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Cuomo defeated in NYC Democratic Mayoral Primary

Jim_MDP said:
While it's a nice idea in a vacuum, the disaster will be the hundreds (more?) of local grocers it drives out of business.

There's certainly no easy solution, I just think this one isn't viable in the city, which isn't a "food desert", just expensive.
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Do you have evidence that government-owned grocery stores drive local grocers out of business? Or is this just a thing you're assuming will happen?
 
AOC's gotta teach those American men to move!
Mamdani is as bad at this as Trump, Biden and Elon.
But certainly an occasion worth celebrating for the next POTUS and the next mayor of New York.
The music sounds like Cuban timba, but the lyrics are about Puerto Rico.
 
Jim_MDP said:
While it's a nice idea in a vacuum, the disaster will be the hundreds (more?) of local grocers it drives out of business.

There's certainly no easy solution, I just think this one isn't viable in the city, which isn't a
"food desert", just expensive.
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It's a strange one - if it is too expensive for most people than despite groceries technically being available it is in fact a food desert for those that can't afford it.

I would have thought looking at what keeps the prices high would be a better approach - if it is the business rates/taxes then perhaps reducing those would be a more effective approach rather than having to build up supply chain etc. for the new city businesses. The local authority could look at incentivising tax reductions based on what the store stocks and sells.
 
MAGA’s nightmare wins NY: Dem socialist SHOCKS establishment, liberal decodes win on MSNBC (MSNBC on YouTube, June 26, 2025 - 8:47 min.)
MSNBC’s Ari Melber reports on what Zohran Mamdani’s win in The New York City mayoral primary means for the future of the Democratic Party.
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‘Seismic’: Zohran Mamdani’s primary win is a ‘wake up call’ for Democrats, says Hayes (MSNBC on YouTube, June 26, 2025 - 10:24 min.)
“Today, every Democrat who holds office in this country woke up to the possibility of a primary challenge next year because of what happened last night in New York City,” says Chris Hayes on Zohran Mamdani’s NYC mayoral primary win over Andrew Cuomo.
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‘Brilliant campaign’: Bernie Sanders reacts to Zohran Mamdani’s primary win (MSNBC on YouTube, June 26, 2025 - 6:54 min.)
“It was one of the great political victories in modern history,” says Sen. Bernie Sanders on Zohran Mamdani defeating Andrew Cuomo in the NYC mayoral primary. “Zohran ran a brilliant campaign.”
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'It's not about being a Democratic socialist!' 'Yes, it is!': Hosts clash over apparent Mamdani win (MSNBC on YouTube, June 26, 2025 - 10: min.)
The Weeknight hosts and Democratic Strategist Basil Smikle debate the significance of Zohran Mamdani’s apparent victory in the New York City mayoral primary – and what it might reveal about the Democratic Party's future.
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Of course, the DNC will continue to claim that it's not about politics, that it's all about charisma, about talking to young people on TikTok etc., and centrists will continue to claim that it will alienate right-wing voters if anybody says anything that the Cheneys can't agree with.
However, ...
'From lecturing to listening': Mamdani explains how he drew votes from Trump supporters in NYC race (MSNBC on YouTube, June 26, 2025 - 7:40 min.)
In his first national interview since Tuesday's primary election New York City mayoral candidate Zohran Mamdani talks with Jen Psaki about the principles of his campaign and how he reached out to voters who had previously chosen Trump, and how he countered significant opposition spending.
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Darat said:
It's a strange one - if it is too expensive for most people than despite groceries technically being available it is in fact a food desert for those that can't afford it.
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It's true that affordability is built into the idea of food deserts, but the operational definition of 'urban food desert' that tends to get used by researchers is something like "an area with no grocery stores within 0.5 miles", and there are plenty of neighborhoods in NYC that meet that definition (which map closely to low-income areas). The problem isn't that they have a Gristedes but not a CTown, it's that they have neither. You can't incentivize a store that isn't there to lower their prices.

