| Home / College Guide / Kathleen Parker: Among wealthy Manhattanites, Eric Adams wins the most-popular v |
| Posted on Wednesday, July 16 @ 00:00:35 PDT |
The United States of America won’t stand for a socialist New York City, never mind the Upper East Side. And not to mention the real estate moguls who’ve fallen in love for the first time with the current mayor, Eric Adams. They view him as the best bet against the pro-Palestinian and socialist Mamdani, whose policies would be bad for business.
Already, fundraisers are being held in the Hamptons and uptown, with high rollers writing checks and making pledges to support Adams, who looks as if he just won the lottery. Dapper and smiling while shaking hands, Adams is the sudden beneficiary of New York City’s richest residents.
Marc Holliday, chief executive of the New York City-based real estate trust SL Green, hosted a fundraiser for Adams last week at one of his Manhattan office towers. Power couple Kenneth and Maria Fishel co-hosted another one this month in the Hamptons with New York City billionaire John Catsimatidis and his wife, Margo, real estate investor Jared Epstein, and others.
“Everyone is talking about how much wealth is aligning against Mamdani,” said Noble Black, a New York City luxury real estate broker.
This political wagon-circling follows Mamdani’s Democratic primary win against former Gov.
Andrew Cuomo, who had been the executive class’s darling a short time ago . Now, Cuomo is once again persona non grata and shifted gears to run as an independent against Adams. This is an improbable gamble by a man who can’t seem to see what’s in front of his nose. It’s over.
Cuomo already lost his state’s affections when he left the governor’s office in 2021 under the shadow of a sexual harassment scandal. And during the pandemic, he was saddled with blame when 15,000 elderly people died in New York nursing homes that had been forced by Cuomo’s policy to accept COVID-19 patients from hospitals.
Cuomo would be doing the city a favor by stepping away and lending his support to Adams, but “surrender” isn’t in his vocabulary. It’s one thing to step away from embarrassment that might get worse. It’s another to give up all hope of a political future when your name is Cuomo.
Mamdani, meanwhile, must be giddy. When the wealthy so plainly align themselves with your most challenging opponent — and you’re running specifically to help the far less rich — you can’t pay for better publicity. Even so, Mamdani’s success in the primary is thanks to millennial and Gen Z voters who turned out in great numbers.
Whether as many will show up again in November is a guess. The trick is to get older voters off their duffs in what could prove to be a generational turning point.
Mamdani’s dubious path to victory lies in his newness. He’s young (33) and photogenic, and promises free bus fare, city-owned grocery stores and rent control, among other pipe dreams. A change agent in the mold of a Barack Obama — a nearly unknown who suddenly appears with zeitgeist timing and sparkling charisma — Mamdani was briefly irresistible.
Listen now and subscribe: Apple Podcasts | Google Podcasts | Spotify | RSS Feed | SoundStack | All Of Our Podcasts
For a minute, a columnist I know fell under the spell of his youthful exuberance and embraced a reprieve from same ol’, same ol’. But I’ve been to government grocery stores — in Cuba and East Germany, back in the day — and you really don’t want socialist bureaucrats selecting your comestibles. Remember what shelves looked like during the pandemic? That’s the way they always are in the socialist and communist countries I’ve visited.
There’s a reason a dollar economy thrives “underground” alongside Cuba’s communist marketplace. Only people with dollars can buy quality products, such as an iron.
Or pencils.
I had another eye-opening experience in my 20s while visiting Germany when the Berlin Wall was still a brutal reminder of the communist takeover of the eastern half of the country. Crossing over from West to East Berlin with a tourist day pass, I was stunned by the stark differences in the commercial districts. Dazzling, modern grocery stores in the western half of the city featured hundreds of varieties of cheeses and sausage, while the eastern versions had only one or two types of each. In West Berlin, you could find the latest fashions, while a comparable store in East Berlin offered racks of the same dresses, blouses and jackets.
I realized then that my graduate-student interest in socialism was not, after all, a good fit. Nor, I suspect, would it be for most New Yorkers.
This is to say that Adams, running as an independent, got lucky. Not only is he up against a socialist whippersnapper and a suspected sexual harasser, but in April, the Justice Department also dropped charges accusing him of bribery, wire fraud and soliciting illegal campaign contributions from foreign governments. What’s a little corruption in New York politics?
Adams was alleged to have accepted gifts and luxury travel valued at more than $100,000 in exchange for favors.
In one instance, he allegedly pressured the fire department to speed up paperwork for a foreign government’s skyscraper. It needed to be ready for a 2021 visit by the Turkish president, according to the indictment.
Oy. The DOJ dropped the federal case because — are you ready? — it was interfering with Adams’s ability to enforce the Trump administration’s immigration laws. The mayor’s new BFF, President Donald Trump, is a natural ally in that he shares a mutual enemy: New York Attorney General Letitia James, who charged Trump with financial fraud for inflating the value of assets to get favorable loans and insurance. Trump and other defendants were fined $364 million and barred from doing business in New York for three years .
Shared enmity is a certain kind of bond, I would imagine, and the president has made clear his preference for mayor, if indirectly. Basically, he dislikes everyone else. He didn’t like Cuomo’s upstaging him during the pandemic and blamed him for the nursing home deaths. He has called Mamdani a “pure communist” and a “total nutjob.” Trump intimated that Mamdani is in the United States illegally, which is just silly, and has said he’ll arrest Mamdani if he wins in November and doesn’t “behave.
” If Mamdani interferes with Immigration and Customs Enforcement operations in New York City, Trump has said he might stage a federal takeover. He says a lot of things.
We should care what happens in New York for all the reasons: We love New York City and New Yorkers. Seriously. A Mamdani win could have a ripple effect and inspire other socialists to follow suit. Given the ongoing housing shortages, especially in urban areas, there’s plenty of angst to go around. Finally, we’re not socialists. At least 60% of Americans view capitalism favorably, according to a Gallup poll in 2021.
New Yorkers are not fools, and they’re not afraid of an independent candidate. Former mayor Mike Bloomberg, a Democrat, ran successfully as both an independent and a Republican on a platform of competent management. And Adams, an incumbent with a decent record, has an American bootstraps story that makes Mamdani seem like an overexcited schoolboy. He was raised with his five siblings by a single mother. When he was 15, he and his brother were arrested and beaten by two white cops for “criminal trespass” and stealing a TV. This traumatic experience influenced his decision to become a cop.
Girded with an undergraduate degree in criminal justice and a master’s in public administration, Adams worked his way up the hard way.
Mamdani seems not to have done much other than serve two terms (he’s in his third) in the state assembly after attending Bowdoin College, where he majored in Africana studies and was co-founder of Students for Justice in Palestine. This is not much of a recommendation for governing the nation’s most populous city.
It’s not easy for everyday Americans to identify with the super-wealthy or to share their concerns, but being rich in a capitalist society isn’t usually considered a disqualification from having good sense. Businesspeople who grow the economy and provide jobs (and maybe even affordable housing) aren’t wrong to support Adams. And don’t forget: Mayor Adams is getting rid of the rats.
|
|
| |
|
