Trump's anti-NYC poses are fresh fodder for Mamdani
New York City mayoral contenders, from left, Zohran Mamdani; former Gov. Andrew Cuomo; incumbent Mayor Eric Adams; Curtis Sliwa; and Jim Walden. Credit: AP, Rod Lamkey, View Press, Marisol Diaz-Gordon
The second Trump administration has quickly established itself as governmentally menacing in the eyes of most of New York City’s elected officials. This became clear Wednesday in testimony during a low-key meeting in Albany of the New York City Financial Control Board, which has monitored the city’s complex budgeting for a half-century.
Punitive policies aimed at "sanctuary" cities, and "the potential of devastating cuts in federal grants" for social services, health care and education, threaten the city's multiyear budget plans, said a report cited by FCB fiscal analyst Michelle McManus. Trump’s immigration rules have depressed tourism, a major city revenue source.
Last year, Trump won only 30% of the city vote for president. Despite limited improvement over 2020, the president mainly carried the city’s few GOP strongholds. Nine months later, the city may well be en route to defiantly electing a self-described socialist, Democratic nominee Zohran Mamdani, for mayor. Trump support for another candidate might only benefit him.
Mamdani surged past former Gov. Andrew Cuomo to win the June primary. This week, a Siena College poll for the general election showed Mamdani shellacking Cuomo, who’s running as an independent, by 44% to 25%. Republican nominee Curtis Sliwa got 12%, and incumbent Mayor Eric Adams, who didn’t bother with the primary, 7%.
Sliwa, now 71, founded the Guardian Angels anti-crime group in the 1970s. He’s forgoing the red beret in most appearances. He’s popular in outer boroughs and suburbs, and no doubt generates more interest from his AM radio listeners than TikTok users.
Nowadays, Sliwa speaks more like a populistic alternative to Democrats and less like a comic shock-jock. His campaign analysis is spot-on: "Every day it’s Trump versus Zohran Mamdani, it’s a good day for Zohran Mamdani … In this situation, it doesn’t help if [Trump] intervenes in New York City."
But Trump’s intervention from afar is imminent — in several ways. He has threatened to effectively ride herd on the New York Police Department, perhaps with an "emergency" National Guard presence like what he imposed this week in Washington, D.C.
Even D.C. Mayor Muriel Bowser, who has avoided making Trump an enemy, saw fit to call the activation of 800 guardsmen "unsettling and unprecedented " — and part of an "authoritarian push."
And even Adams, who owes Trump for breaking all norms regarding the independence of federal prosecutors and nullifying felony corruption charges against the mayor in exchange for cooperating with all ICE operations, had no choice but to push back. "We don’t need anyone to come in and take over our law enforcement apparatus," Adams said. "We have the finest police department on the globe. People come here to be trained."
Mamdani, who is conducting a Five Boroughs Against Trump tour, has managed to make solidarity against an overreaching president a visceral rationale for his candidacy. He even cites news reports that Cuomo has been conferring with the president, which Cuomo denies.
"We see far too many parallels between Donald Trump and Andrew Cuomo," Mamdani said.
That may resonate among Democrats who soured on Cuomo four years ago and saw him pushed out of the governorship. But, of course, it doesn’t illuminate how Mamdani or anyone else would handle crucial public-safety, housing and environmental issues at City Hall. Trump’s role aside, that’s what the unsexy midsummer fiscal hearing in Albany was all about — the tantalizing question of where the life of the city is heading.
Real municipal issues, anyone? Maybe after Labor Day — when fall campaigns begin in earnest.
Columnist Dan Janison's opinions are his own.
Dan Janison is a member of the Newsday editorial board.
