Transcript of New York on the Brink: The Race That Could Radically Reshape the Left

A series of significant elections are taking place on November fourth, but none have drawn as much attention as the contest for mayor of New York City. The race pits a once popular Democrat governor who's fallen from grace against an upstart state assemblyman who calls himself a Democratic socialist, but whose critics call him a radical Communist. Also on the ticket is a Republican who's been under fire to withdraw in order to save the city from far policies.

In this episode, we sit down with National Review writer, Caroline Downey, to discuss the state of the race in this final stretch. I'm Daily Wire executive editor, John Bickley with Georgia Howe. This is a weekend edition of Morning Wire.

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Joining us to discuss the three-way race for mayor of New York City between Zoran Mamdani, Andrew Cuomo, and Curtis Sliwa, is National Review writer, Caroline Downey. Caroline, great to have you on the show. Thanks for coming on.

Thank you for having me.

We're just a couple of days away from this New York mayor's election. It's one of the most watched mayoral races I can remember in recent elections. Zoran Mamdani seems primed to win, but he's also facing some last-minute headwinds. That includes House Republicans urging the DOJ to investigate him, even possibly revoke his US citizenship. Let's start there. Is there any legitimate chance of these investigations impacting things?

I'm not 100% confident of that, especially with the final home stretch of the race being right now. But I do think that it's worth investigating, honestly, some of the dark money ties to Zora Mamdani's campaign. We know that there's radical Islamic people who have been involved in his campaign or adjacent to it. He was recently seen campaigning with a unindicted co-conspirator in the World Trade Center bombings. We know that George Souros and the Open Society Foundations are very much... Their network is involved in the Zora Mamdani campaign. I have questions there because New York City, We still are haunted by the memory of 9/11, that terrorism is no joke here. We like to pretend that, Oh, New York City, the mayoral race, how could it be involved in international politics? It's about domestic issues, and that's partially true. Cost of living and The improving quality of life here for actual local residents is important. But New York City has always been involved in foreign affairs because the United Nations is here. It has been the target of terrorist attacks in the past. We can't escape what goes on outside of the United States. It comes to New York City because it is a commercial hub, and it is also a diplomatic hub.

Speaking of the foreign nature of a lot of the politics of New York, the recent demographic and voting data in the city is pretty amazing. The percentage of foreign-born voters there and how much of a percentage Mamdani, specifically, is drawing from that population. What have you seen in terms of those numbers?

Yeah, there is very transparently a large foreign-born population here. It's obvious. It's obvious to the plain eye. I think about how AOC was stumping for Zora and Mamdani recently, and she was touting out all of these statistics about immigrant groups that have fled war-torn countries throughout recent history to find havens in New York City. She mentioned one in particular that no one in mainstream media has fact-checked her on, and that was Jews during the Holocaust. She said that New York's also been a sanctuary for Jews during World War II, during the Holocaust. That's actually not true. It's the fact that FDR, under his administration, closed the doors to a lot of the victims of the Third Reich. Maybe had he not done that under that Democratic administration, we'd actually have a higher Jewish population in New York City that might be able to counter the fact that the foreign-born vote is very much driving a lot of Zora Mamdani's momentum, in addition to the Gen Z transplants like myself, who have no connection to 9/11. They have no memory of 9/11. And they do believe that Mamdani will deliver the Santa Claus laundry list of promises that he won't actually be able to fulfill because Kathy Hochul has already said, I'm not going to raise taxes and the richest individual is here because she knows that that's the base that she needs to pay for a lot of the city's priorities.

If Zora and Mamdani did get his way and raise those taxes, they'd flee to Florida and Texas in a heartbeat.

Now, he's attempted to walk back or soften some of those policies. Do you think that rebrand is working? And do you think that most New Yorkers in general know how radical his proposals for policing were to begin with?

He's trying to appease some of those undecided, I think even Democratic voters who don't like Andrew Cuomo. It's a very unsavory choice. Obviously, his past has been riddled with corruption. He's not exactly a gem of a candidate on the Democratic side either, but Mondani is so egregiously radical. I do think that he's maybe reaching some of them, but I also think that his past has continued to haunt him. There are clips. We have the evidence. We have the receipts. We know what Zora Mandani has said in the past about not only refusing to condemn globalized the antifada, but actually saying he wants to seize the means of production. He does want a socialist utopia. There are those who say, Well, he's not actually a bona fide socialist. He's not a Communist. He just says these things because he thinks they're fancy labels and fun. But no, he wishes that there would be a socialist revolution across the country, but he's not actually going to implement that, as I said, because the Democratic governor, Kathy Hochul, won't allow him to do that. So maybe there are liberal voters in New York City out there who are saying, It's going to be benign at the end of the day.

