Charles Fain Lehman, Rafael Mangual, John Ketcham, and Pirate Wires’s Mike Solana analyze the results of New York City’s mayoral election.
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Audio Transcript
Charles Fain Lehman: Live from New York. This is a City Journal with special guest Mike Solana. I was saying, I was saying before we got on, Mike, that we’re just going to go in order of like, loud anger. So it’s going to be you. And then it’s going to be me. And then it’s going to be Ralph. And it’s like, who’s going to…
Rafael Mangual: Why am I on the bottom of the anger totem pole?
Charles Fain Lehman: Because you try to, you pretend to be reasonable when you’re on camera.
Rafael Mangual: This is true.
Charles Fain Lehman: You act you act like you’re a reasonable person. I do not act like a reasonable person. I’ve never, I’ve never pretended to be a reasonable person. We learned before we got on, Mike, that John lives in one of the jurisdictions that is projected to vote for Curtis Sliwa. So he’s a Sliwa American.
John Ketcham: In a sea of blue. The only little speck of red in a sea of blue. I’m holding the line.
Mike Solana: I grew up, um, I grew up in Ocean County. I said, I grew up in Ocean County, New Jersey. So I’m watching all of these, uh, results come in from the Jersey governor’s race and they’re like, Oh my, and then here’s like this Ocean County. It’s just like bright red. And I know all about Ocean County.
Charles Fain Lehman: I’m unhappy with that result. That is not a good result.
Mike Solana: What’s the result for New Jersey?
Charles Fain Lehman: Yeah, Sherrill won. Yeah, no, they called it almost immediately. And the same thing in Virginia, Jason Miyares has lost to Jay Jones, the one who talked about killing people’s children.
Rafael Mangual: That’s insane.
Mike Solana: It’s wild. They just have no, that’s… What Jay Jones said was unambiguous. He was like, I want this woman’s kids to die. Like that’s just like crazy. They will vote for anything.
Charles Fain Lehman: Right, and like, we’ll see the other interesting thing, somebody was talking about this,Virginians as a general rule are more likely to vote for a Republican for attorney general like there’s a you know, it’s a five point effect or something for Virginia and AG specifically because they just perceive it as a law and order role. That didn’t even matter.
Rafael Mangual: But that result, that really could, mean, essentially every single Democrat who clutched their pearls at the things that Donald Trump said that were allegedly uncouth was full of it. Yeah. Great. I mean, it’s like, why, you know, like talk about like Trump’s effect in terms of the debasing the quality of the discourse. I mean, this is a guy who literally said I want their kids to die so that they can feel the pain.
Charles Fain Lehman: And also would kill the speaker of the Virginia legislature.
Rafael Mangual: In a sick way and nothing, no social consequences. This is why people no longer care to pretend to be reasonable anymore. That’s why I might get actually genuinely…
Charles Fain Lehman: We’re, we’re frankly, well, we have four minutes until the polls close. think people I can’t actually see we have this like for those of you who watching we have this setup where my phone is perched on top of a like a thing for holding cameras. I don’t know what the technical term is for the tripod. Fancy tripod. Yes. So I don’t know how many people are watching us. They could be like three people like…
Mike Solana: 100… We’re close to 200
Charles Fain Lehman: Well, close to 200. I was not betting on that. Thank you. We will try not to disappoint you. So we got we got a nice… This is is a question we got three and half minutes for the polls close. So I will ask everybody here. Where are you on a scale from optimistic to gave up hope months ago? I will start. I am at gave up hope months ago. That is where I am personally.
John Ketcham: What’s the measure of success? Is it Mamdani getting the majority or is it Mamdani losing? That’s the thing. I mean, I’ve tempered my expectations. If Mamdani wins with only plurality, I think that means a different kind of thing.
Charles Fain Lehman: Guess, Mike, are you optimistic?
Mike Solana: I knew that he was going to win the primary. I was like, Cuomo’s fucking toast. Mamdani’s got the juice. He’s definitely going to win. He’s the only one who’s actually campaigning. Cuomo was talking about Trump. I never thought for a second that Cuomo was going to win that primary. Mamdani won. And the second that happened, I was like, it’s over. New York’s voting for a communist. It’s crazy. Like here he goes. He’s not even like a fake communist. He’s like fully like a Marx quoting whatever, but no, not optimistic. Not even mad about it, like I just got so used to it so long ago that I’m like, yeah, I feel like he’s already running things. I think he’s like already the mayor.
Rafael Mangual: I think I have you all beat because my lack of optimism caused me to leave the city in 2020. Yeah, I was counting on New York City losing its mind well before anybody else at this table. So there you have it.
John Ketcham: Everyone was saying that ranked choice voting was going to be a huge thing, it was going to take weeks to get the results of the primary. It was all BS. We learned that night. Cuomo didn’t even need to say on primary night that Mamdani won. We knew the gig was up.
Rafael Mangual: Immediately.
Charles Fain Lehman: So what was interesting, I was a dupe, I was a fool, I believed in the polling. And to me, the one iota of maybe I could know, maybe something will surprise me tonight is if the polling was that catastrophically wrong during the primary, then I can imagine a world in which the polling is catastrophically wrong in the other direction, and actually in 20 minutes Curtis Sliwa is going to be elected mayor New York.
Rafael Mangual: Could you imagine?
Mike Solana: Right. But that’s just not the direction that the night is going. That’s not where any other race is going. I don’t think that we’re… I saw…
Charles Fain Lehman: And that’s the interesting macro question, right? Is like, you know, I was saying to somebody earlier, if Ciattarelli puts up a big fight in New Jersey, Miyares wins in Virginia, like, that means something about the national environment. Now I’m going to go to all my friends who are like, Democrats don’t have any chance of 2028. And I mean, like, you’re completely wrong. People will vote for a rock with a D next to it.
Mike Solana: But at the same time, don’t know what were people expecting though for this, for tonight. Like, I just don’t know what the positive outcome for Republicans was supposed to be. I just don’t think there was really a chance for, I don’t think that, I grew up in New Jersey. I did not think that the Republican had a shot. It did not look to me like the Virginia governor had a shot. Even Jay Jones doesn’t surprise me. It seemed like that’s the direction everything was going in. So I just don’t, yeah, I just don’t really know. I definitely think… Go ahead.
Charles Fain Lehman: I was, what I was going to say is, like, to me the core calculus comes down to on the one hand, like, the incumbent party in the White House pays a penalty in the following elections. And that’s just like reliably true, voters, thermostatic equilibrium, blah blah blah. I can do the political science. Doesn’t really matter. On the other hand, if you read the polling, I would say that the Democratic Party is marginally more popular than Osama bin Laden, but it’s only like a matter, it’s a matter of margins, right? Like, people hate the Democrats. They’re not popular. And so the counter argument is like, maybe there has been a durable shift to the Republicans’ interest because of that unpopularity.
