Zohran Mamdani’s New York Vision Risks Repeating Old Failures

Here’s what you’ll learn when you read this article:

• Why Zohran Mamdani’s socialist platform revives policies that history shows failed in New York City.

• How political messaging and PR strategies can succeed by repurposing old tactics with fresh twists.

• What communicators should advise clients when navigating a politically divided climate and controversial candidates.

As the years pass, fewer people remember that in the days before the 24/7 cable news political shows, news outlets paid little attention to candidates’ campaign rhetoric until after Labor Day, which was considered the official day of campaign kickoffs.

Monday, Sept. 1, 2025, is Labor Day. So keeping with what was the traditional kickoff of political campaigns when I toiled for a political PR agency, here’s my first Labor Day broadside against Zohran Mamdani, the democratic socialist candidate for mayor of New York City. It might not be the last before he is elected because the Democratic Party can’t get its act together and settle on one candidate.

Of course, as most readers of this essay know, the official kickoff of political campaigns now is one second after New Year’s and continues until the last second of the year. Campaign talk and analysis by self-anointed political experts is worse than listening to sportscasters use the same trite expressions day after day, year after year and decade after decade, or Donald Trump saying, “I didn’t do it. Everyone lies about me,” which might be the most outrageous lie he ever told.

Just like sportscasters use what I call “template” words and President Trump lies, Zohran Mamdani’s supposedly new revolutionary proposals are old hat, some of which have been unsuccessful because they didn’t work in a democratic (small d) society.

Examples: NYC had tuition-free colleges that were regarded as the “Harvards of the working class.” They lost their stature when people like Mamdani wanted anyone, qualified or not, to be able to go to college. Eventually, the free tuition became economically unfeasible and was discontinued. The college-for-everyone crowd was responsible for the downgrading of the city colleges.

It was that same crowd that pushed for busing students from one locale to another, which resulted in destroying the city high school system and led to an exodus of hard-working middle-class citizens to Long Island and Westchester, looking for better schools for their children. Destroying the best by lowering the standards so everyone, despite their qualifications, could attend what was considered the best before forced busing is not my idea of good government.

On Aug. 9, The New York Times headlined a story, “Mamdani’s Plan for New York City Schools Is Unclear as Election Nears.” But it’s clear to me because I’ve lived through the days when New York City public schools and colleges were destroyed by busing and open enrollment.

Re: free buses – This has been tried before, during the COVID-19 era. It takes money to run a transportation system. Where does the democratic socialist suggest getting the money to run the system? Oh, I know. Let’s keep taxing the rich and middle class until there are no longer any rich in New York City as they continue to move to lower tax cities, as the middle class citizens have been doing for years. That’s why New York’s number of congressional representatives continues to decline.

Re: freezing rents – This has also been tried before and is still in effect. Who will build new housing if the builders can’t make a profit? More than 50% of city taxes are paid by the 2% richest. Under Mamdani’s plans, the richest would leave the city. Then who would make up for the tax shortfall necessary to keep the government working? Certainly not what Mamdani refers to as the underserved.

Re: lower food prices – The average net profit margin for supermarkets in the U.S. is around 1.6% after taxes, according to the Food Industry Association. That seems fair to anyone who isn’t a socialist.

He also offers free child care, a doubling of the minimum wage, 200,000 new units of affordable housing for the poorest New Yorkers and expanded public services, paid for by higher taxes on the wealthy. “It is not so much a platform designed to realign New York’s priorities or shift its resources as it is a rebuke of the city’s identity for the past 40 years,” said a New York Times article. (It’s also a route to destroy New York City’s economy, in my opinion.)

If voters believe Mamdani can deliver what he promises without turning New York City into a socialist city and without alienating high- and middle-income taxpayers, I have a few bridges to sell them. His policies, if enacted, will result in transforming the Big Apple into a city of the poor as affluent people, already paying about 50% of their income in taxes, relocate as many, along with businesses, have already done.

As things stand today, New York state is facing a projected $10.5 billion budget deficit, according to the Times. How does Mamdani propose to raise the money to enact his agenda? Oh, I know. Let’s just keep raising taxes on people who have worked hard to raise their standard of living until they flee the city.

Now for the election: Mamdani won because there were six people on the ballot, dividing the traditional liberal Democratic vote. The same outcome is likely to happen in the general election. That might be the best thing that can happen to the city and the national Democratic Party. It will teach them a lesson that they have to unite behind one candidate to win.

Many of Mamdani’s policies are not new. They have been tried in Western Europe. But Western Europe is in disarray, economically and politically. Earlier this year France announced it is cutting back on work holidays because of economic concerns.

Mamdani backers say he won because he appealed to the ignored and underserved communities. That’s ridiculous. New York City government has never neglected its neediest citizens. In fact, its programs to help the underserved have been copied nationally and internationally. The city needs a government that wants to uplift all people, not a government that wants to downgrade people so less fortunate people feel good.

Mamdani’s act is old hat, much of which has been attempted unsuccessfully before.

Even though I vote for left-of-center candidates, if I still voted in New York City, I would vote for Mayor Adams or Gov. Cuomo rather than Mamdani. I realize they are flawed candidates. But I’d rather vote for a candidate who aspires to uplift the unsuccessful without it being at the expense of the successful.

No matter how socialists like Mamdani frame it, what they seek is a distribution of wealth. People who back that should take a refresher course in history – particularly a course that focuses on Russia and China. How did the redistribution of wealth in those and other socialist countries turn out?

Socialists today believe that government can fix everything. A history of socialism proves otherwise.

Democratic socialists’ wants are not my idea of an America I want to live in. No matter what they call it, it is an America that devalues individual talent and success while fostering the belief that a person doesn’t have to better themselves because the government will take care of you. It is a philosophy that Big Brother will take care of you. And history shows how that thinking has turned out.

