November 5, 2025

ROSS DOUTHAT: Mamdani Is at the Top of the Cyclone But It’s All Downhill From Here.

We’ve seen this play out before, and not just with mayors. New York voters elect someone on the far left and the whole country is obliged to get excited about them. It was true of AOC obviously and while she could be running for the Senate soon, she’s probably the exception that proves the rule. Other lefties who’ve made a splash recently haven’t been as successful.

Jamaal Bowman won a seat in congress in 2020 and was inaugurated in the squad. Cori Bush was elected in Missouri that year too. Both of them were examples of the young, vibrant left that had defeated stale Democratic incumbents. They were going to shake up Washington and be part of a resurgent left-wing.

And now, just a few years later, both of them are gone. The original four members of the squad—AOC, Ilhan Omar, Ayanna Pressley, and Rashida Tlaib — are still around but their numbers aren’t growing and their impact seems pretty limited.

Mamdani’s best outcome, according to Douthat, is that the complete novice at any kind of work manages New York City so well that he, like AOC, can move on to some statewide office. But if things don’t go perfectly, he could just as easily wind up like Bill de Blasio, another leftist mayor who promised voters the moon and wound up disliked by most of them, to the point that he couldn’t win a seat in congress.

Mamdani’s problems have already started.

FDNY Commissioner Robert Tucker tendered his resignation Wednesday, the morning after Zohran Mamdani’s mayoral election victory at the polls, the Daily News has learned.

In a letter to Mayor Adams sent less than 12 hours after Mamdani’s win over former Gov. Andrew Cuomo and GOP candidate Curtis Sliwa, Tucker announced his last day will be Dec. 19…

Tucker, who is Jewish and a Zionist, felt he wouldn’t mesh well with Mamdani, a Democratic socialist, and his team, the source said.

Jim Geraghty adds, “I don’t want to soft-pedal the amount of damage Mamdani can do as mayor. But in the coming months and years, he is likely to be frustrated with how little unilateral power he has as mayor:”

The mayor cannot unilaterally raise taxes in the city. The New York City Council sets property tax rates, and the personal income tax rates are set by state law and administered and collected by the New York State Department of Taxation and Finance. Any tax hikes will have to be approved by the state legislature in Albany. Mamdani gets sworn into office on New Year’s Day; Governor Kathy Hochul and members of the New York state senate and state assembly are up for reelection in November 2026. None of them will be particularly eager to raise taxes in an election year.

Mamdani wants to make it free to ride city buses. Bus fares are controlled by the Metropolitan Transit Authority board. The MTA structure is . . . complicated, but the bottom line is that the mayor has limited influence over it:

Legally, it is an independent corporation, run by a board of directors. As the MTA told its bond investors as recently as February, it is “a corporate entity separate and apart from the state, without any power of taxation.” The MTA board has 14 voting members — six recommended by the governor directly, including the MTA’s chairperson and CEO, and four recommended to the governor by the mayor (the remainder come from other downstate New York counties) and approved by the state senate.

For Mamdani to establish his city-run grocery stores, he can use the city’s Economic Development Corporation, which already runs six New York City public markets.

Given how hamstrung Mamdani could be in office, America’s Newspaper of Record notes that America’s best-known Communist slacker may not have thought through his career ambitions sufficiently:

Posted at 4:30 pm by Ed Driscoll