Mike Solana: It does seem in New Jersey though that the governor is overperforming compared to what’s his Murphy’s last election, which for a Democrat is interesting to me. Like it seemed like Jersey was closer last time around. So I don’t know. I don’t know if it’s just that…
Charles Fain Lehman: My pet theory about Jersey is that it was the last titanic struggle between the Italians and the Irish. Because this is what it was, Phil Murphy and Jack Ciattarelli. Polls are closing, we should talk a little bit about what else is getting voted on tonight and what’s going on on the ballot for people who are turning in who are not New York politics obsessive. I don’t know if John, you want to jump in and give us some sense of what is happening tonight?
John Ketcham: So there are six ballot proposals on New York City voters’ ballots. Number one is a very technical state constitutional amendment that has to do with forest land way up in Essex County. There was an Olympic sports compound that was built on land that was supposed to be protected forever by the state constitution. I think it’s section 19 of the state constitution. Complex was built on this land, there is a remedial measure to fix the problem. Very minor technocratic issue. Questions two, three, and four would facilitate a housing supply in New York City in large part by taking away the vote from the city council. So in New York City, there’s an informal practice. It’s not in law. It’s called member deference. And the idea is that, I am, as a city council member, may have redevelopments or rezonings that I don’t like. You may have rezonings that you don’t like. So if I disapprove of one, you will agree to vote mine down. And if you disapprove of one, I’ll agree to vote yours down. And the city council basically follows this member deference practice, which means that…
Charles Fain Lehman: And, parenthetically, the city council is full of crazy people. Literal lunatics.
John Ketcham: It’s genuine question of whether the city council is to the left of Mamdani or not.
Charles Fain Lehman: Yeah, I think they are to the left of Mamdani.
John Ketcham: They’re like Sandy Nurse, peas in a pod, right? Yeah. So, question, ballot questions two, three, and four would take certain rezonings and remove it from the city council’s vote and therefore bypass the member deference practice because it’s just never going to go to the city council. It’s going to go instead to bodies like the city planning commission or to a new board created of the mayor, the speaker, and the borough president for question number four. The bottom line is that the three housing land use related ballot questions would facilitate more housing supply. It would compliment Mayor Eric Adams’ greatest legacy, which is the City of Yes for Housing Opportunity Plan, which was a really historic achievement, which showed that you could develop a political constituency in favor of housing supply growth. I think history will be favorable to Adams for this. It’s the single biggest land use change in New York City since 1961.
Charles Fain Lehman: And yet they wouldn’t reelect him. They wouldn’t do it.
John Ketcham: The irony here is that now it’s past nine o’clock. We can speak our minds. Adams would have been better than any of these guys.
Charles Fain Lehman: Right!
John Ketcham: 100 percent.
Charles Fain Lehman: I can say now I can say now with great comfort that I took an informal poll and many of my colleagues, like after the primaries, like who are you voting for and the answer is Eric Adams. Right? Crime is down. Housing is, there is going to be increased. The volume housing is going to be increased. Yes. He may have taken some bribes It’s hard to say what’s going on…
Mike Solana: Who cares though. I don’t care. It’s not as bad as communism. It’s not as bad as communism. And what with the bribe? It was a first class seat or something, a business class seat. I don’t really, he’s the executive of the most powerful city in the world. He should be flying, but he shouldn’t have to fly business with a bribe. We should just be paying for him to do it. I don’t understand. There shouldn’t be a controversy.
John Ketcham: It’s called VIP treatment, right? If you’re the most important guy in New York City, yeah, you get some extra…
Mike Solana: Let him fly business class. He deserves it. I would do anything right now.
John Ketcham: And the other thing was like the expedited permits for the Turkish consulate. That’s, okay bad, because it relates to public safety. But it’s an indictment of the way our government works that you need to like get in contact with a borough president who then becomes a mayor to get the thing approved. Let’s make the government work better.
Charles Fain Lehman: I actually think the solution to this is that it should be easier for the Turkish to build stuff in the city of New York. That seems pretty straightforward to me. But also like look many mayors are corrupt. That’s like not unusual practice in city of New York. On the scale of corruption not that big of a deal. I feel like we should also note for listeners who are not we have New York 1 going on in the background. We have what is it? 36 percent of the vote is in. Mamdani is at 51 and a half. Cuomo is at 39.7 and Sliwa is at 8 percent! Well, thank god he’s in.
John Ketcham: Michael Lang had Sliwa at about 11 percent.
Charles Fain Lehman: Michael Lang, we should say is an elections analyst focuses on New York and was extraordinarily accurate in the primary. So we’ll see he can do it again in general. Yeah, he’s on Substack. By the way, I should plug because otherwise our producers will get mad at us. So should plug City Journal’s Substack. Yes. At cityjournal.substack.com also Pirate Wires, which is just piratewires.com. Great website, both great websites. Pirate Wires, little bigger, we’ll catch up to them.
John Ketcham: Great endorsement guy.
Charles Fain Lehman: Did you great
Mike Solana: That was a great collab. Did you see that the DA retweeted it? She was like, so proud to accept the endorsement from PirateWires. We get a lot of that now. The voting guide is like, the one that we do in SF is like really popular and the different, we actually had, this is crazy. We, after the voting guide came out in the election, this last election took place, I found journalists were sniffing around because people had gone to them and told them that we had like this shady endorsement process in which we wouldn’t talk to other candidates that we didn’t endorse or something. They were like, the other candidates were mad that we didn’t talk to them. I was like, I didn’t know that you even knew we existed. I am like nothing but happy to talk to you. Like this is awesome.
Charles Fain Lehman: But yeah, so here’s an interesting question is like, you have, and we’ve talked about this, and you talked to this last time too, you have seen… I’m not willing to say that San Francisco is good now, but like San Francisco is better, successful…
Mike Solana: San Francisco is the way, man. I’ve been saying this, I keep beating this drum. It is like the most exciting city for politics, I think, in the country. It has like just, it’s a total complete violation of the narrative that is, I think, the most well understood. It’s a smaller game though. You have 11 supervisors to New York City’s 51 city councilors. And you have, well then what you have is I think, sort of similar. You have a small group of people who were like, wait, this is crazy. What do we do? And they just kind of started the process earlier. There was a lot of money and a lot of commitment and they started running better candidates. And now there’s like a slight turnaround and the mayor’s great and or as great as you could expect from a Democrat. And like, yeah, things are looking up.
Rafael Mangual: I had this theory of like San Francisco’s turnaround that part of what caused the injection of sanity into the city’s politics was the fact that it was harder for the elite and the politically active to avoid the downside of bad policy, right? Like it didn’t matter if you lived in a really nice neighborhood, like you were still dealing with people shitting in the street and you were still dealing with, you know, homeless people chasing you down the block, demanding that you go to an ATM to give you money. You were still, you know, seeing needles. So it was like, you know, in a way everyone shared in the burden of the aftereffects of the bad policy decisions in San Francisco in a way that’s not necessarily true here in New York. And that gives me pause because it makes me think that we’re actually not going to see that turn around.
