Eric, We Hardly Knew Ya

New York City Mayor Eric Adams withdrew from the New York mayoral campaign.

Adams, only the city's second black mayor, started out with great promise when he took over as mayor of the nation's largest city in January 2022.  A former police officer, he ran on making the city safer and seemed to have more of a purpose than the well-meaning but rudderless Bill DeBlasio.  But Adams got bogged down in personal and public scandals that led him to make many a devil's bargain with Trump in order to evade prosecution for federal charges of bribery, fraud, and soliciting illegal foreign campaign donations.  The deal between Trump and Adams essentially allowed Trump to have more leeway over New York in his plan to detain undocumented immigrants.   

Somehow, everyone had forgotten that cops can be crooked too.

Adams, who hoped to be elected to a second term as mayor, saw the writing on the wall and realized that Zohran Mamdani is clearly on the path to becoming the city's 111th mayor (unless Andrew Cuomo can find a way to short-circuit him, which seems unlikely at the moment).  He bowed out  but his name will still be on the ballot, a circumstance of embarrassment not just for Adams but or anyone who votes for him.  Even if he never goes to prison for his alleged crimes (and he will remain presumed innocent, because once the charges were dropped, he no longer had to worry about being proven guilty), he's already paid his debt to society by surrendering his credibility and his political career.   

Cuomophobia (Or, Hail Zohran, Our Fearless Leader!)

Not since Samuel Tilden prosecuted Boss Tweed and proved him guilty of corruption has there been a political earthquake of such great magnitude in New York City.  New York State Assemblyman Zohran Mamdani, who is 33 years old and a Muslim of South Asian origin, won the Democratic nomination for mayor of New York.  Mamdani is a democratic socialist who is so progressive he makes Bernie Sanders look like a Tea Partier.  Among his policy proposals are municipally owned grocery stores for underserved communities, a "30 by '30" minimum wage increase - $30 an hour by 2030 - free bus service for the poor, and sanctuary for non-heterosexuals.

Well, all of the establishment leaders in both parties in New York State are appalled since Mamdani defeated former New York State governor and political hasbeen Andrew Cuomo - called the future of the Democratic Party by Defector columnist David Roth, who clearly hasn't been paying attention to Cuomo's past - for the Democratic mayoral nomination.  Top Democrats who supported Cuomo are second-guessing themselves and predicting impending doom for the party.  Republican leaders in New York State and in Washington, D.C. fear a hostile Islamic takeover of the city fueled by state socialism that would make the Big Apple a lemon for business owners, middle-class taxpayers, and Jewish residents (Islamophobia always takes precedence with Republicans over their own anti-Semitism).  

Progressives looking forward to the general election in New York City had better not get too confident - not yet, anyway.  Incumbent Mayor Eric Adams is still standing for re-election as an independent, and there is a precedent for a New York City mayor winning a second term as an independent after being dumped by his own party - John Lindsay, who was disowned by the Republicans but managed to win re-election without party backing in 1969.  Also, Republicans and center-right independents could pull off the same hat trick that Republicans and center-right independents pulled in Connecticut in 2006.  When U.S. Senator Joe Lieberman failed to win the Democratic nomination for a fourth Senate term that year, losing to Ned Lamont, the Republicans put up a token nominee while backing Lieberman's independent general election campaign.  Lieberman was re-elected, and Connecticut progressives who backed Lamont had to lick their wounds.  Substitute "Adams" for Lieberman and "Mamdani" for Lamont, and you get the GOP/establishment Democratic Big Apple playbook.  True, Republican mayoral nominee Curtis Sliwa, the founder of the Guardian Angels vigilante group and conservative talk-radio host, is no token candidate, but a coalition of Republicans and establishment Democrats might pivot to Adams if they think Adams can prevail in a three-way campaign.

(Aside:  Ned Lamont was elected governor of Connecticut in 2018 and re-elected in 2022.  He is the rarest of birds - a Democrat who was allowed to make a comeback after an electoral defeat.)

