15 hours ago
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Rightwing politicians and media issued grave warnings about Zohran Mamdani.
The election of the democratic socialist would, according to some, cause a spike in crime, and a reduction in freedom, prompting rich people to flee the city and leading to, in the words of one conservative thinktank, “collapse, dependency, and political repression” in the manner of “Venezuela” and “Cuba”.
The reality of Mamdani’s first few days in office have been rather different, as the 34-year-old has eschewed turning the city into the forewarned dystopian nightmare in favor of making progress on campaign promises like housing and rent, while also conducting minor municipal repairs.
After an inauguration on New Year’s Day that saw thousands of New Yorkers brave sub-zero temperatures to attend, Mamdani swiftly got to work on chipping away at perhaps the most ambitious mayoral agenda in modern history.
The issue of affordable housing formed the backbone of Mamdani’s campaign, and on his first day in office he created two taskforces aimed at creating new development: one will review city-owned land to see if it is suitable for construction, another aims to “identify and remove bureaucratic and permitting barriers” which slow down the building of homes.
The new mayor also announced an eye-catching series of “rental ripoff” hearings, where tenants will be able to testify about their living conditions – with a view to cracking down on negligent landlords. Later that week Mamdani issued an executive order that gave officials 45 days to bring city homeless shelters into compliance with health and safety codes, and similarly ordered officials to come up with a plan to improve conditions in New York’s jails – including ending solitary confinement.
A highlight, and a thumb in the eye to those who said Mamdani would be thwarted by the New York governor, Kathy Hochul, came when that pair released a plan on Thursday to provide free childcare for two-year-olds in New York City.
“A big win for the people of New York,” cheered the New York Democratic Socialists of America, which helped elect Mamdani. “A huge moment for parents,” said the advocacy group New Yorkers United for Child Care.
These are all measures Mamdani promised during his year-long campaign, so shouldn’t really have come as a surprise. Yet they have been conducted to a backdrop of howling from the right.
Fox News lamented that “Mamdani sides with tenants” in response to his plan to crack down on the worst New York landlords, while the rightwing New York Post displayed its objection to the rental ripoff hearings by quoting the head of a landlord lobbying group – hardly a sympathetic figure.
Mamdani further came under fire over his objection to the US swooping into Venezuela to capture its president – “an act of war and a violation of federal and international law”, the mayor termed it, and was criticized by the right after he called out the ICE killing of Renee Nicole Good on Wednesday.
The Post, as it was during Mamdani’s campaign, has been a constant critic. The Rupert Murdoch-owned tabloid seemed to misjudge the mood in criticising a Mamdani and Hochul’s childcare plan.
“Universal child care isn’t a win for ‘affordability;’ it’s an expensive, taxpayer-slamming boondoggle that doubles as a feast for fraudsters,” the Post cried in an editorial on Monday – completely ignoring polls that show two in three New York voters support not just the idea of free childcare, but also the prospect of paying for it by increasing taxes on the wealthy.
Elsewhere, Mamdani has been conducting small but meaningful fixes. Thousands of people cycle across the Williamsburg Bridge between Manhattan and Brooklyn every day, yet for years cyclists have been forced to negotiate a skatepark-esque dip at the Manhattan exit.
Pleas to fix the ramp have gone unheard for years, but on Tuesday Mamdani simply popped up at the Manhattan side of the bridge, with a spade and a crew of department of transport workers, and had the aggressive dip smoothed into a nice, gentle incline.
Even the New York Post couldn’t find anything bad to say about that.