Mike Solana: I don’t know. I don’t think, I think the, cause LA had, I don’t, I wasn’t living in New York at the time. It sounded pretty bad of what was going on in COVID that summer of 2020 to me. Like certainly the rioting that was, there was less rioting in San Francisco than other major cities. There was some massive looting down in Union Square, but like less than New York, less than LA, like just less all around. I think that the big difference was people. There was this huge microscope on San Francisco. Everybody on Twitter lived there and was talking about it. And so it was hard for these local politicians to escape the scrutiny and they were taken back by it. They were surprised by it. You could tell in the very early stages of that they didn’t, they weren’t used to it. They didn’t expect people to care about what they were doing. And suddenly everybody really cared. And not only San Franciscans, but like people across the country were like, this fucking DA in San Francisco, we got to get rid of them. And it’s like, nobody knew… Nobody on their side knew what to do with that. think that you have to New York city needs that. You need like just a huge, camera on every single one of these city council members. They should all be stars. Like, why don’t we know their names? They’re the legislators of the city and they’re doing insane, terrible things. Everybody should know who they are and they should be talking about them every single day and they should have to defend themselves.
Charles Fain Lehman: The, uh, you know, I think, and I’m curious your take on this, Mike, but I think a sort of core dynamic in what happened in this race is I’m to go out on a limb here and assert something controversial. Andrew Cuomo sucks. He’s a terrible candidate. And I think this for several reasons. One is all the sexual harassment allegations. And then another one is all the dead grannies. And then another one is just like, he’s not very, you know, he’s not very persuasive or personable. Also, also he signed all the pro-crime bills and burned a lot of bridges.
John Ketcham: He burned a lot of bridges. A lot of people he turned on.
Mike Solana: It made no sense to run him. It’s crazy that he ran and then after he lost it’s really crazy that everyone doubled down.
Charles Fain Lehman: Okay, but so what’s interesting to me is just like Andrew Cuomo was able to successfully clear the field and there was no… There was neither coordinated effort in the primary to pick up somebody other than him, you know, like it’s not wasn’t going to be Whitney Tilson, but like Whitney Tilson who is a you know, a hedge funder very good guy, a moderate Democrat would have been a great mayor in my opinion. You know, there was nobody in the Whitney Tilson lane who… The city’s elites did not coordinate around somebody like Whitney Tilson, an alternative who was going to own the modern lane that wasn’t Cuomo. That didn’t happen in the primary. And then it didn’t happen after the primary is over. And clearly there was a comprehensive failure to do that kind of, you know, I know that people were talking about, we get Jessica Tisch, the NYPD commissioner, to step up? Is that possible? And it just, it didn’t work. So like, what is the failure of elite coordination? And how do you get around that? Because it seems like you guys succeeded at elite coordination, know, Garry Tan succeeded in elite coordination at San Francisco. God bless Garry Tan. Like, what do New York City’s movers and shakers need to learn? What have they, what did they get wrong?
Mike Solana: Man, that’s such a good question. I have no idea. It’s just like, all of the money and all of the smart people are on the center sort of centrist side in San Francisco. Once we started talking about who was in charge and who was in power, it was very obvious that we needed something different and the things that we needed were really ground floor things. It was like, you know, crime should be illegal again and people should stop shitting in the streets and the schools should be open and we shouldn’t be trying to rename them rather than reopen them. Basic shit like that. In New York, I don’t, I just don’t… Honestly, like I feel like it’s not going to work out for you guys. I think that the demographics are totally different. think that you have a smaller concentration of smart people and you have a lot of smart people, who are…
Rafael Mangual: You can see that in the polling data.
Mike Solana: And, and I think it’s like, I mean, you can see the different, the way that, finance is leaving the city. It’s I saw polling, some numbers on that. That was down to like 7 percent or something. yoYounow, I, just, it’s such a different city, but I, I think it starts with just being ferocious. If you have some high status people who are like, no, socialism is really bad and these radical leftists are fucking crazy and it’s fine to make fun of them. In fact, it’s good. In fact, it’s high status to make fun of them. You don’t want to be seen on their side. If you can do that, then I think that’s helpful in San Francisco. That was a little bit easier because, you know, it’s like, it’s a one industry town. And so if you had all the elites in that industry who are on the same side, it was like, oh, we’re allowed to believe this now? But in New York City, who are you trying to get is like, is your guy really just Bill Ackman? I don’t even think he’s that…. Do people care what he thinks? I don’t care what he thinks, but I’m not in New York, so I don’t know.
John Ketcham: And even here within an industry like the real estate industry, it’s fragmented. Your rent-stabilized property owner does not have the same interest per se as your developer does. Right? So they want different things. One wants to be able to make more housing at, you know, more predictably is the most important thing. What people don’t talk about is that it takes like two to three years to get through environmental review for rezoning in New York City. And the developer has to bear all of the uncertainty and all the costs of that. And then they have to go through the land use process, the ULURP process that ends in the city council vote that I said has this council member veto at the end of it. So there’s just so much uncertainty. But if you’re a rent-stabilized owner, you just want the ability to change the law and increase the rents a little bit, right? Whereas in San Francisco, yeah, there is more of a concentration of the tech industry and an alignment of interests. And here we just don’t quite have that.
Rafael Mangual: I’m really curious to get your take on Mike is a lot of overachieving but, and by overachieving, I mean over-credentialed really, like underachieving,
Charles Fain Lehman: Downwardly mobile.
Rafael Mangual: Yeah, downwardly mobile Millennials who don’t have roots in New York. They’re, you know, first-generation New Yorkers who are coming out in droves for Zohran Mamdani
Charles Fain Lehman: And Reihan Salam, the president of the Manhattan Institute had a great piece on this in the Journal.
Rafael Mangual: Yeah, no, he’s, is, yeah, it’s great analysis. Just, like, what’s your, your sort of take on that? I mean, like he seems to have essentially hijacked the political machine of New York by recognizing that our demographics are just very different, and there’s not a sort of pool of old school New Yorkers with roots who have long-term ambitions about what the city should be. Rather it’s people were probably going to be here for five, six years and then go back to their Midwest towns from whence they came to start their families.
John Ketcham: Who cares what happens?
Mike Solana: Yeah. Yeah. I mean, I think local politics is always a question of just who wants it more because of this dynamic. It’s like not a lot of people are super engaged because at least these really transient cities, you have a lot of that in San Francisco too. It’s a super transient city. And the radicals generally speaking just want it more. And then you have these one-party towns, right? It’s like New York City, and San Francisco, Los Angeles. It’s just, there’s one political party in charge. And when that happens, then, these people go after the races that even fewer people care about, which are the races that lead to something like your mayor endorsement. So it’s like the in San Francisco is the D triple C was a really important thing for a minute. was like, was, who was getting the official democratic nomination and the radicals ran that shit. So for a second, it was even, think I’m actually have to check in. I’m not actually sure where they are now, but there’s that a disadvantage. They feel like normal people don’t care about local politics. They’re trying to like live their lives. Whereas the socialists are the, don’t know what you would call them. These radical leftists are like in a constant state of agitation. I think it’s the same here, it’s the same there, and you have to just watch.
John Ketcham: They’re meeting twice a week at the DSA. Right!
