By Chris Powell
Far-leftists in Connecticut’s Democratic Party are so excited by Zohran Mamdani’s victory in the Democratic primary for mayor of New York City that they are starting to think about challenging Governor Lamont if he seeks the party’s nomination for a third term.
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Having vetoed unemployment compensation for strikers and a housing bill that, while cheered by the left, was more bluff than substance, the governor has just polished his reputation as a moderate at the expense of leftist support. But Lamont’s reputation as a moderate is still overdone. He has pledged to keep giving the state employee unions everything they want and he remains as much a supporter of illegal immigration, transgenderism, and political correctness as any leftist.
Though Mamdani’s victory scares moderate Democrats as well as the political right, it too may be overdone. For Mamdani’s two top opponents in the primary were badly compromised. A federal criminal indictment, canceled by President Trump, caused Mayor Eric Adams to withdraw from the Democratic primary and to try get re-elected as an independent instead. That left former Gov. Andrew Cuomo, disgraced by a sexual harassment scandal that forced him to resign four years ago.
By some calculations Mamdani’s vote total in the primary was only 9% of all New York City voters, and it’s a long way to Election Day with plenty of time for Adams or a Republican nominee to seize the flag of moderation. There’s also plenty of time for Mamdani’s critics to mock his public record and the likely expense of his platform.
Like many on the left, Mamdani believes that nearly everything desirable should and can be free. He wants free public transit, free child care, a freeze on apartment rents (but not a freeze on the expenses landlords must pay), and groceries subsidized by city-operated supermarkets.
Who is to pay for all this? Not the recipients of the goodies but “the rich,” on whom Mamdani would raise taxes — if he could, but he can’t, since New York City income tax rates are set by state government, not city government. That is, his platform is a fraud.
But Mamdani has a point, and it resonates especially with city residents: The cost of living is too high. Indeed it is, and not just in New York City but in many other places, like Connecticut. Unfortunately, like most leftists, Mamdani is not interested in bringing costs down; he just wants to transfer them to others, perpetuating a vicious cycle.
That cycle began with government driving up the cost of living, especially the cost of housing, with inflation and taxes, crushing the poor and the once-middle class. This caused people to seek more free stuff and subsidies from government, prompting government to oblige (and, of course, to grow), thereby driving inflation and taxes up more, causing people to demand still more subsidies and free stuff and government to oblige, and so on.
Why can’t so many people afford to feed themselves and care for their children anymore? Why haven’t wages kept up with inflation?
These questions don’t interest elected officials, probably because they would implicate themselves by asking. But answers can be inferred.
Wages aren’t keeping up with inflation because work skills aren’t, since public education, having reduced itself to social promotion, is not producing as many people equipped to support themselves and their children.
Welfare policy has wrecked the family, depriving millions of homes of fathers and breadwinners.
Government’s mistaken financial priorities, like the supremacy of government employee unions, has diverted money from important services to the public.
The admission of millions of illegal immigrants has depressed the wage base for the less-skilled labor being produced by public education.
Mamdani’s victory is a measure of New York City’s impoverishment by government. People will always vote for free stuff if the plan is to get someone else to pay for it, and, as the French economist Frederic Bastiat discerned long ago, government is the great fiction by which everybody tries to live at the expense of everybody else.
Chris Powell has written about Connecticut government and politics for many years. (CPowell@cox.net)
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Chris Powell column 