The radicals are now in charge of NYC. Mayor-elect Zohran Mamdani has unveiled his transition team and voters who agreed with his diagnosis that “everything is too expensive” will now have to live with the anti-police activists, anti-merit educrats and anti-Zionist radicals running the show. The moderate center is in for a shock.
Take Alex Vitale, Mamdani’s “safety advisor” and author of The End of Policing, who seeks to abolish police departments, viewing them as “a tool of white supremacy.” Vitale will collaborate with convicted armed robber Mysonne Linen on Mamdani’s public safety plan. They support Mamdani’s plan to replace the NYPD with a “Department of Community Safety” for a range of police calls. They also reject federal law enforcement assistance – presumably including the successful efforts that recently cleared rival drug gangs from Washington Square Park and the ICE raids that cleaned up Canal Street.
The education committee includes retreads from the Bill de Blasio era, such as former Deputy Chancellors Josh Wallack and Karin Goldmark, a Park Slope resident who promoted de Blasio’s signature diversity plan in Brooklyn’s District 15 – yet sent his own son to Manhattan’s District 2 screened schools, despite his intense criticism of their merit-based admissions. Goldmark played politics with Yeshiva students’ education by delaying a report that showed students were not receiving the “substantially equivalent” education the law required in 39 schools, and got caught red-handed. Both promise a return to raw politics over quality education for public school families. Equity advocates are also returning, including Zakiyah Shaakir-Ansari, who serves on the Youth and Education Transition Advisory Committee, and admires convicted cop-killer Assata Shakur and supported every effort to rid NYC public schools of meritocracy and educational excellence.
Mamdani’s true North lies in his “anti-Zionism” allies, many of whom offer little of the plausible deniability he employs to frame their views as anything other than outright “from the river to the sea” anti-Semitism. Familiar figures include Linda “Nothing is creepier than Zionism” Sarsour, who shares Mamdani’s unbridled animus towards Israel’s right to exist as a Jewish state. The BDS contingent is particularly strong: Waleed Shahid, a “political strategist” who portrays Zionism as a capitalist conspiracy; Tamika Mallory, “equity committee co-chair” and defender of Holocaust denier Louis Farrakhan; Hassaan Chaudhary, a communications aide who celebrates anti-Israel violence and promotes classic antisemitic tropes; and Nerdeen Kiswani and Yasmin Bawa of Within Our Lifetime (WOL), known for disruptive protests, bridge occupations, and calls for “global intifada,” both serving on the public safety transition committee.
Mamdani won the election and earned the right to assemble his team. His campaign was nearly flawless, propelling him from relative obscurity to mayor of one of the world’s most important cities, but his radicalism will have a cost – and presents a unique opportunity for Republicans in NYC.
Millions were spent trying to defeat him, and consequently more than a million voters – mostly Democrats and independents – did not vote for him. Andrew Cuomo’s independent “Fight and Deliver” line effectively served as an “Anyone But Mamdani” option, drawing Democrats, Republicans and independents, many of whom held their noses to vote for Cuomo, primarily to block Mamdani.
Those voters – many lifelong Democrats who habitually support the party – represent a tremendous opportunity for Republicans in New York City and statewide, if the GOP awakens to their discontent and offers a platform and candidates that can speak to the Mamdani-era politically homeless voters – who just had a practice run voting off of the Democrat line. More New Yorkers voted for Cuomo than for past mayors like Giuliani, de Blasio, or Adams and though he lost, Cuomo demonstrated the depth of opposition to Mamdani’s vision. New York is better than rich-kid socialism and intersectional grievance studies as a governing philosophy and many New Yorkers know it.
One clear voting divide was between longtime residents and recent arrivals: the longer one has lived in New York, the more likely they were to support Cuomo; newcomers (five years or less) overwhelmingly backed Mamdani. The long term native New Yorkers are the voters a revitalized GOP needs to court.
The transition team’s extremism foreshadows challenging times ahead for New York City, but they also offer NYC a chance to reset. The question is will a real opposition emerge?
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