Charles Fain Lehman: So I mean, think that and that I think is an under told part of the story and we’ve done some stuff on this at City Journal. We were talking to Nicole about the Working Families Party, which people I think don’t understand the influence of the Working Families Party is a like Northeast, they’re in Connecticut, they’re in New York, they’re in, I think, New Jersey, a couple of other states, but it’s a local party that exists to run progressive candidates against Democrats that are perceived as too moderate. And the Working Families Party has a major infrastructure in the state of New York. The DSA, major infrastructure. The Zohran Mamdani’s campaign started as a DSA membership drive. That was the goal of the campaign. He said this in Politico. They were shocked they got anywhere because their purpose was to build power for the DSA. But I think part of what you see in these low-turnout, off-cycle, to your point, Mike, in these low-turnout, off-cycle elections where there isn’t a lot of interest, people don’t know what the stakes are, people don’t know what’s going on, is if you have any kind of infrastructure, it seems like you can have a great deal of impact. The reason Mamdani won primary is the DSA did such effective turnout that all the models were wrong because there were assumptions about the composition of the electorate were wrong. That’s how far off they are.
Mike Solana: They organize. They just care about it. No one else does. If you had some kind of… You need a machine before you can say like, why did our machine not win? And you’re just like, you’re at zero right now. So you have to build that. You have to get funding for it. Shouldn’t be hard again, with people like Ackman running their mouth off. It’s like, great. Well, now here’s the thing you have to fund. Give us lots and lots and lots of money to fund it. And then you do, think you have to like guilt these people. All these like super, super wealthy people. You need you to be like, you have to give us money. It’s just like the only… There is no alternative here. We’re doing this. Here’s the machine. We’re going to, you know, gather the candidates and you have to give us money or you’re a bad person and we will publicly shame you the way the left does.
Charles Fain Lehman: I should say, our producer just handed us her phone, Decision Desk HQ called it for Zohran, 9:03. Game’s over. Zohran Mamdani, next mayor of New York City. Crime is now legal.
Mike Solana: Riker’s Island immediately opens. It’s open. It’s Gotham.
Charles Fain Lehman: This is where we’re living now. This is New York. I’ll start now. I will be giving this to the DSA, of which I am now by law a member. Congratulations, everybody.
John Ketcham: We’ll live in our rent-stabilized until we die. That’s what bothers me the most. New York City is a place where dreams should come true. Where strivers should make the most of their lives. And now we’re okay with the 1936 apartment that you have that’s getting worse every single year and is never going to get better because the economics are impossible. And that’s good enough for the rest of your life because you never leave a rent-stabilized unit. Why would you? It’s just like we are changing the ethos of our city.
Rafael Mangual: One reason, if she gets sick of what the city eventually does to you, it becomes the kind of place where you want to live and raise a family, which you can’t do well here. I mean, like, you know, I’m born and raised in Brooklyn. I have lived most of the years that I’ve been on this earth within the five boroughs of New York. I lived in the Bronx. I lived in Manhattan. I lived in Brooklyn. I have lived in Queens. I thought that I would die in New York City as a father, as a husband, as a professional. And it got to the point where you’re nickel and dimed nonstop. You know, you’re getting speeding tickets from some camera for going 36 miles an hour on a six lane highway at 10 o’clock at night when no one’s on the street. You’ve got the city building miles and miles of bike lanes in what used to be parking spaces for residents that no one uses. And now it takes you 45 minutes to find a parking spot.
Charles Fain Lehman: At least the guy going 45 miles an hour on his ebike can pass you in the bike lane
Rafael Mangual: Or you can spend $700 a month on a, you know, on a garage, right? You’ve got like, you know, homeless people walking into parks and starting to bathe in the sprinklers that should be for the kids. Something I’ve seen happen in Queens when I was out with my kids in Forest Hills. And, you know, like, and then you start thinking about the schools. If you’re lucky enough to live in a neighborhood where you’re zoned for a good school, you inevitably have to deal with the fact that your kid is going to be indoctrinated. And if you care at all about him not being a woke nut job by the time he or she’s 13. And even that dichotomy, right, will get you in trouble in a New York City public school.
Charles Fain Lehman: He, she, they, it.
John Ketcham: You won’t even know because they won’t even tell you.
Rafael Mangual: It’s like you can’t, you can’t escape it. And if you want just a normal family life, the message is crystal clear. New York City ain’t for you.
Charles Fain Lehman: Yeah, yeah. And I think Connor, Connor O’Brien, who’s at the Economic Innovation Group, a friend of CJ, a friend of MI, had a great report looking at the steadily declining share of families and children under 5 in the city of New York, and it’s just been plummeting since COVID. And it makes a lot of sense. And this, by the way, you know, I think is, this is an important thing that we who are critical of Mamdani need to take away from tonight, which is like, he is right about the problem. Affordability is the problem. He is completely correct. Totally wrong about the solution. The solutions are really dumb and they will make the problem worse.
Rafael Mangual: Yeah, but there are also people who have and would have continued to be willing to pay the premium if they could take for granted all the other stuff that matters about the quality of life, about safety, about being able to ride the subways without worrying about the crazy guy who’s having a conversation with somebody who’s not there, without having to deal with the needles on the floor in the playground in Washington Square Park, which is surrounded by houses that cost two million, three million, four million, five million dollars. Like that’s the people who’ll pay for the premium of living in New York. They will pay to be close to restaurants. They will pay to have good sushi at 11 o’clock at night. They will pay to have access to cool clubs. Like the one that we were just at for a party. We won’t tell you where cause you weren’t there. Like once you can’t take any of those quality of life, peace of mind becomes significantly more valuable.
John Ketcham: Are you paying more for more or more for less? It’s that simple. And New Yorkers lately have been paying more for less up until really this year. I mean, if…
Mike Solana: I want to say people always think that this New York will persist forever because it’s New York. It’s this huge magnet for talent and people want to be there. I do wonder how much of that has to do with this giant money machine that was the finance industry. And if that keeps shrinking and there’s less money in the city just to fund, just to get people jobs, like do people stop going? And once the tax shifts a bit, you can’t fund services. It’s just a kind of like doom loop that, sets off in the city. I don’t know that it’s this like invincible city actually. Because it’s not that fun to live in. Sorry, that’s the just like, because it like, you all have a bit of Stockholm syndrome. It’s actually like not that nice. It’s you’re in a metal tube most of the day. It’s like you’re breathing in poison. There’s crime and trash and shit everywhere. Rats are like, people are always joking about the rats with like the giant slice of pizza or something on the stairs. Like that’s super dystopian actually, if you just step back and look at it. So you’re putting up with a lot to be there. And I don’t know. Does that bubble burst?
John Ketcham: We are steps away right now from the brand new monolithic, enormous JP Morgan headquarters. It just opened the other week. It holds 30,000 workers inside and JP Morgan has more employees in Texas than New York City. New York State actually. So that says a lot.