So what do I care, right? I mean, this won't affect the gubernatorial election in my state of New Jersey, right?  But it may.  Don't think that Republican gubernatorial nominee Jack Ciattarelli won't exploit the Mamdani nomination against Mikie Sherrill, his Democratic opponent, for his own purposes, when many commuters to Manhattan live in the state's northern counties and a Mamdani administration might have an effect on commuters through issues like congestion pricing.  Ciattarelli already has a head start by having the opportunity to ask voters to imagine a Sherrill administration working in concert with the mayor of New Jersey's largest city, Newark - Ras Baraka.  Imagine how many times Jack will mention the mayor of Newark - "Ras Bar-AKA!"  By the time November comes, Mayor Baraka will wish his father hadn't changed the family name from Jones.  So think of how Jack can exploit the name of Zohran Mamdani.  

It's very easy to demonize anyone whose surname ends in a vowel, as Ciattarelli's immigrant forbears realized when they came here from Italy.  But in New York City, the only person with a vowel at the end of his surname that got rejected was Andrew Cuomo.  Cuomo was rightly seen as an aging political warhorse out on one last pillage for power in an effort to redeem himself after his sex scandals and the COVID nursing-home scandal by asking to be elected the chief executive of five of New York State's counties (the NYC boroughs) after having been chief executive of all 62 of them.  He is a tried-and-true centrist and a transactional politician, unlike his revered and esteemed father, and he's as megalomaniacal as his brother Chris is self-important.  He offered nothing for New York City's beleaguered residents suffering from the high cost of living and the higher cost of Mayor Adams' stupidity.  Zohran Mamdani did offer something.  

It remains to be seen how NYC independents will vote in November, as New York is a closed-primary state that allows only registered party members to participate. And Curtis Sliwa will still likely garner a lot of support.  But the Democrats ought to remember that not every election campaign for office should have the same type of nominee.  Whether progressive or moderate, all Democrats are pretty much to the left of the GOP these days.  As a center-left Democrat, Mikie Sherrill, who has been blessed with extreme-right Republican electoral opponents that make her look more liberal than she is to progressive voters, is a perfect fit as the Democratic gubernatorial nominee for New Jersey.  As a Democrat more firmly in the middle of the road - so much, she can stand in the middle of the road without touching either yellow stripe with her feet - Abigail Spanberger is the perfect Democratic gubernatorial nominee for Virginia, a former Confederate state becoming more Northern than Southern thanks to an influx of newcomers from the Northeast and a growing realization of the state's geographical position north of 36°30′.  And as an arch-liberal, Zohran Mamdani is the perfect mayoral candidate for New York City, a city populated by immigrants, artists, models, photographers, progressive white women, black women, Hispanics, Asian-Americans, non-heterosexuals . . . I think I just described the guests I always meet at model Nancy Donahue's and hairdresser Harry King's annual parties.  😊

A Turkey of a Mayor

Eric Adams assumed the position of Mayor of the City of New York promising to do something about crime.

And he did.  It seems he got involved it. 

The federal government indicted Mayor Adams for seeking and accepting improper gifts, including luxury travel and illegal campaign contributions from wealthy foreigners.  Some of those foreigners were from Turkey, who bribed him an enormous sum of money to get a large building in Manhattan approved for the new Turkish consulate in New York.  And the mayor was even accused of overruling the Fire Department of New York - who know a thing or two about the dangers of fire in large buildings, particularly two very tell buildings in the Financial District - when the building the Turks wanted to set up shop in failed fire-code inspection.  

Oh yeah, this had been going on since Adams was Brooklyn borough president. His alleged undisclosed travel dates back to 2016, totaling more than $100,000.

Mayor Adams deserves the presumption of innocence until he's proven guilty in a court of law.  But with so many issues besetting New York - an affordable-housing shortage, a larger migrant population, education - how can Adams serve effectively as mayor and still seek his vindication in a court of law at the same time? 

Brooklyn Subway Shooting

The shooting at a subway station in Brooklyn yesterday pretty much shattered the idea that any city in the United States - especially New York City - is or can be safe, especially in this era of COVID.

The gunman wounded several people in the subway station and deployed a smoke device as a distraction.  Despite the nature of the attack, this is, for now, not being viewed as a terrorist attack. 

I'm not sure I'd feel safe going into the city right now, and I know Mayor Eric Adams is doing the best he can to fight violent crime, but under present circumstances, it's clearly not good enough.

Right now, any plans I had to go into the New York for the first time in nearly three years are seriously in doubt.

Election Inspection

The Democrats look like they could go back to going full Whig.  After the election returns this past Tuesday, how could you not come to that conclusion?

