Election Day Comments, Before and After

By Robin Itzler 

Editor's Note: This is a commentary in Robin's weekly newsletter Patriot Neighbors.  Any cartoons are added by me.  If you wish to get the full edition, E-mail her at PatriotNeighbors@yahoo.com to get on her list, it's free. RK

Let’s look at some of the comments made before Election Day.

Bill Maher, liberal commentator—podcast:

"He (Mamdani) definitely has the power and influence to elect JD Vance, or whoever is the Republican candidate next time. It is a walking commercial for the Republican Party nationally."

President Donald Trump; Truth Social

"If Communist Candidate Zohran Mamdani wins the Election for Mayor of New York City, it is highly unlikely that I will be contributing Federal Funds, other than the very minimum as required, to my beloved first home, because of the fact that, as a Communist, this once great City has ZERO chance of success, or even survival!

"It can only get worse with a Communist at the helm, and I don’t want to send, as President, good money after bad. It is my obligation to run the Nation, and it is my strong conviction that New York City will be a Complete and Total Economic and Social Disaster should Mamdani win."

Lyle J. Rapacki, Ph.D.; Arizona Today (excerpt)

"Zohran Mamdani is an example of the anti-American, anti-Christian assault already underway to collapse this exceptional (not perfect) nation. Our founding principles are far and away removed from the Marxist/Islamic darkness working to destroy what was given to us if we would keep it. 

Do not think only large cities are the targets. Small and rural communities are a major target of the Marxist movement with the thought that no one will really pay attention to who serves on a public parks board, or library board, or zoning committee, etc. Slowly and deliberately, deceptively and appearing innocent but with new ideas, personalities, like New York City Mayoral candidate Mamdani are coming into the light - NOT to serve but to collapse the unique and wonderful country given to us. 

Come out of your comfortable numbness! WAKE UP…America is under assault."

Read New York City on Edge of Collapse by Lyle J. Rapacki, Ph.D.

Let’s look at some of the comments made after Election Day:

Scott Pinsker, “PR Fallout of an Electoral Drubbing: How MAGA Fights Back” - PJ Media

"Mamdani’s left-of-Lenin politics, Jew-hatred, and unabashed anti-Americanism make him the perfect foil for the Republican Party. He’s the living, breathing embodiment of every leftwing trope, stereotype, and cliché." 

 

Jim Hoft, “Socialist Mayor-Elect Zohran Mamdani Declares War on President Trump” - The Gateway Pundit

 

"This is the new Left, obsessed with tearing down not only Trump but also the millions of Americans who believe in faith, freedom, and the rule of law." 

 

Chef Andrew Gruel, X post (regular guest on Gutfeld)

 

"Exit polls show 92% of California voters who voted yes on prop 50 thought they were voting to impeach Trump."

Arthur Schaper, “Election 2025: What Happened?”, American Thinker (excerpts)

"A lot of the new MAGA Trump voters are centrist or liberal-leaning independents who have joined the GOP. These voters don’t get engaged beyond the presidential elections. Republican activists must concentrate their efforts on getting them to vote more.

 

"Republicans need to understand that they have to maintain a winning message and a winning organization, whether President Trump is running at the the top of the ticket or not. Republicans cannot get comfortable with trusting that a spirit of Trumpism or a veneer of Trump sentiment will pull them across the finish line for every future election."

Read Election 2025: What Happened? By Arthur Schaper.

Gary Bauer, American Values (excerpts from Nov. 5 newsletter)

"Election Day was a massacre at the ballot box for Republicans. It was also a tremendous defeat for anyone who believes in faith, family, and freedom. The Left swept virtually everything. Across the country, it wasn’t just Democrats who won, but far-left socialists who won.

 

"Many of our political allies believe that Mamdani will be the “kiss of death” for the Democrats. That’s wishful thinking. It would be true if it were 1980, 1984, or 1988. It was less true in the 90s, and it’s not true today when 66% of Democrats have a positive view of socialism.

 

"Both AOC and Mamdani are left-wing, populist demagogues. They know how to rally the average person to their banner. The affordability issue is H-U-G-E, and a significant part of the GOP establishment doesn’t get it."

Click here to sign up for Gary Bauer’s End of Day Report.

