Mamdani's worst threat: Unleashing City Council radicals' wildest, wokest dreams
Over the last three years, his veto threats have prevented some of the body's most disastrous proposals from seeing the light of day, and forced moderate concessions on several bills that became law.
That could all change after November's mayoral election.
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Absent Adams — or Curtis Sliwa or Andrew Cuomo — in Gracie Mansion, the next City Council stands ready to realize its unchecked radical dreams, if one of the most left-wing legislative bodies in the country gains an ally in a Mayor Zohran Mamdani.
If he ever joins this collectivist keg party brewing at City Hall, Mamdani will egg on the wokesters like an Oneonta pledge master with a beer-bong full of Bolshevism.
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In another era, we might hope that the council would elect a moderate as its speaker.
But given the radical wave powering Mamdani's rise, it's hard to have much optimism that center-of-the-road members have the political will to form a viable coalition.
Just like congressional Democrats Hakeem Jeffries, Dan Goldman and Jerry Nadler, none of the council's non-socialist Dems will want to rile up the Marxist Mamdani-backers and threaten them in whatever future race they fancy.
Even if a moderate does pull it together, a City Council speaker's power isn't absolute — and legislative leaders are more often driven by their conference than drive it.
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With the council's 18-member Progressive Caucus as the largest bloc in the chamber, they'll be the ones with their hands on the steering wheel.
And nothing will stand in their way if the expression 'mayoral veto' evaporates from our parlance in January, disappearing like the words 'haberdasher' or 'dungarees.'
To envision what a council without any counterweight could do, we need only look as far as the Progressive Caucus' existing proposals.
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A quick glance at the group's website reveals a series of ruinous policies buried in a towering heap of woke euphemisms.
The caucus demands an 'environmentally just city,' funded by a 'more inclusive budget.'
Its members want schools that focus on 'human development rather than punishment or criminalization.'
After they 'reduce the size and scope of the NYPD and Department of Corrections,' they will implement a 'holistic, multi-strategy approach' to law and order while funding an 'alternative safety infrastructure.'
What does any of this actually mean?
In practice, Progressive Caucus members have wasted their time on senseless yet seemingly innocuous bills — like the time Councilman Lincoln Restler tried to ban Mr. Softee unless he shows up in a solar-powered ice cream truck.
Yet the caucus has also attacked our democratic rights, spearheading legislation that allowed non-citizens to vote (struck down, thankfully, by New York's top court).
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Worse, the caucus has led the council on policies that are devastating the very communities they claim to serve.
Lefty council members stood arm-in-arm with Mayor Bill de Blasio to open the nation's first 'safe injection sites.' Today, many of those same officials are simply stunned that their voters object to the 'fentanyl fold' addicts nodding off on their sidewalks all day.
Still, they see this as a program worth expanding — and Mamdani, a sitting assemblyman, is a sponsor of such a bill in Albany.
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Progressive Caucus housing proposals would cripple new residential development and stymie renovations of vacant rent-stabilized units.
Albany leftists successfully pressured Gov. Kathy Hochul to include the construction-killing Good Cause Eviction law in the state budget — so don't expect Mamdani to put up even token opposition to the Community Land Act, the next item on the progressive punch list.
It would abolish tax liens, requisition public land for housing and prevent desperate landlords from selling their underwater buildings until tenants and community groups have a chance to buy them out.
When Mamdani & Co. use Marxist terms like 'seizing the means of production,' laws like the Community Land Act are the tools of their revolution.
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The rest of their agenda includes rollbacks on public safety — eliminating the NYPD's successful gang database, for example — and an outright freebie free-for-all, from free daycare for all to unlimited housing for the homeless.
Needless to say a Progressive Caucus-dominated City Council won't seek to tap the brakes on Mamdani's own $10 billion government giveaway plan.
Instead, they'll keep trying to turn the city into an open bazaar of street vendors and sex-trafficking (aka Councilmember Tiffany Caban's 'sex worker opportunity program').
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For all their talk of a brave new world, these radical ideas scare the daylights out of me. Whatever challenges we now face, unrestrained leftist control of City Hall won't do anything but make matters worse.
Perhaps Adams, for all his faults, deserves more credit for standing in the breach.
Joe Borelli is a managing director at Chartwell Strategy Group and the former minority leader of the New York City Council.
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