I have worked with a number of very successful candidates and politicians. The one really invaluable skill they all had in common was that they understood basic math. They knew that two plus two often leads to victory, and that two minus one — or three — usually leads to defeat. Addition, subtraction, division. Simple.
Unless, to paraphrase a line from “Top Gun,” “Your ego is writing checks your body can’t cash.”
There is no doubt that many New York City residents — as well as countless people around the country and world who now fear for that iconic city’s future — have been shaken by a recent Siena College poll showing that far-left socialist Zohran Mamdani leads the race to become the next mayor by 19 points over his next-closest opponent, former New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo. Behind them are Republican nominee Curtis Sliwa with 12 percent and incumbent Mayor Eric Adams with 7 percent.
Mamdani has the gift of basic math working massively in his favor. In this particular case, division. Without doing a thing, the cliché “divide and conquer” has been the most important campaign strategy in his quiver. Other than offering the socialist panacea of “a chicken in every pot” — free stuff to constituents who really know nothing about him — it is the one factor that may make him the next mayor of New York.
Mamdani doesn’t have to pay for it, focus-group it or expend any political capital. He simply has to sit back and prepare as the respective egos of Cuomo and Adams hand him the keys to Gracie Mansion — and the four years he will need to bring New York City to its knees.
Why? Because Cuomo and Adams are now engaged in an ego-fueled blinking contest to see who might exit the race first. That, or they secretly want Mamdani to win. Either way, it’s Mamdani with the Cheshire Cat-like smile.
This is proving to be an interesting election in that the winning candidate will be the one least despised by the voters. Each of the four major candidates have high negatives and elicit harsh criticism from various blocks of voters.
Sadly, forgotten in this high-profile contest between dueling egos are the millions of people in the city who are either barely getting by or suffering in the throes of dysfunction and despair — ironically enough, often caused by the failed policies of previous ego-driven mayors.
Many of the residents of New York City who are struggling daily with poverty, crime and lack of education for their children are Black or minority. Ah, but we are seemingly not allowed to talk about that. Many on the left — with a huge assist from Democratic leadership, the media, academia and teachers unions — have gamed it so if you even try to point out the failings of a major American city such as New York, Chicago, Los Angeles, Washington or Baltimore and who is running it, you risk being labeled a racist, bigot or a misogynist.
I don’t care what a mayor looks like or how they identify sexually. The only thing I care about is the suffering of millions of constituents. Life for those people is beyond brutal in many cases — an irrefutable fact you almost never hear about, because that would run counter to the various narratives of the left’s noise machine.
For example, let’s look at another major American city that is a poster child for failure, massive dysfunction and turning its back on those most in need: Chicago.
A city in which, as I have pointed out in the past, more than 40,000 men, women and children — almost all minority and from the inner city — have been murdered over the last six decades. Extrapolate that number across multiple American inner cities and you have our nation’s greatest failing … ever. Except, “shhhh,” once again, you are not supposed to talk about it.
New York City is Chicago on steroids. It has multiple — fixable — problems and life-crushing emergencies across the five boroughs. Unfortunately for those most at-risk inhabitants, many of the people who can help them are entitled elites who exist in bubbles of luxury and safety floating far above the “unwashed masses” of the city.
Two of those elites are Cuomo and Adams. To them, it seems as if the title of “mayor” is yet one more trophy they can amass, serving either as a potential stepping stone to higher office or to private sector appointments and riches once the last term is complete.
In the meantime, those millions of desperately hurting New Yorkers ignored by the elites had better prepare themselves. If (when) Mamdani wins, things will get much worse.
“Free stuff” is the false promise to grab the vote of those New Yorkers. Once Mamdani secures that vote, it will only be about what is best for him and his socialist movement going forward. Those at-risk residents won’t even be a fleeting memory.
Douglas MacKinnon is a former White House and Pentagon official.
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