This paper goes into the causes of food deserts, some of the policies that have been attempted to address them, the motivation for municipal grocery stores, and the lessons learned where it's already been attempted.
 
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dann said:
Of course, the DNC will continue to claim that it's not about politics, that it's all about charisma, about talking to young people on TikTok etc., and centrists will continue to claim that it will alienate right-wing voters if anybody says anything that the Cheneys can't agree with.
However, ...
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It's been funny seeing the post-election narratives emerge. Suddenly he's a "once in a generation" Obama-esque political talent. Interesting how few among the commentariat noticed that a week ago, when the safe bet was a Cuomo victory. People love a winner.
 
Hercules56 said:
I don't think it's guaranteed that Sliwa would win against Adams, Cuomo and the DSA guy, but he will definitely have a Fighting Chance. The general election for New York city mayor race does not have ranked voting
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You're presenting a fantastic case for why Adams and Cuomo should not run in the general election.
 
I read a few articles on MSNBC or CNBC, or whatever the hell it was that popped up on my Google News feed, that was fear mongering the win already. They were up in arms stating that businesses are already fleeing NYC for Texas and Florida because of the low taxes, and that having someone "with his ideology" is going to cause Wall Street to bail on NYC. This is from a new organization that righties call commie and liberal. You'd think you were reading the Wall Street Journal, it's ◊◊◊◊◊◊◊ obnoxious.

Anyway, good for him. As mentioned upthread the mayor of NYC is a ◊◊◊◊ job and props to this guy for wanting it. I hope he can enact the change he ran on and make NYC a better place.
 
Brainster said:
It's great that turd Cuomo lost but Mamdani is likely to be a disaster. He's going to freeze the rent and increase the supply of affordable housing? The former will ensure that nobody wants to build multifamily rentals in NYC, which means you can forget about any increased supply. Worse still is his proposed solution for food price inflation:
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As Mayor, Zohran will create a network of city-owned grocery stores focused on keeping prices low, not making a profit. Without having to pay rent or property taxes, they will reduce overhead and pass on savings to shoppers.
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Brainster said:
No surprise a Democratic Socialist would suggest putting the government into competition with the private sector, but it is refreshing to see him admit that the reason it would succeed was because of unfair advantages (no rent or property taxes).
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"If it moves, tax it. If it stops moving, subsidize it."

Just leaving people alone is a foreign concept to politicians.
 
mumblethrax said:
The proposed rent freeze is for rent-stabilized buildings only, so isn't likely to deter developers from building new stock, particularly if they're incentivized to do so (new construction can include rent-stabilized units for a tax incentives, but don't have to).
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Once burned, twice shy. Rent stabilization originally applied only to pre-WWII units but was later expanded to include an additional 325,000 units (about 1/6th of the total current stock) in 1969. In total only 42% of NYC's rental housing is non-regulated.

mumblethrax said:
Non-profit food co-ops also enjoy "unfair advantages" over commercial grocery stores, by virtue of being exempt from state taxes.
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If you are talking sales taxes, almost all uncooked food sold in stores is exempt whether the store is for profit or not. Corporately owned stores may have to pay state income taxes, but that's paid only on profits. Since most food retailers' profit is only pennies on the dollar (Kroger has been averaging about 2% profit the last four years), the tax paid is really de minimus; at a 10% tax rate it would be 0.2 cents of every dollar sold. Rent, however, is a pretty significant expense for grocers; as a rule of thumb somewhere between 2-4% of sales

mumblethrax said:
Doesn't strike me as a good reason not to have them. It's unlikely that gub'mint grocery stores are going to be in direct competition with existing chains, as they'll likely be focused on food deserts first--dealing with market failures rather than trying to replace private businesses. I doubt we're going to have 100 locations anytime soon, let alone 10,000. Hell, I'm skeptical we'll have one.
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I agree on that last point.

mumblethrax said:
It's worth considering that the mayor has limited power to implement big ideas like this. Any tax increase has to go through the state, and the most likely outcome is the state tells him no. Mayor of NYC is one of the worst jobs in US politics--everyone hates you, you have little hard power, and it's notoriously dead-end.
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It's funny because so much of the American media are centered there and as a result the job is very high profile; I can name the mayors back to the 1970s and I might miss one, but I'd have a hard time doing the same for Phoenix, where I actually have lived for most of that time. But you're right; even some of the guys that the media fell in love with like Lindsay, Koch and Giuliani found it was a steppingstone to nowhere.
 
