Michael Goodwin: Mamdani's NYC borough tour attacking Trump smacks of amateur hour
He won the Democratic primary by pledging that wealthier New Yorkers would pay higher taxes so his City Hall could afford lots of free stuff for everyone else.
Apparently that's all it took to solve the crisis.
Because just like that, the 33-year-old socialist assemblyman is saying he has a new agenda for the general election.
He's now running against President Trump, calling him an enemy and vowing 'My administration will be Donald Trump's worst nightmare.'
This week he's touring the five boroughs, one borough per day, with a steady stream of warnings that the president's policies will hurt the city, and that Mamdani should be elected to resist him.
He reportedly plans to mostly ignore his three main rivals and save his firepower for Trump.
It's all part of an effort to paint the president as Public Enemy No. 1.
Medicaid accusation
He began by accusing Trump of kicking more than 1 million New Yorkers off Medicaid, cutting funding for food stamps and slashing funding for housing programs.
'We know that there is no borough that will be free from Trump's cruelty,' he said.
Mamdani's next step was to dirty up his three main rivals by linking them to Trump.
He says former Gov. Andrew Cuomo, Mayor Adams and GOP nominee Curtis Sliwa should be disqualified from consideration because, he claims, they have cozy relationships with Trump.
Mamdani said in a radio interview the 'president has three candidates in this race — one that he's directly been in touch with, another he bailed out of legal trouble and now functionally controls, and the final one literally being a member of the same Republican Party.'
The decision to appeal to New Yorkers by attacking the president of the United States, a former New Yorker, smacks of amateur hour.
While there are certainly legitimate issues to raise about Mamdani's opponents, overstating their connections to Trump and making that a defining issue is not persuasive.
Neither is turning the president into a toxic bogeyman.
All three denied being close to Trump, with Cuomo foolishly trying to compete with Mamdani by saying, 'Nobody has fought with Trump more than I have.'
For one thing, Trump loves New York and makes it clear he wants to help his hometown and state.
For Mamdani to bite the hand that could feed the city merely to score cheap political points reveals his ignorance of history and of the necessity of City Hall having strong connections to the White House, no matter the party of the president.
His calling Trump an enemy before he's even been elected flips a seminal event on its head. Recall the legendary Daily News headline from 1975 when President Gerald Ford declined a bailout request.
The words 'Ford to City, Drop Dead' helped set in motion bipartisan efforts that eventually got results, all captured in a recent documentary.
A version of that headline based on Mamdani's approach would declare: 'City to Trump, Drop Dead.'
Knowing what we know about Trump, attacks will not get the federal help the next mayor will need.
Leaving aside whether Mamdani's effort to link his opponents to the president will play well in the November election, it strikes me as a stupendously bad idea for a city official or candidate to attack the president to score political points.
Mayoral malpractice
Indeed, it's malpractice for a mayor or governor to spurn the president and by extension the federal government over partisan differences.
The odds of winning anything that way are low and the price of losing is far too high to make it a sensible bet.
Consider some areas where the feds hold the purse strings and can offer other help.
Housing, education, health care, mass transit, highways, bridges, airports, tunnels, prisons, borders, tax policies on nonprofits and the overall economy.
Law enforcement depends on the feds for financial aid and operational support.
Any political upside to Mamdani would be transitory, while the damage to the welfare of New Yorkers could be severe and permanent.
All the more so when that president is Trump, who is a man of action and a prolific counterpuncher.
He has called Mamdani a 'communist lunatic,' to which The New York Times responds by saying 'Mr. Mamdani is a democratic socialist.'
Given Mamdani's radicalism, the change is a distinction without a difference.
Trump's decision to federalize policing in the nation's capital and mobilize the National Guard is consistent with his view that high crime levels in urban areas should not be tolerated.
It's also true the police commander of the nation's capital was suspended after being suspected of manipulating data to downplay serious offenses.
Although Trump talks about making a similar federalizing move in New York, the situations are very different, with the NYPD turning in record-low numbers of shootings.
Of course, that's no thanks to Mamdani and his core supporters, many of whom echo his scurrilous calls to 'defund the police' and his claims that all cops are racists.
He simply doesn't understand or respect police work, and it's impossible to imagine he would have the trust of the NYPD.
Another area where Mamdani is out of touch is his call for higher taxes.
Even Gov. Hochul, a big tax-and-spender herself, rejects his plan.
She admits the state's sky-high taxes already drove many New Yorkers to Florida.
It's also noteworthy that Hochul and other top Dems have not celebrated that Trump's 'Big Beautiful Bill' increased the allowable deductions of state and local taxes (SALT) from $10,000 per family to $40,000.
That marks a major concession to GOP representatives from blue states.
The $10,000 limit, which took effect in 2017, led Cuomo and other Dems to argue it was a rocket aimed at destroying blue states.
In fact, the higher deductions go mostly to high income families, which is why Dems never tried to raise the SALT limits during Joe Biden's presidency.
Demonize the tax cutter
Now that Trump has reduced the incentive for many taxpayers to leave New York, you would think Dems would celebrate.
But it's apparently asking too much for Sen. Chuck Schumer, Rep. Hakeem Jeffries, Hochul and Mamdani to even admit that the change benefits New Yorkers, even though no state Dems supported it.
They would rather demonize Trump than acknowledge he delivered a tax cut for the state's residents.
His promise to cut taxes is a reason why Trump got nearly 44% of the vote in New York last year.
That kind of reaction has Hochul frightened about her re-election next year and has Republicans optimistic about keeping Congress in the 2026 midterms.
It's a reminder that tax rates matter, a lesson Gotham voters must teach Mamdani in November.
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