in spite of the reality that we never had a nuclear plant failure or a single death associated with nuclear energy in the U.S.

In recent years many states have realized the insanity of denying the potential of nuclear power to meet future energy needs and have overturned bans on new nuclear plants. Texas, struggling with its recent self-inflicted energy shortfall from a reliance on new, unreliable wind and solar plants, has just approved a $350 million fund to build new nuclear plants. 

Some of our largest tech companies, including Amazon and Google, who have incredible energy needs to power server farms have also begun investing in nuclear energy to power their operations.

And, of course, there were the recent Executive Orders signed by President Trump to speed up the process for the Nuclear Regulatory Agency to approve new permits and generally make building new nuclear reactors much faster. 

All this is welcome news to most New Yorkers who have been hit with massive electricity bills in recent years that are making living in NY unaffordable for many people. Crushingly high energy bills are just one more reason that there has been an exodus of people from New York to lower cost of living, low tax states like Florida.

But while welcome news, this just scratches the surface of the problem and the need. Many areas upstate are anxious to be the site for this new plant and the many good paying jobs and economic activity it will bring. Unemployment upstate has been abysmal and the exodus out of NY has hit upstate the hardest. 

This, however, should be a first step to making NY a leader in building a nuclear powered future. Communities all across upstate would be thrilled to get a reactor that would revive their local economy while providing desperately needed, reliable and affordable energy for downstate. 

This would be a win-win for everyone. Will Hochul embrace this long overdue win for New Yorkers and build on it or will this just be a one-time election season stunt? Maybe the pressure of reelection will make this more than just a gimmick. Time will tell.

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.

Mamdani Wants to be NYC’s Candyman not Mayor

BQE Admin on June 13, 2025

by Robert Hornak

It’s very fitting that Zohran Mamdani, the 33-year old assemblyman born in Uganda, is the child of a famous Hollywood director. He appears to be auditioning for the lead in a theoretical remake famous movie Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory rather than running for mayor of the biggest city in America. 

Mamdani, a self-proclaimed “Democratic Socialist” has staked his candidacy on a laundry list of giveaways, essentially candy that he plans to give the people of NYC in exchange for their vote, candy that he could only make appear with the magic of Hollywood. 

With the Democratic Primary less than two weeks away, Mamdani’s message has remained consistent. He plans to give away all of the following: 

  • Free buses
  • Free childcare
  • City-owned grocery stores selling food at wholesale prices
  • Create a Department of Community Safety to “prevent violence before it happens.”
  • A freeze in rent while working to bring rents down
  • Build 200,000 new affordable, stabilized rental units
  • Plus, a crackdown on “bad” landlords. 

He claims to know “exactly how to pay for it, too.” His brainstorm of original thinking is to, ready for it – raise taxes on corporations and the rich. Oh, and increase fine collection on landlords, the same people he plans to ask to build new housing that they won’t make any money from. 

This agenda is only realistic in the make believe world of a Hollywood movie. Mamdani doesn’t have control over almost his entire agenda. He might as well be advocating for space exploration and Middle East peace. But I guess he plans to make developers, landlords, grocery store owners, corporations and high income individuals an offer they can’t refuse?

But all these ideas can be refused and have been in the past. This is not the first time these ideas have been proposed. The buses are run by the MTA, a state agency. The mayor has no direct control over them or what the fare is. He could propose a NYC takeover of New York City Transit, the division of the MTA that runs city buses and subways. But then the mayor will be fully accountable for its performance. Not a bad idea, but that’s not what he is proposing. 

His free childcare proposal is to provide “free childcare for every New Yorker aged 6 weeks to 5 years” while lamenting that some women choose to stay home and raise their children rather than remain a taxpaying working in NYC’s infrastructure, while turning the raising of their children over to another worker who Mamdani pledges will be paid equivalent to NYC school teachers. And likely part of the union as well, expanding union leaders’ power and control over a long-broken educational system that, by the way, he has no plans to fix. 

This same dissection can be done for every one of his proposals. City-owned grocery stores will put the thousands of existing grocery stores, convenience stores and bodegas out of business. Putting tens of thousands of workers out of work, from clerks to managers to owners. 

Asking developers and landlords to build 200,000 new rental units that will be “affordable” while freezing the rent those same landlords can charge on existing units and aggressively fining them for every minor violation is not compatible. If developers can’t make money, they just won’t build rentals. It’s that simple. They are many other ways to increase supply to meet demand and try to stabilize the cost. Let’s also not forget the worst landlord in NYC is the city itself, with the worst conditions in public housing. But he has no plan to fix that either. 

Creating a Dept of Community Safety is just code for defund the police. No matter how candy-coated you make that proposal sound, that’s all it is. We have real public safety issues to address, but he has no plan for that either. 

And, of course, pay for it all by raising taxes. After they just finished telling us that tariffs are nothing more than a tax on business that raises the cost to consumers, Mamdani is proposing to raise the cost of goods and services on every New Yorker for everything they buy. 

The role Mamdani is really suited for is the Child Catcher in Chitty Chitty Bang Bang. He wants to entice us with his promise of sweets in a tempting ploy to trick us into an actual reality that traps everyone.

Robert Hornak is a veteran 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.

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