3point14 said:
I'm not sure that leads to great outcomes.
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Huh? Not letting politicians stick their corrupt fingers into everyone's business is a problem?

We're not talking laws against murder or theft. I'm not even sure what that glib comment was even supposed to mean.
 
Hercules56 said:
Adams says he is definitely running. Dem vote will be split in half.
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There was never any question about this, but why would the "Dem vote" be split in half? Why not, say, 70/30? He's immensely unpopular, and he's also running to the right of where he was in 2021. He announced his candidacy on Fox and Friends, about the only friendly media panel he has left. He's more likely to try to build a coalition of Republicans and whatever rump of supporters he has left among Democratic voters.

Brainster said:
Once burned, twice shy. Rent stabilization originally applied only to pre-WWII units but was later expanded to include an additional 325,000 units (about 1/6th of the total current stock) in 1969. In total only 42% of NYC's rental housing is non-regulated.
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This is just a different claim, isn't it? You're no longer describing rational economic behavior in any case. I'm skeptical that rent-stabilization/control is good policy in general (especially now that I no longer have a rent-stabilized apartment) but there doesn't seem to be any good reason to suppose that Mamdani's proposed rent freeze would lead to a reduction in new construction.

If you are talking sales taxes, almost all uncooked food sold in stores is exempt whether the store is for profit or not. Corporately owned stores may have to pay state income taxes, but that's paid only on profits. Since most food retailers' profit is only pennies on the dollar (Kroger has been averaging about 2% profit the last four years), the tax paid is really de minimus; at a 10% tax rate it would be 0.2 cents of every dollar sold. Rent, however, is a pretty significant expense for grocers; as a rule of thumb somewhere between 2-4% of sales
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I was talking about state income tax, but of course a non-profit has an advantage in that it doesn't need to seek a profit at all.

More to the point, I'm not sure how much I care. If private actors aren't meeting basic needs, the state stepping in to ensure that they are seems like a reasonable outcome. I'm sure there are mom-and-pop private schools who resent having to compete with public schools, but seeing that the basic need is met is more important to me than than fostering a competitive market, particularly where there's a history of market failure that has resisted amelioration.

It's funny because so much of the American media are centered there and as a result the job is very high profile; I can name the mayors back to the 1970s and I might miss one, but I'd have a hard time doing the same for Phoenix, where I actually have lived for most of that time. But you're right; even some of the guys that the media fell in love with like Lindsay, Koch and Giuliani found it was a steppingstone to nowhere.
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Yeah, it's a remarkable trend. The last mayor of NYC to attain higher elected office was John T. Hoffman in 1869.
 
As a registered Democrat I voted for Brad Lander the city comptroller. The problem with Eric Adams is the trump administration acting this past February to have federal charges against Adams dropped. The move stunk to high heaven, so bad that members of both the prosecutor's office and members of the Adams Administration resigned in protest. Who knows what kind of deal Adams made with trump, what might have been agreed to? At the time it seemed bizarre to me; the Republican president, less than a month in office, acting to block the prosecution of a Democratic mayor in New York City. It was like something out of the 1890s (an era that trump supposedly reveres.)

I'm no great fan of Zohran Mamdani -- to me he seems a tad too doctrinaire -- but AOC and Bernie Sanders endorsed him (so did Brad Lander in exchange for Mamdani endorsing Lander) so he'd probably get my vote in November.
 
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