Mike Solana: When I was in Miami, there was this tech thing that people would ask about a few years ago. I was here just for different reasons. And I never thought the tech thing was going to happen. However, when asked, would be like, but this is like the fifth borough of New York or the sixth borough of New York City. It’s like people come down here during the winter and
It is a real thing. It’s like New Yorkers are here. It’s not that hard and it’s right there and it’s way more friendly in terms of tax and I don’t think that’s super unlikely. And in fact, we don’t have to speculate. We’re looking at the numbers declining. So like the number of job, of finance jobs in New York is declining. So that is meaningful.
Charles Fain Lehman: You know, I think that there are two arguments against that. There’s an argument against that and there’s an argument for it, which is basically part of how, and I’m stealing this line consciously from Reihan Salam, the president of MI, because I was talking about this earlier. The way that the city has dealt with the departure of capital from the city is a combination, and I should note that we’re watching Mark Levine and Jumaane Williams and a bunch of people getting called by New York 1. Alvin Bragg won despite the endorsement of Pirate Wires. We’re sorry. It’s not great for your win-loss record, but that’s okay. But you know, the city has dealt with this problem in two ways. One is through subsidy, and the other one is through regulation. And what they’ve done is on the one hand, they have taken huge volumes of federal funding. You look at… Well, yeah, but you look at home health aids, home health services are the fastest growing employment in city of New York. By some measures, there’s no employment growth in New York except for home health services. And all of that is federal Medicaid money. It’s how the state manages reimbursement for working as a home health aid in the city. Kathy Hochul has called this like an enormous racket. Those are her words, a racket. But that is like where employment growth is coming from in city of New York is from federal Medicaid dollars. That’s one thing.
The other half of it is if you have an affordability problem, you can seemingly regulate it away, right? Like freezing the rent is not the first time that they’ve tried this. Back in 2019 when Andrew Cuomo was governor, they passed this tenant protection law, which made it much harder to evict people. And we know exactly the effects of that. We know that it increases costs.
Mike Solana: You just, you said, I’m sorry, I want to just talk about Andrew Cuomo for a second. I, now that it’s all just completely over, it, this is his fault. And I think that people really need to just, like, I really hope that that’s the takeaway. This is not Sliwa’s fault. This is not Mamdani’s Mamdani ran, Mamdani, he won. He ran a great campaign. He addressed issues. He won. He deserved it in the primary. He deserved it in the general. Like I, really can’t stand, I hate him, I will use the word hate, I think this is like an evil human being, but he fucking deserved it. And Andrew Cuomo deserved to lose, he was so bad, he was the worst, he was a bad candidate then, he was a bad candidate in the general, he made every bad decision he possibly could, the way he handled the Sliwa thing was also like there had to have been a win there, he had to have been able to sit him down and figure something out. That was like, that was really the, not getting Sliwa to leave the race, if that was what he needed to win then he should have made that happen. And the fact that he couldn’t was the third huge thing that he did that was fucked up and wrong. And I just, really hope that not only him, but the sort of Bill Ackman’s of the world who really jumped all in behind him and insisted this was like, you know, God’s gift. He needs to, everyone needs to just get on board with the fact that Cuomo is his own. He is the reason he lost. Nobody else.
Rafael Mangual: I mean, like the other thing about Cuomo is Cuomo was exactly the wrong candidate for this moment. Mamdani had a massive weakness on public safety. Cuomo had the worst part of his record on that issue.
Charles Fain Lehman: He wouldn’t disown it.
Rafael Mangual: If Cuomo had come in with a genuine mea culpa and said, listen, I screwed up. I was steered by people to my left and I gave in when I shouldn’t have. And bail reform and discovery reform and juvenile justice reform and all this other stuff on the police reform front. Like I shouldn’t have done it. I shouldn’t have closed 17 state prisons. I shouldn’t have closed, you know, another handful of juvenile detention facilities. And if you trust me with this, I will backtrack on all of this and I will make it right. He never did that.
John Ketcham: In hindsight he didn’t even say that. Yeah.
Mike Solana: He thought he was going to win. He didn’t think he had to do anything because he, he truly believed that he was just going to win. Everyone back in the primary, everyone, many, all of these sort of like machine Democrats just believed that. And it was this incredible arrogance and, and he got smacked down and then he couldn’t recover in the general. It was like, I don’t even know.
Charles Fain Lehman: Our producer is telling us that there are questions in the chat. And I’m going to pull this. I want to bring this in because I think there’s a great answer. Question from Livestream chat. How likely will a lawfare strategy work for the worst parts of the Mamdani regime? We actually have lot of thoughts on this topic. You want to talk about lawfare?
Mike Solana: What do you mean by that? Lawfare strategy. What is that?
Rafael Mangual: Like using litigation to stop Mamdani on certain things.
Mike Solana: Yeah, I want to know from you guys what you think he’s capable of. So answer this one and then like, would love to just kind of get him.
Charles Fain Lehman: And we can tell you, communication with Mike, John and I were working on this for Pirate Wire.
Mike Solana: Yeah, don’t say too much. Don’t give too much away. I do want to know.
John Ketcham: Yes. Okay. Let’s start with freezing the rent, right? It’s a signature proposal. De Blasio got it done three times, but the mayor does not have the ability to control rent-stabilized rent increases. The mayor does not have the unilateral ability to freeze rents. That power is vested in a board called the Rent Guidelines Board made up of nine members. The mayor appoints all nine, but they are appointed for a term of years and the mayor cannot fire them except for cause. He can fire the chairman, but not the other members. Two of the other members… It’s like an independent body. It’s at least designed, contemplated to have a degree of independence from the mayor. And that is very important.
Charles Fain Lehman: And there’s a kind of legal mandate, right? It has a specific statutory responsibility in what it has to weigh in determining what the rent increase is going to be every year. The members of the board can’t just be like, we think it should be six. There are factors that they are required by law to consider.
John Ketcham: Like operating costs for owners, like property tax increases, and like water sewer rates. So the statute is clear. You have to consider these factors. And there are two representatives for owners, two representatives for tenants, and four representatives for the public interest. So there is a statutory scheme in place that contemplates a weighing of interests and a deliberate decision.
Now, what Mamdani is basically saying is, we don’t care what the statute says. The only thing that really matters is getting to a zero percent rent increase. So I’m going to put my minions on the board that will only agree to a zero percent rent increase. And we’re to basically jettison this carefully constructed statutory scheme. Doesn’t matter what they’re required to weigh. We’re only going to go with a zero percent. So if your operating costs are up five percent, doesn’t matter. We’re only going to agree to a zero percent.
Charles Fain Lehman: And the problem with this is actually, I mean, it is bad policy, but more importantly, it is flagrantly illegal. Like, Zohran Mamdani has spent the past year promising to violate the law if he’s elected. And there is a component of New York state law that allows individual civilians who are affected to bring civil suits to enjoin legal action on the part of the mayoralty. This is article 78 of- Yeah.
John Ketcham: Civil procedure.
Charles Fain Lehman: You know, I expect an article 78 suit like today, like, maybe they have to wait until he’s sworn in. But if I am if I am rent-stabilized landlords in the city of New York, I am preparing an article 78 suit literally as we speak if the paperwork has not already been drafted. Right?
John Ketcham: Created a hell of a record. I mean, it’s like lawyers say don’t put it in writing, He made a whole campaign about it.
