New York City’s Mayoral Election

As New Yorkers turned out to vote for a new mayor yesterday, Nicole Gelinas explained why she hoped the election would be a close one—no matter who wins.

“A single-digit margin of victory could be a useful check on the next mayor’s governance approach, and a signal that the winner should govern as if he is on probation rather than the recipient of a universal mandate,” Gelinas argues.

Read here to understand how the size of the win will shape the new mayor’s agenda.

New York City’s mayoral race was without a doubt its most consequential in decades. But other aspects of the election are worth looking at, too, Jack Santucci and John Ketcham maintain. Take voter turnout. In the 2021 general election, 1.15 million voters turned out. This year, early voting alone saw more than 735,000 voters in a nine-day period—433 percent higher than in 2021. And how many of those voters cast their ballot for a candidate on the other “side”?

Read about some other notable aspects of this year’s election.

Late last month, far-right influencer Nick Fuentes’s appearance on the Tucker Carlson Show sparked a commotion on the Right. Some pointed out that Carlson had “platformed” a bigot. Others, like Heritage Foundation president Kevin Roberts, argued that conservatives should debate Fuentes, not “cancel” him.

Christopher Rufo believes that both sides misunderstand the Fuentes phenomenon. Fuentes pushes morally repugnant positions—praising Hitler, opposing interracial marriage, calling himself a “white nationalist”—to gain attention. Conservatives who engage with his ideas in good faith are playing into Fuentes’s hands.

“Every time conservatives operate on his terms,” Rufo writes, “they reinforce his taboo-breaking, making him stronger.”

More than 99 percent of public schools in the United States are governed by local boards. New York City is an exception. Since 2002, city schools have operated under mayoral oversight—and the effects have been dramatic.

“Graduation rates for four-year cohorts rose from 53 percent in 2003 to 83 percent today,” Jennifer Weber writes. “Black and Hispanic students have made the most dramatic gains, with both groups’ graduation rates rising more than 30 percentage points in that time.”

Why such impressive gains? Mayoral control offers more leadership stability, Weber explains. Read her take on why the current system should remain in place.

One of Zohran Mamdani’s signature proposals was his pledge to make city buses fare-free. He argued that this would not only address New Yorkers’ concerns about affordability but also make city buses safer, since drivers would no longer be forced to challenge riders trying to board buses without paying the fare.

Mamdani supported these claims with data from a New York City pilot program that showed both increased ridership and a 38.9 percent drop in assaults on drivers on five fare-free bus routes.

That safety claim doesn’t hold up under scrutiny, however. Matt Darling explains that Mamdani relied on an early, inflated estimate and failed to account for a citywide decline in assaults. When the full-year data are considered and compared with trends across the entire bus system, the supposed safety improvement shrinks to roughly 16 percent—too small and statistically uncertain to back up Mamdani’s claims.

“Somehow I don’t think committing crimes in the name of an agenda will get people to support the cause.”

Photo credit: Michael M. Santiago / Staff / Getty Images News via Getty Images