Capitalism, for all its shortcomings and faults, provides a path for people to improve their status at the same time it provides help for people who need government help. Socialism doesn’t. What it does is try to take away from successful people in order to help less successful individuals. That stifles individualism.

Another reason I oppose socialism is because socialists think that only they have answers to society’s problems. Most are more prone to shout than compromise.

I oppose socialism because when people get something for nothing, it limits motivation, which stifles the creativity necessary to keep inventing products that better society, because people expect the government to do the thinking for them. That can transform a democratic country into a fascist one, which I consider akin to socialism.

Still another reason I oppose socialism is because most socialists are fanatics. It’s their way or no way, just like the MAGA fanatics who support President Trump.

Socialists also think they are always correct.

Mamdani, especially, is a prime example of “doing it my way.” He criticized Gov. Cuomo for speaking with President Trump without having any idea of what they spoke about. As everyone who has read my posts knows, I was a “never Trumper” before he was elected president. But I also believe that keeping dialogue alive between opponents is preferable to refusing to speak to rivals, especially when one is the president of the United States.

Mamdani said that Gov. Cuomo’s telephone conversation with President Trump was a “betrayal of New Yorkers.” I say that his entire campaign is a betrayal of reality.

Finally, I believe Mamdani is a hypocrite. He based his campaign on “affordability.” But he lives in a Queens rent-stabilized apartment despite his $142,000-a-year state assemblyman’s salary. Mamdani wants to freeze the rents on rent-stabilized apartments. He said he is skeptical about income requirements for apartments like his. Of course he does. It’s other people’s money he needs to enact his agenda without his moving to a non-rent-stabilized apartment.

I am not against government programs that help the needy. Nor am I against raising my taxes to fund those programs. What I am against are politicians who want to lower my standard of living that I worked decades to achieve, in order to make those whose standard of living is lower than mine feel good.

In 1945, Winston Churchill said, “The inherent vice of capitalism is the unequal sharing of blessings. The inherent virtue of socialism is the equal sharing of miseries.”

In a previous post on this website, on July 14, I wrote that “Cuomo’s defeat exposes the Democrats’ PR failure.” If Mamdani gets elected, as I expect he will because his supporters will vote as a bloc while Democratic, Republican and independent voters will split their votes, his actions will expose the failure of socialism.

A Pew Research Center survey showed that about 1 in 5 U.S. adults (21%) say they regularly get news from influencers on social media. This is especially common among younger adults: 37% of those ages 18 to 29 say they regularly get news from influencers.

Analysis of the voter breakdown by age showed that about 40% were under the age of 40, according to data from the New York City Board of Elections. The youth turnout portrayed a substantial surge in early voting by young people and was attributed to enthusiasm for Mamdani’s social media strategy.

Also, for years, research studies showed that young people’s political beliefs were influenced by movies. In an Aug. 25 Wall Street Journal column titled, “People’s Republic of Hollywood,” Andy Kessler argued that one reason Mamdani appeals to young people is because movies glorify socialism (and lists a bevy of them as examples). Traditional Democratic candidates are just beginning to realize that the old way of campaigning is just old and that the political season no longer begins on Labor Day, but the second after midnight on New Year’s Eve.

If I lived in New York City I would be an “anyone but Mamdani” voter, because the history of socialism shows that “It only works well until you run out of other people’s money,” a quote attributed to British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher, who also said, “There is no such thing as public money, there is only taxpayers’ money.” And the well-off are already paying, as they should, a substantial amount of taxes that keep New York City running without an anti-Semitic, anti-Israeli socialist mayor.

When I was a New York City resident, I lived through decades of attempts to re-engineer the city’s population by trying various socialist ideas. They included building low-income houses in middle-class areas (which the low-income residents destroyed); locating drug centers in middle-class, non-drug-affected areas; busing elementary school students from one area to another, which turned “good” schools into “bad” ones; lowering the requirements needed to attend the city’s highly rated specialized high schools so students who couldn’t meet the entrance requirements could attend; eliminating the requirements to attend what were formerly the city’s highly rated colleges; and affirmative action programs that penalized qualified individuals, but not the people who pushed for them because they sent their children to private schools. History shows that most of these social engineering programs were a failure, as Mamdani’s proposals, if enacted, will fail.

The New York City mayoral election is certain to receive even more national attention as Election Day draws closer. News outlets are certain to ask business leaders how the election of a socialist will affect their business decisions. My suggestion to PR people is to advise clients against speaking out against Mamdani, because if he wins, as I suspect he will, business leaders will have to work with a socialist mayor for the next four years. Business leaders who want to be heard should limit their discussions to how they think their businesses will fare over the next four years, without attacking Mamdani personally. There will be plenty of other people to do that. Best not to antagonize supporters of Mamdani. They buy products, too.

There are important PR lessons that practitioners should remember from Mamdani’s campaign strategy: Good PR campaigns can be accomplished without the “Big Idea” or reinventing the wheel.

Two examples

During his 1948 presidential campaign, President Truman reached voters using a whistle-stop strategy – touring the country by train and making speeches from the back of the train. I modified the strategy by having a New York City candidate do a subway campaign, by getting off at each station where he would introduce himself to potential voters.

During the first year that I managed the fan balloting promotion for baseball’s All-Star Game, when Gillette was the sole sponsor, I created a new approach, which I used as a template successfully for the next seven years, until Gillette decided to go in another direction. What I did to make the promotion newsworthy each year was add one new element.

PR people should remember that sometimes only providing a new twist to an old idea is the best idea. They also should remember that spending thousands of dollars developing a campaign does not guarantee success.

And one final lesson that I always told people who reported to me: No matter how good the results of a program are, it isn’t a success until the client says it is.