Mamdami won

[conuly]

I haven't had a chance to look at any other election results yet, but that's cheering. I do think he's vastly overpromised and will regret it - among other things, free buses requires first wresting the MTA back from Albany, and that's not the job of a single term - but it's not like I liked any of the other candidates.

Especially Cuomo, for many reasons, but most especially because you just can't trust somebody who thinks the best career move after governor is mayor.

Comments

[hudebnik]

Mamdani has a lot of ideas. Some of them won't work. Some of them will work. Some of them might work if he had the power to enact them, which he doesn't.

I didn't vote for him primarily because of those ideas, or even because Sliwa and Cuomo were dreadful. I voted for him because he listens to people who don't already agree with him. He started his campaign by going to neighborhoods that had voted for Trump in 2024 and asking average people on the street why. When he won the Democratic nomination, he knew that the business community was terrified of having a "Democratic Socialist" as mayor, so he met with as many NYC business leaders as possible to find out what they feared and what they hoped for.

Now that he's won the general election, his transition team are, and presumably his appointees will be, largely people more experienced than him, experts in their respective fields. Most of them are politically progressive, but fairly mainstream. This is unlikely to be a disaster.

He will, of course, face more opposition from the White House than Adams, Cuomo, or Sliwa would have faced. With him as Mayor, NYC will not get Federal grant money that might have actually been delivered to Mayor Adams, Cuomo or Sliwa... but that says more about the occupant of the White House than the occupant of Gracie Mansion. With him as Mayor, NYC is somewhat more likely to have ICE/ATF/military raids like those in Chicago last month, and somewhat more likely to have National Guard and/or regular military patrolling the streets... but that was fairly likely to happen no matter who won the election.