Charles Fain Lehman: This is my other favorite one is Mamdani has multiple times gone on television and said he wants to raise taxes. This is how is he going to pay for all his plans? He’s going to raise taxes, go to Albany and raise taxes. His plan is to raise taxes. He has said multiple times he wants to make sure that whiter parts of the city of New York pay their fair share. He wants to raise taxes on whiter New Yorkers. My response is that Harmeet Dhillon, who is the assistant attorney general for civil right who lives and breathes to go after the stuff. Harmeet Dhillon is going to field day with that one. I expect her to be in his office tomorrow morning. Like that’s flagrantly illegal. You cannot do that.
John Ketcham: That assumes he’s going to get some property tax reform done. So on the one hand, he justifies 0 percent rent increases, because owners of rent stabilized buildings have had their net operating income increase by 12 percent. And on the other hand, in the next breath, he says, but you know, we could do property tax reform. Well, you would only do property tax reform to help landlords who are really struggling. But I thought they were making too much money because it’s like 12 percent. So what is it? Are they making too much money or are they not making enough?
Rafael Mangual: You’re asking too much.
John Ketcham: Basically, I know, know. He had the chance to respond to this legal question, totally dodged it every single time. And it’s a real challenge. It will come up if and when he gets his RGB, Rent Guidelines Board to vote for a zero percent of rent decreases. And then it’s in the court. The other thing is that Mayor Eric Adams might reappoint the RGB members who have been… No, I mean a couple of years at least because I basically think like five members are expired terms right now. So. Years, three years, yeah. So basically many of the members of the rain guidelines board have expired terms. Mayor Adams might be able to get them to order them to step down and replace them with new members. And then Zorn Mamdani is going to say, can I please have my 0 percent rent increase? And they’re going to say no. And then he’s going to say, I’m going to take you to court. And then what are the legal levers that Mamdani has to pull? I don’t think they’re very good.
Mike Solana: There’s a question now of who he is, you know, we’ve never seen him actually succeed as a policy person. He’s a very effective communicator. I don’t even know that he wants to be a policy. Like maybe he doesn’t really, maybe he’s not in it to actually change the city. He’s in it because he’s a theater kid and he wants the attention. But we’re going to see and we’ll figure out pretty fast.
John Ketcham: Sorry, it was just called.
Charles Fain Lehman: Oh yeah, New York One 1 also just called it. Sorry, we’re watching New York 1 in the background.
Rafael Mangual: Literally, I just got a text that says “Jesus Christ.” So. I’m not lying.
Rafael Mangual: I won’t say who it’s from.
Charles Fain Lehman: We’re going to we’re see the camera movie a little bit on our end sorry everybody says we’re playing the show that the phone doesn’t die.
Mike Solana: No, it’s all good. My phone is dying.
Rafael Mangual: Here is another question, and Mike, I know you had a question that you wanted to ask us, but before we get to that, there is another question from the chat that I just wanted to put to the group. And really, I think this one’s for you, Mike, which is why isn’t San Francisco seeing a Zohran-like candidate succeed right now the way that we are seeing?
Charles Fain Lehman: And before Mike answers that I want to know that there are other races that we should be watching we’re seeing still stuff Minneapolis, Seattle right seeing DSA challengers, since I don’t know what the results are I haven’t look but, so you know it’s a national phenomenon. Sorry, go ahead, Mike.
Mike Solana: Well, so, I think that those sort of like hard left had a lot more control in the city like 2020. And so it was hard for them to claim this sort of outsider, we’re going to change the city thing. It was very apparent that most of our problems were because of them and their ideas. And so we could run against them rather than them sort of like coming up against this sclerotic, decaying, moderate machine. However, there are, there are some radicals in the wings, especially for Congress. It’s, seems like. Probably that’s going to go, Scott Wiener sucks. So think it’s going to go to the radical guy. And, I don’t know, like it’s, it’s kind of, see this anywhere you see young people who are left-wing, they’re not Democrats. This is like the high-level thing in the country for the Democratic Party is that party is a radical party. That is the future of the Democratic Party. It can only be radical. That’s where all of the energy is and little by little, it’s going to be like that probably everywhere. But in San Francisco, people have been just very effective at the centrist mobilization thing. And again, we were running against them. So we have this sort of outsider status.
Charles Fain Lehman: And as you said, Mike had this great piece in the Atlantic a couple of like a month ago about the abundance faction. It shed everything that I had been thinking about that tendency.
Mike Solana: It’s just a complete joke. The fact that if you read Abundance, the opening of the book is like, this is specifically not for Republicans. This is only, we’re only talking to the left. And I thought, well, if you’re only talking to the left and not even the center-right, like not even the center, just the left, then you’re fucked. Like you’re never going to win because the left is you, if you’re only speaking to the left, you have to contend with Luigi Mangione Democrats. People who want to literally kill healthcare executives and celebrate that. And they’re not into abundance. In fact, they want to kill you too. They want to kill the Ezra Kleins of the world as well. Like nobody is safe in the eyes of a communist.
Charles Fain Lehman: Yeah, I mean, think one way to read San Francisco at sort of the macro political level. And sorry, the cameras moving around because trying to deal with that. One way to read San Francisco at the macro level is that, like, there will be voter discipline if things really suck. And in some senses, the same thing happened with Eric Adams’s election back in 2021 or like, Anne I can’t tell you her name, outgoing probably, District Attorney or equivalent in Seattle is Republican. The city’s attorney in Seattle, but who won election in 2021 something like that because things just got so bad. We ran this great piece about from Christian Brownemaking the same point about like, when do Republicans win in the city of New York? And the answer is like, when things are really bad, right? Like when was Giuliani able to happen? It was the like, what was the, you know, what was the 2000 murders?
Rafael Mangual: Yeah, Crown Heights, right? I think it’s really what did it for Giuliani because we had 2000 murders a year in 1989 when he first ran and lost to Mayor Dinkins. yoYounow, crime was, was much higher in the late eighties. It was actually starting to go down by 1993 when Mayor Giuliani won. But I think, you know, the Crown Heights riot just killed any, you know, potential sense of confidence in Mayor Dinkins. I think racial tensions has gotten to a point where people just didn’t care anymore. And I also think that like the exhaustion of crime, even though it was getting better people, you know, you’re talking about a decade of like, you know, well over a thousand murders. And for a good part of that decade, 2000 murders a year, people were just sick of it. And I think also like there was something to the fact that there were parts of the city that the elite and well-to-do wanted to access, but they couldn’t, you couldn’t go jogging in Central Park without getting, you know, robbed or raped or worse. You couldn’t go down to the theater without having to walk through or at least around Times Square, which is basically just an open air prostitution and drug market.
Mike Solana: Yeah, no hookers. The famous Times Square hookers.
Charles Fain Lehman: Right.
