Across America, the New York City mayoral race is causing unrest and fear on both the left and the right, except perhaps in one place: Gotham itself.
I met Al in a park in Mott Haven in the Bronx, under a World War I monument. He is in his early forties and works for the Metropolitan Transit Authority.
“Free buses are stupid,” he told me about the proposal from democratic socialist candidate Zohran Mamdani. ‘That’s never going to happen. My bosses like money.’
I spent the last two days crisscrossing the Big Apple talking to voters. And I have to say that the attitude towards this election is, quite frankly, quite blasé.
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I met Derrick downtown, where he works in the hospitality industry. He is in his 50s and somewhat confusingly told me that he thought Socialist Bill de Blasio was a better mayor than current Mayor Eric Adams, but that he supports Curtis Sliwa.
If that makes you scratch your head, well, I was too. But he explained that “we know Curtis, and he loves New York City” with a Brooklyn accent that sounds exactly like Hakeem Jeffries. “I saw Guardian Angels on the subway when I was little. He gets respect.”
Former Gov. Andrew Cuomo lambasted rival Zohran Mamdani as the two vie to become mayor of New York City. (Angelina Katsanis/Pool via Reuters; Mike Segar/Reuters)
Derrick reminds us that voters, especially in New York City, don’t fall into the neat boxes we want them to, and maybe that’s a good thing.
The next day in St. George, Staten Island, I met Cindy and Denise at Steiny’s Pub, just steps from the ferry station. Cindy, the bartender, mother of a child in her early 30s, and Denise, who is retired, both worked in the school system.
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“It just doesn’t matter that much,” Cindy told me. “Life happens here, not with the kings running things.”
Denise nodded in agreement and said, “I’ve lived among them all [mayors]. You work hard, you do well, it’s okay,” she said.
By now I was a little confused about what the election of the century was supposed to be. Would I meet someone who was excited about it?
Naveed, my Uber driver to Brooklyn, provided the answer. He is from Pakistan and has two daughters in college, one of whom, much to his chagrin, is studying journalism.
“We had talked about law school,” he told me.
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“On the first day of early voting, all my Pakistani friends in California texted me to vote for Zohran, but I was already in line,” he laughed.
He told me that the excitement about Mamdani in his community is at an all-time high, unlike anything he has ever seen before. It was the only example of such exuberance I could find, and that may be telling.
Getting out of the car in Bay Ridge was a homecoming. It was my nabe before I moved to West Virginia two years ago.
I went to Bay Ridge specifically, not just because I missed the Brooklyn-style wings at Salty Dog, but because it is a Republican enclave and critical to Andrew Cuomo’s chances of winning.
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There I met Steve and Suzanne, lifelong residents of the neighborhood for a combined 23 years.
“Has Cuomo even been to Bay Ridge, Suze?” Steve asked. She shrugged. The consensus there was that he hadn’t seen it, or at least no one had seen it.
Sliwa, I was told, was there just like any other day. That says everything you need to know about Cuomo’s entitled approach to Republican New Yorkers. I call it outright political malpractice.
“Who’s going to win?” he asked me. I said, “I have to ask you that.” He replied, “I don’t know, probably what his name is, but Bay Ridge isn’t changing.”
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Suze added, “It is what it is.”
And honestly, that’s a pretty good way to sum up the responses I’ve gotten from almost all the New Yorkers I’ve spoken to. This could be the “it is what it is” election.
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On the surface, no city is changing as quickly and as rapidly as New York, and yet at its center, under management that may be strong or disastrous, there is a core identity and a beating heart that remains the same. At least in the four decades I’ve known it.
No one I have met thinks Comrade Mamdani can change that. After all, they all lived under the mayoralty of socialist Bill de Blasio, and New York is still standing.
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Gotham is the people, the guys like Steve who wake up at four in the morning and go to work on Long Island. They feel insensitive to Mamdani, and maybe that’s true.
New York City is New York City, people here don’t panic, even though the national news says they should. This is the Big Apple, and really, it is what it is.
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