Mamdani, he talks a big game. He's totally an ideologue, progressive ideologue, and he is cozy with radical Islamism. But he's not going to get to actually impose most of this because, first of all, he's got to navigate the city hall bureaucracy. I'm not so sure he's prepared to do that. And also, as I said, the governorship he has to go through. And there's some question as to whether maybe at least Stefanic wins that seat one day, and then he's going to have to deal with her. He might be a neutered mayor at the end of the day, or one could hope.

In fact, Cuomo's argument is that, look, this guy has never held a real leadership position. He's not up for the job. In some ways, you're saying there's a hidden message here that could work to Momdonny's advantage. People might not really fear him enough because they assume he doesn't actually know how to cover it. Now, in terms of policing, there is a lot of power that a mayor does have with police, including damaging morale, if nothing else. If he does win, what do you think he's going to do with the police Department?

I am most fearful about Mamdani's promises, or I should say threats, when it comes to crime, law and order, and safety, because he does have some power We saw how under Mayor Eric Adams, this is a former law enforcement officer. So he was much more sensitive to the concerns of police, and he wanted to empower them more than his predecessor, which was De Blasio, which I do not remember that era fondly at all. That's when I moved to New York City, and it was bleak. And you wouldn't take the subway alone as a single woman. No, that's playing Russian roulette with your life. Would not recommend that. But if Mamdani gets his way, then yeah, there's going to be social workers addressing mad lunatics in public transit. How are they going to de-escalate that situation? I have not a clue because you need a weapon as a deterrent to stop that threat. I've had some close calls in New York City myself walking alone. I tell all my friends, because you are basically a lamb going into the slaughter under a Democratic mayor, like Mamdani, if you take public transit. I don't mean that to be fear mongering, but to say that they're not just with that, but also at the broader state level with the progressive prosecutors and the bail reform.

It's a perfect storm for you to be a sitting dock, and you just shouldn't take any chances like that. I am afraid that Mondani will disarm cops, strip them of their lethality, which is, like I said, the only thing that really is a deterrent to crime and lawlessness. And we're going to have a lot more are lunatics, emotionally disturbed people running about the streets. And that's a whole other thing, institutionalization, because New York has a problem with mentally ill homeless, but also serial career criminals who have been let back out to the streets so many times and are allowed to terrorize, especially young women, again.

Now, you mentioned Eric Adams. He was a flawed candidate for re-election. He was unpopular for a lot of reasons we've covered on this show. But he was a centrist Democrat. Do you think the rise of someone like Momdani ultimately might show that Democrats are rejecting a centrist like Adams? Like you said, for example, it's been an unsafe city for a while now under Adams. So ultimately, are they blaming those mainstream Democrats for the state of affairs?

Well, I think it's important to note that it's not necessarily that New York City is a microcosm of larger Democratic Party politics and how the Old Guard is being pushed out, those dinosaurs are being replaced by the new and rebellious squad, younger, new blood talent. Because the New York City case has always been very different and distinct. As you said, it's high foreign-born population. 34% of the voter base, I believe, is under the age of 35. It's a pretty significant percentage of voters here that are very young. Many of them are transplants. They're coming right out of college from other places, also millennials. They have these idealistic views of the world. I think a big part of the youth momentum for Mom is the disenchantment with the economy and cost of living. Honestly, it's the overproduction of elites. That's the problem here, is that there's too many want to be elites who didn't achieve what they thought they were going to achieve, and they're saddled with student loan debt. Here's this guy who looks like them and talks like them, and he's really charismatic, and he's got great graphic design, and he's promising to lighten their load and to give them the acclaim and accomplishment that they always hoped they'd have.

They always thought that they would have achieved X, Y, Z like their parents did by now, and they haven't. So there's that element. But I just think New York, how many times has the mayor of New York gone on to national politics, gone on to be a serious contender on the democratic platform stage? It doesn't happen that often, right? Because the country knows that New York City is a weird case. It doesn't represent the rest of America, the heartland and the rust bout. No, it's isolated. It's a bubble, and they like it that way. If they want... I hate to say it because I live here, but we may have to live through this ridiculous chapter to truly learn the lesson.

Yeah, and if Mamdani is actually able to get some of his aggressive policies through, I think the fallout will be pretty quick, as we've seen in other cities that have tried similar things. Caroline, thank you so much for talking with us today.

Thank you so much. Great to see you guys.

That was Caroline Downey, and this has been a Weekend Edition of MorningWire.