Rafael Mangual: Like Union Square, you know, was again just like an open air drug market, know, Bryant Park was an open air drug market. I mean, so it was like all of these places in prime Manhattan where the movers and shakers like, like if you lived on the Upper East Side in a beautiful apartment, you know, overlooking Central Park, you wanted to be able to, and you worked on Wall Street, you wanted to be able to take the 6 train, but you couldn’t without taking your life in your hands. And so it was just like people eventually got sick of it. And I think, that’s ultimately what has to happen for New York. We don’t learn our lessons the easy way.
Charles Fain Lehman: You know, I think, I think the other point and this is, Mike, you said it, but I think is generally true. It’s just like part of what happens is just that people notice that things are nuts, right? Like you can you can boil the frog for a long time. But the frog does eventually notice that it’s getting boiled. Like it there can be 1900 murders a year or 800 murders a year. But when you hit 2000 like wait a second, I don’t actually have to live like this. I could vote for somebody who’s not going to do that. But I think you know that is made easier by raising the saliency of absurd things happening, the challenge that will exist. I think about this in our coverage at the City Journal, you guys thinking about this. But Ralph has been, and he’s going to keep beating this drum, beating the drum about the gang database, which is like the NYPD keeps a database of who’s in a gang in the city New York, which is like good because gang members murder each other a lot and they murder other people a lot, love that. And Mamdani very clearly would like to abolish the gang database. He’s been quite open about this. Which is deranged. And we don’t talk about it.
Rafael Mangual: It’s deranged on its own, but it’s scarier because Mamdani is going to take office along with a city council whose composition make this a likely occurrence. Like there are legit police and prison abolitionists in large numbers on the city council who will pass a bill to abolish the gang database. It will get to Mamdani’s desk and he will sign.
John Ketcham: And if the city council speaker that gets elected is also on the far left, then you really have an unprecedented situation of like, where are we going? It’s totally uncharted waters at that point.
Rafael Mangual: I mean, the mayor has traditionally been, at least in recent history, check on the radicals in the city council. That’s not the case with Mamdani and Gracie Mansion. So, you know, the gang database abolishing that is one thing that I think Mamdani will actually deliver on that will be terrible. But it’s not the only thing. I think he is going to move forward on this, like, proposal to give final authority over police discipline to the civilian complaint review board, is basically just a group of cop-hating civilians who want nothing more than to charge NYPD members with crimes and get them fired. And that is going to cause a significant slowdown. It is going to cause a lot of reticence on the part of police officers, and it’s going to be a disaster.
Charles Fain Lehman: And you know, and just to pile on that very briefly, the NYPD is currently losing 300 officers a month, right? The NYPD is 3000 officers below where it was. That’s like the full size of many cities’ forces. It’s 3000 officers below where it was in 2019. Yeah, right. Well, yeah, our producer is saying Trump’s going to come sending in the National Guard, which like may become necessary. That’s where the standoff is. And Mamdani has promised he’s not going do anything about this. He’s not going to hire additional cops. He’s not going to try to elevate the number of officers. New York City’s safety, if have this point of quality of life, New York City’s safety is built on the backbone of there is a literal army of police officers in this city. That’s why New York City is safe. And if you just go, you don’t really need it. It will not go well for you.
John Ketcham: I think other example of New York City’s public schools budget is 41 billion dollars a year. spend about $40,000 per pupil in the city’s public education system. He is promising to get rid of mayoral control. Now that’s Mayor Bloomberg’s signature education achievement, where there used to be dozens of small districts that were basically corrupt fiefdoms by locally elected politicos. And Mayor Bloomberg centralized it as one of his first major accomplishments into a Department of Education with a school’s chancellor is appointed by the mayor and the buck stops with the school’s chancellor and ultimately the mayor. Mamdani is saying, I don’t want mayoral control anymore, but he hasn’t said what’s going to replace it. So you’ve got this $41 billion behemoth of a system. It’s like bigger than states entire budgets. I’m not worried, whatever. It’s just going to be something, but I won’t tell you.
Mike Solana: Zero accountability. People make this this misunderstanding here. People think well democracy right? We should vote for these things. That’s more accountability. In fact what happens is like nobody pays attention to those races and then there’s no accountability. No one ever knows who’s in charge of anything and the mayor if you even elect them in can’t do anything even if they make a promise to do something. So it’s a huge problem. I think you mentioned Trump a second ago.
Mike Solana: I think that he will actually be a huge part of Mamdani’s and Mamdani will become now a huge part of Trump’s presidency. think the two of them are super attracted to each other. They both are showmen and I think they’re like the perfect foil for each other. I think Trump has more power. He’s going to withhold probably money in a bunch of ways. I’m sure courts will get involved, but it does seem like, I don’t know. I’ve never seen an, has there been a president whoever cared this much about who the mayor of New York City was? Trump’s going to care a lot. And I think that there’s probably… The what?
Charles Fain Lehman: Gerald Ford. The famous New York fiscal crisis in the mid-70s and they went to the feds for a bailout and Gerald Ford said no and there’s a famous New York Daily News headline, Ford To City: Drop Dead. Ford to city?
John Ketcham: Yeah, he did come through with some loans.
Charles Fain Lehman: He did eventually give them money but it’s sort of a classic summary of like how bad New York was in the 1970s. I think that’s right. The other actor who’s really interesting here for me is there’s going to be a gubernatorial election in the state of New York next year
Mike Solana: You think Ocasio’s going to run?
Charles Fain Lehman: with polling that shows the likely Republican nominee, representative Elise Stefanik ahead of governor Kathy Hochul by a point. It’s early days. We don’t know, but if I am Elise Stefanik, I’m like, I want to run against Zohran Mamdani.
John Ketcham: Kathy Hochul has endorsed Zohran Mamdani.
Charles Fain Lehman: She is on stage holding hands. I could see the photos.
Mike Solana: Right, especially a year from now.
John Ketcham: Yes like she looked like she was held captive by the police like she made that choice she did not have to.
Charles Fain Lehman: Chuck Schumer did not endorse him. Chuck Schumer did not come out and endorse Zohran.
Rafael Mangual: Today he was asked who he could and he declined to say. He just said I voted and I, you know, I hope New York City will be okay
John Ketcham: That’s what it for.
John Ketcham: Mamdani didn’t, Mamdani didn’t endorse Kamala Harris. So she could have just said, look, you know, I’m going to be the adult in the room. I’m going to make sure that the city is incapable, responsible hands. I won’t endorse Zohran Mamdani, but you know, I wish him well as a Democratic nominee. She didn’t do that. So she’s got to own it.
Isabella Redjai: I mean, you it’s bad when Bill de Blasio endorses him.
Charles Fain Lehman: Yeah.
John Ketcham: Well, that’s thing. So Mike, you made an important point about accountability, right? Well, if you are voting for Zohran Mamdani because you’re going to get your 40 bucks a month frozen on your rent, prospective rent increase. Well, then you know what? The mayor can do whatever the hell he wants and you’re still going to vote for him to save you 40 bucks a month. Right. The danger. It’s like bread and circuses was dangerous in the Roman Empire, not because it gave freebies to the poor, but because it allowed the emperor to do whatever he wanted. And that’s basically the dynamic that we are seeing. Like Mamdani might just hire a bunch of bureaucrats and like not, we have $116 billion budget. That is just a bonanza for the nonprofit industrial complex, for the teachers unions, for all sorts of government workers, unions, employment. Bill de Blasio increased government employment in New York city by like 35,000 jobs. Could anyone have really said that their lives were materially better by the fact that of the de Blasio administration that’s…
Mike Solana: That is really crazy. This is my biggest problem with government and the bloat of government is that my life has never gotten better. Like there’s not been a single thing the government has improved in my entire life. And I don’t think anyone else can answer that it has either. There’s this perennial question of like, where did the money go? What did you spend it on?
