New York politics

New Yorkers Aren’t Buying It

Featured image New York has long been a “sanctuary city,” but when busloads of illegal immigrants began showing up, that changed rapidly. Mayor Eric Adams says that the presence of 58,000 or so illegal immigrants threatens to destroy the city, and blames the Biden administration. He’s right about that. A group of New York pols that included Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Gerald Nadler, and others toured the Roosevelt Hotel, epicenter of the fiasco, and »

NYC Mayor Adams: Trump Was Right About the Border

Featured image The headline isn’t strictly accurate, but remember when Trump or some Trumpster supposedly said uncontrolled immigration would lead to a taco truck on every corner? Well, New York’s hapless Mayor Adams, who presides over a virtuous “sanctuary city,” now says that continued uncontrolled arrival of migrants will “destroy New York City” and its surrounding suburbs, which is implicit confirmation of Trump’s immigration stand in 2016. He and other Democrats whose »

Florida vs. New York

Featured image As states increasingly segregate into red and blue, California, New York, Texas and Florida are the heavyweight contenders. (Although, don’t forget poor Illinois.) A year ago I had the good fortune to hear Governor Ron DeSantis give a speech to a Minnesota group in Naples, Florida. DeSantis said something that I thought couldn’t possibly be correct: that Florida has more people than New York, with a state budget only half »

Rats!

Featured image For quite a while it has seemed like we are stuck in a time loop determined to repeat the 1960s, with rising crime, urban riots, racial politics that summons the complete capitulation of the liberal establishment, vast expansion of the welfare state, etc. Also rats in New York City. Bloomberg reports: Wanted: NYC Rat Czar. Will Offer Salary as High as $170,000 New York Mayor Eric Adams is looking for »

Zeldin’s zinger

Featured image When he won New York’s Republican primary for endorsement to challenge Governor Kathy Hochul in this year’s election, Lee Zeldin declared Hochul “in over her head” and described her as “a walking identity crisis.” In their debate last night Zeldin zeroed in on the rampant crime in New York and got off a zinger while Hochul remained utterly impassive: Lee Zeldin nukes Kathy Hochul over violent crime in New York »

Bringing the War Home

Featured image Representative Lee Zeldin is running for Governor of New York against Democrat Kathy Hochul, who succeeded Andy Cuomo when Cuomo resigned last year. Like Democrats across the country, Hochul is raising record amounts of campaign cash. But like Republicans across the country, Zeldin is running on a tough on crime platform that resonates with voters. Polls indicate that the race is neck and neck. Today the importance of the crime »

A Cuomo Comeback?

Featured image What could be better than Anthony Weiner, Elliot Spitzer, or Hillary Clinton attempting a comeback? Andrew Cuomo making a comeback, that’s what. From Monday’s Wall Street Journal: Former New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo and his aides are intensifying an effort to revive his public standing, including discussing how to make his first public appearance since resigning in August, according to people close to him. . . Mr. Cuomo and his »

Eric Adams wins

Featured image It took two weeks, but we finally have a winner in the New York City’s Democratic mayoral primary. He’s Eric Adams, the pro-cop candidate. Adams held a substantial lead in the actual voting. He was hands-down the candidate a plurality of voters said should be the Democrats’ nominee. However, the convoluted ranked-choice voting methodology caused his lead to shrink and almost disappear. As things stand now, he leads the second-place »

All Eyes on New York City Today

Featured image Keep your eyes on New York City tonight and tomorrow, as it goes to the polls for the primary election for a new mayor. That sound you’re not hearing is the worry of progressives that the winning candidate just might be Eric Adams, the black Brooklyn borough president who appears to be the most conservative candidate in the field, at least when it comes to law and order issues that—big »

Is Cuomo the Worst? Yes, and No

Featured image Cast your mind back to 1982 for a moment. Lt. Gov. Mario Cuomo was contesting for the Democratic nomination for governor against New York City mayor Edward Koch, a colorful figure with many sensible views acquired from experience. (He wrote an article for The Public Interest in 1980 explaining that having become mayor, he wished he’d voted against a number of laws that he supported in the U.S. House because »

The DeSantis dissent

Featured image Michael Brendan Dougherty asks “Again: Where Does DeSantis Get His Apology?” and embeds Guy Benson’s comparison of Florida with New York (below). Dougherty also links ot the New York Times story “9 Top N.Y. Health Officials Have Quit as Cuomo Scorns Expertise.” Cuomo’s quarrels with his public health officials are not exactly the most scandalous element of his clownish rule and voluble self-love, but it is an angle that plays »

Dan Henninger’s Grand Slam

Featured image One of the most-read unsigned editorials ever to appear in the Wall Street Journal editorial page was way back in 1993, entitled “No Guardrails.” It is rare that an unsigned editorial at a daily paper has much of a half-life, but “No Guardrails” was one those that you clipped out and kept handy, and which people talked about for years after. Dan Henninger, nowadays the Journal‘s regular Thursday columnist, was »

Mayor de Blasio, and Other Leftist Luxuries

Featured image It is a long running theme that the United States and Europe have been dissipating their inherited moral capital, and with the asset side of our civilizational balance sheet running dangerously low, we can see the consequences in front of us over the last seven days. Take New York City Mayor Warren Wilhelm Bill de Blasio, who is, let’s face it, a literal Communist. You could tolerate him so long as »

Andrew Cuomo’s Corruption Circus Rolls On

Featured image My conservative cousin from New York (for a few more months) filed this dispatch on criminality in Andrew Cuomo’s inner circle. Tuesday’s conviction of Andrew Cuomo’s close associate Joe Percoco deals a sharp blow to the Governor’s 2020 Presidential hopes and may even jeopardize his reelection prospects this year. Percoco was Cuomo’s executive deputy secretary and longtime confidant. He was found guilty of soliciting and accepting bribes from top management »

Is Mayor Putz going down?

Featured image Michael Goodwin summarizes the latest news emanating from the prosecutors circling around New York’s Mayor de Blasio in the New York Post column “The mayor is going down!” The schadenfreude is overwhelming. The Post runs the column with the tabloid cover below. I’m thinking there must be something to it. Goodwin writes: Less than a week ago, Mayor de Blasio was offering aid to Ecuadorians after the earthquake there. Now »

Is corruption thicker than socialism?

Featured image Aspects of the campaign financing practices of New York City mayor Bill de Blasio are under federal corruption investigation, the New York Times reports. The investigation centers around two businessmen with ties to de Blasio — Jona Rechnitz and Jeremy Reichberg. Federal agents reportedly have interviewed roughly 20 senior New York Police Department officials as part of an examination of the ways Rechnitz and Reichberg wielded influence in New York »

City Journal at 25, with Brian Anderson

Featured image The Manhattan Institute’s City Journal is celebrating its twenty-fifth anniversary. The table of contents for the twenty-fifth anniversary issue is posted here (subscribe here). To salute the magazine’s milestone, and bring the magazine to the attention of readers who might not be familiar with it, I submitted a set of questions to long-time editor Myron Magnet (now retired) and current editor Brian Anderson. I posted my exchange with Myron Magnet »