Can't Anybody Here Play This Game?

As a journalist, my two favorite political events were the New Hampshire primary and the New York City mayoral election. The intensity was amazing. Madness and glory in very small places.

New York was especially fun. I’m a New Yorker by birth and, until recently, predilection. I learned my politics there (and in Boston). There was a tradition of great and colorful politicians, from the brilliant scoundrel Jimmy Walker in the 1920s (who was actually a damn good first term mayor), to Fiorello LaGuardia in the 1930s, to Ed Koch in the 1970s and 1980s, to Rudy Giuliani in the 1990s before he went crazy, to Michael Bloomberg in the 2000s. There were hilarious wannabes like William F. Buckley and Norman Mailer (whose running mate was Jimmy Breslin). I would vote for any of the above over the candidates running now.

The city has fallen on depressing times. It was always a hard place, but it’s a harsh one now. Walking down Fifth Avenue a few weeks ago, Sanity Goddess proclaimed, “The magic is gone.” Tru dat. The restaurants and Broadway shows are ridiculously expensive. It has become impossible to be a bohemian in Greenwich Village, my old favorite neighborhood—and through much of the rest of the city (except for some wonderful neighborhoods in Brooklyn). A lot of soulless, anorexic—I mean, pencil thin—high-rise apartment buildings have been constructed…for rich people, many of whom don’t really live in the city.

And yet, New York is still New York. Queens, my home borough, has the most resplendent array of recent immigrants—from all over—of any patch of turf in America. The working class, what remains of it, still says things like, “Ged-dout-a heeyah” and “Fuhgeddaboutit.” (Mario Cuomo, the upwardly mobile Queens intellectual, would say it, too, but with perfect diction: Get Out of Here.)

I was the political columnist for New York Magazine in the late 1980s and early 90s, and boy was it fun. Ed Koch and Mario Cuomo were the presiding geniuses, the Scylla and Charybdis of local politics. Mario would call me before dawn if he was pissed off about something I’d written. Koch would call my mother.

I’ve told this story before, but it is relevant now. When he was governor, Mario called me and pleaded, “Why don’t you write about the fact that I increased funding for the schools by 90%?”

“You did that?” I said. “I’m so sorry.”

“What do you mean, sorry?” Mario stormed.

“Because the schools still suck.” I replied.

They’re worse today: an incredible $36,000 is spent per pupil—about twice the national average—with National Assessment of Educational Progress scores of 28% proficient in reading and a few points more in math. Proficient means you can read street signs. Granted, there are unique challenges in New York—money needs be spent on non-English speaking kids and a disproportionate number of others with special needs. But $36,000 per pupil is more than $800,000 per average classroom. There is absolutely no way to justify that, especially with a teacher corps that contains some geniuses but is generally less than mediocre—and unable to be fired.

And that is true across the board. New York City has about 306,000 public employees. Maybe 10% of those are part-time, but…yowww! If there was ever a government in need of a DOGE peel, it is this one. The problem is not new. Tammany Hall—the Democratic machine—traditionally featherbedded the bureaucracy in the 19th century. These days, the public employees unions are Tammany Hall. They have been a gathering force since the 1960s. In New York City, everyone is unionized—even the city lawyers, even the school principals. The result has been high-priced corrosion. The unions run the city—perhaps not to the extent that they do in cratering Chicago, where the teachers union elected its own personal mayor, but their impact is Godzillaish. Various mayors—Koch, Giuliani and especially Bloomberg—have tried to push back against this, and opened a few doors to better government, but their successors (people like the fabulously dreadful Bill DeBlasio) usually rush to close them.

Happily, the excellent charter schools in the Harlem Children’s Zone still exist, despite the frantic opposition of the teachers union. The charters get results similar to public schools in the suburbs. But education, which I believe is the absolute key to future success for New York (and everywhere else), hasn’t been much discussed in the Democratic mayoral primary, which will take place on June 24. According the Manhattan Institute, a moderate-conservative think tank that has been incredibly valuable over the years, per the New York Post:

A new Manhattan Institute report — dubbed an “Education Agenda for New York City’s Mayor” — recommends reviving policies from the Mike Blomberg era: championing the expansion of charter schools, increasing merit-based schools, closing and consolidating low-performing and under-enrolled schools, and implementing accountability measures such as publishing A to F report cards rating each school’s performance.