Rafael Mangual: This is. There’s this other thing that’s happening right now, which is a federal government shutdown that no one seems to be feeling or noticing, which ought to tell you exactly how much the government is working because the federal budget is way bigger than the budget here in New York. And I don’t know.
Charles Fain Lehman: All the money that’s rolling continues to flow. And this is the challenge, the challenge of Trump cutting off federal funds. It is the case that New York City is strongly dependent on federal revenue. It’s stuff like highway funds. What is the Department of Transportation going to do under Mamdani? Are they going to go back and pick up fight?
Rafael Mangual: They’re going to fix BQE.
Charles Fain Lehman: Well, that, we’d build a second avenue subway. No, they’re going go back and pick the fight about, I can’t generate the term for it, charging people extra money for driving. Congestion pricing. Congestion pricing, thank you. I don’t know why I couldn’t get that. Are they going to go out to be in that fight? I don’t know. There’s been a legal fight about that. Are they going to send troops to New York City? I think that New York is in a much more precarious, to your point Mike, but I think you were saying this earlier. New York is in a much more precarious position than it realizes. And that the bread and circuses model only works if you have somebody to make the bread and somebody to produce the circuses. And currently New York City is running out of bread makers and circus producers, or more precisely funders underwriting.
Mike Solana: There are plenty of circus performers in New York. I would say they’ve got those in spades.
Charles Fain Lehman: And they voted for Zohran Mamdani.
John Ketcham: They’re going to be in City Hall.
Mike Solana: Yes, they’re driving the bus.
Rafael Mangual: There’s something else that New York is running out of and that is time between now and August of 2027, which is the date that I want you all who are watching this to understand is a date of very great importance. Why?
Charles Fain Lehman: We open the asylum.
Rafael Mangual: August 7 is when we will have our Gotham moment. That is when the jails on Rikers Island must by legislative mandate be closed and emptied of all prisoners. Where are they going to go? In theory, they’re supposed to go to one of four borough based jails, which by the way, will only be able to house about 38, 3900 of the 7000 that we currently have incarcerating on Rikers.
Charles Fain Lehman: But they will be built. They will be in construction
Rafael Mangual: None of them will be ready come August 2027. Here’s Zohran Mamdani’s first challenge. What is your plan? What are we going to do come August 2027 when not one of those jails is built yet? Are we going to have a forced experiment in complete decarceration in a jail-free New York? If that’s the case, then absolutely bring the troops.
Mike Solana: Close the tunnels, raise the bridges. It’s a great movie.
John Ketcham: The population of Rikers Island is the worst of the worst right now because of bail reform in part.
Rafael Mangual: Let me just contextualize this.
Charles Fain Lehman: Do this and then we should do closing thoughts. We have seven minutes left.
Rafael Mangual: There was a period of time in which violence, you know, really kind of post-2016 on Rikers Island just went through them. What happened in 2016? Well, they got rid of solitary confinement and so they couldn’t control any of the inmates anymore. This was a big fight that I was having with the Democrats in New York City and the de Blasio administration’s basic answer was that well, hey, we’ve done these bail reforms. We have, you know, really decarcerated. And so the reason we have so much violence is not, has nothing to do with solitary confinement. It’s just that we have a higher concentration of really dangerous criminals. Well, guess what? Those are exactly the kinds of people that you don’t want on the street. And that’s exactly where they’re going to go come August 2027.
Charles Fain Lehman: All right, we got five minutes left. We want to close out the closing thoughts. Phone might die in the middle of that, so we’ll try to be very succinct. John, I’ll give it to you first. What are your takeaways?
John Ketcham: We’re going to learn a lot about the shape of this administration based on the staffing of it. Does Mamdani higher experienced people who have, you know, former Bloomberg members, for example, former Adams members, or is he going to bring the DSA into govern? That’s going to say a lot. And we will learn in the coming days and weeks.
Rafael Mangual: My money’s on DSA.
John Ketcham: So the first deputy mayor in large part runs the nuts and bolts of the city. Who Mamdani picks for first deputy mayor will be an important bellwether. The other thing is New York City has a balanced budget requirement. It is the most stringent budget requirements of any major city in the U.S. Governing moderates people in normal circumstances because you have to make the numbers balance out somehow. If we have a recession, if we have a federal funding crunch or any number of other contingencies, well, Mamdani is going to be starting from behind. Jow he manages those challenges concretely, given that he really has not answered for these contingencies in the campaign trail, that will be very important. But we will be here for all of it and chronicling it because we’re not going anywhere.
Charles Fain Lehman: You got anything you want to add?
Rafael Mangual: Look, it’s, think it’s a sad day for New York, to be honest. I mean, I, I’m generally a relatively happy-go-lucky guy. Those of you who love to insult me on Twitter know that I usually just respond with a funny gif. But this is, this hurts. I mean, I, I do love this city. anAnd do think it’s going to be worse off. I feel lucky that I was able to be in a position to leave the city when we decided that that was the best thing to do for our family. I suspect a lot of other people will make that same choice. But the one thing that guides my work here is that there are a lot of people who can’t, and they deserve better than Zohran Mamdani.
Charles Fain Lehman: Mike, you have any words of wisdom?
Mike Solana: I don’t know about wisdom, but it’s a prediction. I think that like Trump is going to make this his new cathedral. I think he’s super, I think he’s going to be extremely attracted to New York city. I think it’s going to become the canvas for his art. And, um, I think that it’s going to be really difficult to discern what’s real. Like what, what is Zohran doing versus what is the noise and the pageantry. They’re going to be performing a lot. It’ll be crazy. I think it’s going to be crazy. I think we’re all going to have a lot to write about. Yeah. We’ll get the ball rolling.
Charles Fain Lehman: I think that’s right. I’m going to add to that, you know, we are always cautious about electoral politics, but now’s our…
John Ketcham: The ballot proposals.
Rafael Mangual: One. Yes. Yes.
Charles Fain Lehman: Yeah, sorry. Yeah, let me leave you closing thoughts. The, you know, now we’re in the realm of actual positive decision making. Now a 34-year-old whose first real job was being a state assemblyman and before that he was a rapper is actually the mayor of the United States. Mayor of largest and most important city in the United States, arguably the most important city in the entire planet. Watch is my response because we’re going to be paying attention and we have lots of opinions. Listeners, thanks for joining us. Mike Piratewires.com go subscribe. Great morning email. We also send that stuff sometimes I feel like we can call it there. No, we’re good. Okay. Thank you all so much. Thank you, Mike. You’re the best
Mike Solana: Bye guys.
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