Who wins in JC mayoral runoff?
By D. Menzies
Native lament
A month ago or so I watched a video an NYC man made about Zohran Mamdani as “the gentrifier’s candidate.” I didn’t get the impression the guy was a supporter of anyone else in the mayoral race — certainly not Cuomo or Silwa. He was talking about how he thinks Mamdani appeals to a population who has largely made affordable options for someone like him — a native New Yorker — much more out of reach than they would be otherwise and how rarely it’s mentioned in the conversations about affordability.
Mamdani’s policies and charm offensive are meant in some part to chip away at the very things that have given people like Mamdani himself a leg up in a city that sits as the crossroads for culture and capitalism entrenched in meritocracy.
But that doesn’t help the guy who made that video much in the meanwhile, nor does it change the timing of “socialism” having a win just as the bottom has fallen out from beneath any notion of a firm middle class — as opposed to sometime in the four decades as people in various dis-invested places in the city’s boroughs have been left to deal with dire conditions.