In that spirit, the Manhattan Institute graded the mayoral candidates. All received D’s and F’s, except one. Who is this candidate? An obscure Wall Street moderate named Whitney Tilson, who is running way behind the favorites, and even the second-tier bozos. He was, among other things, involved in the birth of Teach for America, and therefore a total anathema to the United Federation of Teachers, a union that once stood for excellence and now stands for thuggery.

And so, sight unseen, I hereby endorse Whitney Tilson for Mayor of New York. Good luck, fella!

You might be interested to know that the UFT hasn’t endorsed any of the candidates. This is not out of indifference, but of the utter confidence that the winner will abide by its wishes. The New York Times hasn’t endorsed anyone either, out of disgust.

But, you might ask, who’s your second choice, Klein? That matters in New York, where you can vote for as many as five candidates, in ranked order, a reform that may need some reforming. The top two in the polls are Andrew Cuomo and a guy named Zohran Mamdani, who is a 33-year-old Democratic Socialist who, even the New York Times says, “is running on an agenda uniquely unsuited to the city’s challenges.” I mean, a Democratic Socialist? I mean, the DemSocs have mixed feelings about the continued existence of Israel. The organization recently criticized Alexandria Ocasio Cortez for being too moderate. (AOC has endorsed Mamdani, as has, of course, Bernie). Mamdani offers youthful energy and a bucketful of bad left-wing ideas, a rent freeze, free this and that. He has been gaining on the leader in recent weeks.

And the leader? None other than Andrew Cuomo, the deposed former Governor of New York. As David Von Drehle put it delightfully in The Washington Post: “Cuomo… brings all the pizzazz of an Oldsmobile Cutlass Ciera.” I’ve known Andrew since he was a hot-headed teenager. According to Mario, young Andrew once took a baseball bat in search of a thug who put a lit cigarette to his sister’s breast. Plus ca change: He’s a hot-headed adult now, MeTooed# by a dozen women during his years as governor.

But I’ve had long conversations with Andrew about the notion of actually governing things, starting back when he was HUD Secretary under Clinton...and he was interested. Before that, he invented an excellent welfare to work program called Project Hope in The Bronx. “Mario asked why,” Andrew once told me. “I ask how.” His warehousing of the elderly during COVID was scandalous, but he does reside on Planet Earth when it comes running stuff in New York. I think he would be a reasonable mayor. As Ed Koch used to say:

If you agree with me on nine out of twelve issues, vote for me. If you agree with me on 12 out of 12 issues, see a psychiatrist.

Lord, I really do miss Ed and Mario. But anyway, I’d put Andrew Cuomo as second choice for mayor on my ballot.

There is a possible third choice, endorsed by Ezra (No Relation) Klein in the Times today: Brad Lander, the City Controller. He’s the good government candidate (a goo-goo, as my Tammany grandfather used to say). I trust Ezra; I suspect that Lander would be amenable to Other Klein’s “abundance” agenda, finding ways to build new housing and defang the regulatory Gehenna that is New York. In other words, he is boring. Just the sort of candidate I used to fall for. Perhaps more nap-worthy than worthy.

But in an effort to become more colorful, Lander did a stupid thing this week. He got himself arrested. In a court house. He was with an illegal immigrant at the time; he was holding her hand, in support, when the ICE men cameth. They tackled and manacled him, in the Trumpian spirit of the times. This is becoming sort of a thing for Democratic politicians now, since U.S. Senator Alex Padilla of California got himself tackled and trussed at a Kristi Noem press conference in Los Angeles. I suppose the arrest may remind some voters that Lander is in the race, but illegal immigrants are here, well, illegally. We need most of them to stay here, lest Trump properties lose their cleaning staffs and gardeners…but do Democrats really want to brand themselves as defenders of illegals? In America, that works for Trump.

So, we have New York. Bad news for the Dems, any way you cut it.

Fortuntely, across the river in Joisey, the Dems got sane and nominated Rep. Mikie Sherrill as their candidate for governor. She’s tough, smart, moderate, a former Navy helicopter pilot. She and Abigail Spanberger, a former CIA agent who won the Democratic gubernatorial primary in Virginia, should be the strong new look of the Democratic Party.

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