Funny thing happened during this year’s Puerto Rican Day Parade, which in various incarnations has decorated Fifth Avenue every second Sunday in June since 1959.
This was my 25th appearance, once as grand marshal. As about a million other participants and spectators enjoyed the perfect early summer weather, the floats, the cheering crowds and marching bands, I ran into two friends running for mayor.
First came the unpopular actual mayor, Eric Adams, a former police captain. Followed in minutes by Andrew Cuomo, the unpopular former governor of New York, who was attempting a political comeback by running for mayor.
While aware of their checkered pasts, I still like them and greeted both warmly as we marched up Fifth Avenue.
Mayor Adams was first. We embraced and held each other at arm’s length in greeting.
With the grace of a dapper welterweight, he is a cool cat, a New York bon vivant until he was indicted last fall on bribery and other charges.
Worse, for many New York voters, he lobbied successfully to get the bribery charges dropped by the Trump Justice Department. The truly rotten part was that he allegedly got the charges dropped in exchange for a promise to help dreaded ICE hunt down undocumented immigrants who call the city home.
Tainted by the migrant scandal, Adams knew he couldn’t compete for the Democratic nomination for mayor, so he announced he was running as an independent.
With the Democratic nod unexpectedly in play, former Gov. Andrew Cuomo jumped into the race. Backed by the city’s powerful real estate and finance industries, Andrew looked like the Come Back Kid, commanding substantial leads in the race for mayor as voters apparently put aside his fall from grace over sex harassment allegations that were never charged. We grabbed each other in a “we’re still here” old friends embrace.
Two weeks later, the New York mayoral primary upended everyone’s expectations entirely.
Cuomo got killed by a kid from Queens; vanquished in the Democratic Primary by Zohran Kwame Mamdani a 33-year-old Muslim state assembly member (born in Uganda, as if he weren’t exotic enough). With Cuomo on the cusp of dropping out of politics entirely, it is Adams’ long-shot bid for reelection as an independent that is breathing new life.
So, it will probably be Adams vs. Mamdani in November’s general election, with Mamdani the heavy favorite, even though Adams’ policies make much more sense for New York than those of this unexpectedly popular, self-proclaimed Democratic Socialist.
In New York, as elsewhere, there is no such thing as free lunch, housing, police, sanitation, or transit.
This charming idealist wants to shift the property tax burden “from the outer boroughs to more expensive homes in richer and whiter neighborhoods.” Which sounds woke and racist and aimed at middle-class taxpayers who cannot pay more. Increase taxes any further, and there will be no middle class in New York City.
Still, savvy young people turned out by the tens of thousands to vote for a political novice who is running against rich, white people. I have a theory on why that is more ambitious than simply cost-of-living.
Mamdani shocked the world and won the Democratic primary for mayor in part because young New Yorkers, many of them Jewish, are sick of the war in Gaza. Mamdani is a passionate supporter of BDS, the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions Movement that aims for eventual Palestinian independence.
Their vote wasn’t just for Mamdani. It was also in part against the older Jewish establishment’s intransigent support of Israeli Prime Minister Bibi Netanyahu’s government and its cruel policy toward Gaza and the West Bank.
From college campuses to the ballot box, this issue will continue to resonate with young voters sick of the appalling civilian suffering. Their growing activism will affect even who gets to run the nation’s largest city.