Terry McAuliffe's nomination for a second nonconsecutive term to oppose Republican nominee Glenn Youngkin (above) was one of those classic bad ideas that was plausible enough that no one would challenge or question such a preposterous idea.  McAuliffe got the nod to run again not so much for his record as governor from 2014 to 2018 but because of his position in Democratic insider politics and his fundraising ability.  Also, he's a friend of the Clintons.  And he seemed to feel as entitled to the governor's mansion in Virginia as the Clintons did to the White House.   But he screwed up in saying that parents did not have a say in how children were educated - revealing his ignorance of elected school boards - giving Youngkin a perfect issue to run on.  And when Youngkin responded in kind by suggested with a campaign commercial that Toni Morrison's "Beloved" shouldn't be taught in AP literature (though the ad did not mention the book by title), McAuliffe couldn't even use it to his advantage.   President Biden was chastised by some pundits by deflecting blame for the Democrats' loss in Virginia from his inability to get his agenda passed; McAuliffe's foibles as a candidate suggest that Biden was right.  He was such a lousy candidate he took the Virginia Democratic Party down with him; it appears that the party lost control of the lower house of the state legislature.  Two of the new Republican members took part in the January 6 insurrection.

(By the way, if you go back to my post from this past Monday and make a sentence from the first word of each sentence in it, you'll see that I called Virginia right.)

Biden certainly didn't have anything to do with the surprise result in New Jersey, where Phil Murphy won re-election as governor by far less than expected.  Murphy ran on his progressive record and didn't shy away from his policies but he failed to enunciate his accomplishments as much as he should have and he completely ignored the issue his Republican opponent Jack Ciattarelli hammered away on repeatedly during the campaign - property taxes.  It turns out a lot of people still care about that!  Murphy, relatively speaking, was one of the big winners among the Democrats this past Tuesday.  He stays in office with most of his agenda in place and he's in a position to secure his legacy, and he is now the first Democrat to win a second term as governor of New Jersey since Brendan Byrne in 1977.  But he should have won by more.

The disappointing results Democrats had in Virginia and New Jersey were local, but nationally they still have a problem.  Republicans blame the Democrats' losses on the Democratic agenda.  Listening to them, you'd think nobody in America wants paid family leave, expanded Medicare coverage, or universal nursery school.  (Hey, I just called Joe Manchin a nobody!)  Well, it makes perfect sense that voters rebelled against the Democratic agenda - because a lot of voters thought the Democrats wanted to rename schools named for Founding Fathers in honor of black nationalists, teach "critical race theory" in those same schools, tear down statues of Jefferson and Washington, and, oh yes, defund the police.  Because even when they talk about paid family leave, Medicare dental coverage and all those other nice things, they still can't articulate their agenda in clear-cut language, and what they do say gets drowned out by so-called "woke" members of the Squad.  So it makes sense the the biggest winner among Democrats, New York Mayor-elect Eric Adams, is an ex-cop who would rather defend the police than defund them.  (Guardian Angels founder Curtis Sliwa, his Republican opponent, is a cat lover and has sixteen cats at home; that was the only thing I liked about him.)     

Oh yeah, it's so obvious that woke-ism is so out of place in These States - even in our major-league cities - that Buffalo mayor Byron Brown was re-elected as a write-in candidate after losing the Democratic nomination to a self-described socialist!  

But the muddled message wasn't the only issue - so was the fact that the Democratic Congress was supposed to deliver the goods and spent much of the past year arguing with each other.  In the end, they were the only people who were "woke" on Tuesday.

The Democrats still have a chance to cut their losses in the 2022 midterms, if they prove they can govern and pass legislation that will help the people.  Last night, they got off to a good but troubled start; the House finally passed President Biden's infrastructure bill, which now goes to the White House for the President's signature.  But distrust remains over the reconciliation bill, and there's a long way to go to get that settled.  Moderates, however, have committed themselves to voting on it ,later, so maybe we can still build back better.  And maybe get voting rights legislation passed.  Or, we could end up seeing a Republican Congress in 2023 passing a whole new round of tax cuts.  

And by the way, speaking of voting rights . . . voting rights were expanded in Virginia and New Jersey, and look what happened. 

Oh yeah, congratulations to Michelle Wu for becoming the first elected female mayor and mayor of color of Boston.