In a New York Minute... Everything Can Change. Things Can Get Pretty Strange
Deep Dives
Explore related topics with these Wikipedia articles, rewritten for enjoyable reading:
-
Zohran Mamdani
16 min read
The article centers on Mamdani's mayoral campaign and the political reactions to it, but assumes reader familiarity with his background, political positions, and rise to prominence in New York politics
-
Curtis Sliwa
2 min read
Sliwa plays a crucial role in the article's narrative about vote-splitting and political machinations, but readers may not know his history founding the Guardian Angels or his previous political campaigns
-
Borough Park, Brooklyn
15 min read
The article describes Borough Park as 'one of the strangest places in America' with its Orthodox Jewish community and unique culture, but doesn't explain its history or why it became such a concentrated Hasidic enclave
The idea that Zohran Mamdani is going to bring about the downfall of Western Civilization is stupid. For one thing, most people who try to claim such nonsense can’t even coherently define “Western Civilization,” or how Mamdani is supposed to be an existential threat to it. And if Mamdani is really such an existential threat, why couldn’t the Republicans in New York get their act together to rally behind the only viable alternative, Andrew Cuomo, who was eagerly soliciting their vote? With the emphatic endorsement of the current Republican President, Donald Trump? Again, if it was such an emergency situation, then presumably the 146,000 voters in New York City who opted to back the no-shot Republican nominee, Curtis Sliwa, did not adequately receive the message. Maybe they hated Cuomo too much to ever vote for him. Fine. But then don’t try to act like this was the nation’s Last Stand Against Communism if your personal antipathy for the one guy positioned to block the dreaded Communist Takeover was too much of a hindrance. “He’s a miserable rat bastard!” one Sliwa voter in Queens shouted to me about Cuomo.
There are those who believe that the likes of Rudy Giuliani and George Pataki defied Trump, and continued to stick by Sliwa, because they viewed the elevation of Mamdani in NYC as conducive to Republicans’ future political prospects — because the next crop of GOP gubernatorial candidates can now use him as a foil, and tell the rest of the state that they need to elect Elise Stefanik (god forbid) so she can remove the Communist or something. At which point, the likes of Giuliani and Pataki will gain more political cache and access. So let’s think about that for a minute. If the theory is true, and it’s plausible enough, NY GOP bigwigs such as Giuliani and Pataki were so unconvinced of Mamdani’s existential threat that they were willing to contribute to his election, rather than defeat him, as a 3D Political Chess ploy. (Although to call Pataki a bigwig in 2025 is a “big joke.” Rudy too, arguably.) Another part of the explanation is likely the role of decades-old dynastic blood feuds among these aging wannabe shot-callers. Pataki improbably beat Andrew’s father Mario in 1994, in an enormous upset. So it would be like a mortal political sin
...This excerpt is provided for preview purposes. Full article content is available on the original publication.