Republicans shouldn’t celebrate the rise of Zohran Mamdani—a socialist likely to become the next Mayor of New York City—as providing an easy foil to paint Democrats as too radical for voters elsewhere to trust.
New York isn’t a city the GOP can truly capture.
Republicans have become mayor—Rudy Giuliani governed from 1994 to 2001—but must deal with left-leaning city councils and state legislatures.
GOP mayors become more liberal than Republicans elsewhere—that’s one reason Giuliani failed to win the 2008 Republican presidential nomination.
Other Republicans, Michael Bloomberg—2002 to 2013—and John Lindsay—1966 to 1973—eventually became Democrats.
The city is in a dead heat with San Francisco and Chicago to be the poster child for all that’s wrong with Democrat governance.
Their dysfunction inspires the Abundance Movement among center-leaning Democrats to refashion the party as more pro-growth. Mamdani is one part of the party’s hard left resistance to such thinking.
He wants higher taxes on the wealthy to finance free buses, daycare for preschoolers and city-run grocery stores in poor neighborhoods to address food deserts and to freeze rents for city-regulated apartments.
Republicans shouldn’t mock him too much.
In May 2020, when Democrats were positioning former Vice-President Biden as a moderate to unseat President Trump, this column cautioned that economic frustrations were making young voters increasingly receptive to socialism.
Ultimately, Biden gave us a left-wing presidency that dramatically increased the federal budget deficit from 2019 to 2024.
Mamdani is campaigning as a class warfare crusader—but look at how Mamdani scored his June primary win.
His principal opponent, former Governor Cuomo, won majorities in rent-burdened and poorer sections of the Bronx, whereas Mamdani exploited the frustrations of New York’s seemingly affluent middle class.
Allison Schrager, as senior fellow at the Manhattan Institute, observed that in Brooklyn, which is home to many young professionals, Mamdani did well in neighborhoods with heavy concentrations of frustrated elites—professionals in the creative arts, media, nonprofits and academia.
Their plight highlights a growing divide among college-educated Americans.
America’s competitive advantages are increasingly concentrated in finance, high-tech and media, and so are the great-paying jobs.
Many young people, carrying heavy college debt and burdensome high rents, aspire to homes they can’t afford.
Simply, if you aren’t an investment banker, software engineer, rock star in the media or sports, or big firm attorney representing them—jobs in other industries don’t pay enough to live reasonably in a city like New York.
More troublesome, it's common to encounter 30-somethings who have lost high-paying jobs to corporate downsizing and now can’t find another, comparable position.
The job market is stagnant—frequently firms are not filling vacant positions as CEOs look to use artificial intelligence to grow sales while shrinking headcounts to boost profitability.
AI has the potential to raise productivity and increase annual GDP growth to 3% or 4%. But governments must ensure workers are equipped with the needed mix of skills, and aggregate demand is strong enough to pull us through cycles of corporate downsizing as AI reduces payrolls.
High school curriculums and President Trump’s tariffs and immigration crackdown are an anathema to these.
High school juniors in vocational programs are getting $70,000 job offers, because high schools offer too few vocational training opportunities.
Tariffs are taxes and will either raise prices or force businesses to find other ways to pay for more expensive imported components and products for resale. Read: find new ways to trim payrolls.
Economists worry about tariffs creating wage-price spiral inflation—but what about a deflationary vortex of AI payroll cuts instigating reduced consumer spending and then yet more layoffs?
Trump’s tax cuts are mostly extensions of the 2018 Job Tax Cut and Jobs Act. Immediate benefits are rifled shots to tipped workers, hourly workers who get overtime, and low- and moderate-income seniors.
To the extent tariffs raise prices, most Americans won’t have extra cash from the Big Beautiful Bill to pay those.
Immigrants fill vital gaps in our needs for technical skills and for less-skilled workers and tradesmen in agriculture, hospitality and construction.
The latest jobs report was deceptive.
July delivered 73,000 new positions, but too many were in government-supported healthcare and social service industries
That may not prove a one-off, but rather a preview of coming attractions.
The unemployment rate remains low because more potential workers are leaving the job market—frustrated and discouraged.
Capitalism usually outperforms socialism, but it requires sound stewardship to succeed.
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Peter Morici is an economist and emeritus business professor at the University of Maryland, and a national columnist.