John Nolte, “GOP Can Fully Embrace MAGA or Face More Tuesday Night Election Beatings,” Breibart News (excerpt)

"Fourth, it really is the economy, stupid; and, of late, Trump has been awfully distracted with world events — trade deals, peace deals, etc. There’s been a lot of world travel. There’s been a lot of success. Nevertheless, the Trump Administration needs to refocus on Making America Great Again, which is a lot less attractive to any president. After all, overseas, U.S. presidents hold all the power. Domestically, it’s all about in-fighting, compromise, haggling, and partial victories. The lure of foreign policy is obvious, but it can also be a trap." 

Finally: 

In his acceptance speech, communist Zohran Mamdani told President Trump he had four words for him regarding what will be happening in New York City: Turn up the volume.

President Trump responded on Truth Social with his own four words: And so it begins ..

 

Defund Mamdani

October 26, 2025 By Robin M. Itzler @ American Thinker

Unless freedom-loving New Yorkers, especially those who can’t easily move to red cities, vote for Curtis Sliwa on November 4, they will bear witness to the Big Apple becoming the Rotten Apple.

Polls show that Gen Zers living in their parents’ basements are excitedly going to vote for the AOC-endorsed communist Zohran “free stuff” Mamdani. Should Mamdani win, drastic changes could start with the New York Police Department.

This is the largest police department in the United States, with nearly 34,000 uniformed officers, but it is still understaffed. Proud men and women in blue with 20 or more years of service are expected to submit their retirement papers should Mamdani be elected. These dedicated officers will not want to work for a mayor who tweeted on October 23, 2020, “We need to elect a socialist city council to defund the NYPD.”

Bill Bratton, who was police commissioner for mayors Rudy Giuliani, a Republican, and Bill de Blasio, a progressive Democrat, said in an interview:

There will be a very significant exodus from the NYPD very soon after his (Mamdani) election, if he is elected. They’re going to leave. And that’s a reality.

During the campaign, the smooth-talking communist tried to walk back many of his anti-police comments and tweets. Finally, Mamdani issued an apology that sounded as sincere as Joe Biden endorsing Kamala Harris for president.

Mamdani, like all communists, lies.

New York Post reporters Vaughn Golden and Craig McCarthy wrote that Mamdani’s top campaign staffer, Robert Akleh, was caught in several undercover videos saying of law enforcement officers, “Who gives a s**t what cops think of Mamdani?”

Akleh went on to add (all on video) about police officers who risk their lives every day to protect New Yorkers: “They’re city employees. You get told what to do, shut up. When did you get an opinion?”

Akleh is Mamdani’s senior consultant. He has previously worked for Democrat Socialists of America (DSA) candidates Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and former Representative Jamaal Bowman. What else do you need to know? In the taped conversations, Akleh also dumped on New York Governor Kathy Hochul, “Israel supporting” Democrats, and his disgust for wealthy people. (We assume he really means white wealthy people and not rich Muslims like Mamdani.)

Every New Yorker who cares about the city must get out and vote for Curtis Sliwa, the Guardian Angels founder who has devoted his entire life to making the city a safer place for people to live and work. Otherwise, historians will pinpoint November 4 as the exact day New York City became a third-world “utopia” cesspool. (Some say it already is.)

Former Mayor Rudy Giuliani endorsed Curtis Sliwa for mayor of New York City. In his X podcast, Giuliani said, “Curtis Sliwa has been a hero for New York from the time...he was born [snip] Here’s my choice: 100 percent Curtis Sliwa.”

As noted above, should Mamdani win, it is expected that officers with more than 20 years on the force will submit their retirement papers. Those with less than 20 years could be forced to seek work elsewhere since they rely on overtime to make ends meet, and Mamdani has repeatedly said he wants to reduce the NYPD’s overtime. There are three NYPD groups that greatly depend on overtime pay:

• Officers with fewer than five years on the job because their starting pay is low for an expensive city.
• Officers with five to ten years on the job who earn more but are likely to have family expenses.
• Officers seeking to boost their income in their final years to receive higher pensions.

In New York City, a starting officer’s annual salary is $60,884. After five-and-a-half years, they earn $126,410. A family of four requires just over $318,000 to live comfortably. NYPD salaries are not that high, considering what it costs to call New York home. It’s overtime that gives police officers the income they need in expensive New York City.

However, comrade Mamdani has made it clear he wants to bring down the NYPD’s overtime. In February, he told the New York Editorial Board, a group of veteran journalists, “We need to bring down the NYPD’s near-billion-dollar overtime. We need to eliminate that overtime.”

In 2024, the NYPD spent $1.1 billion on overtime wages, and this year, it appears the overtime payments will exceed the budget by $100 million.

Curtis Sliwa is the only mayoral candidate who knows every inch of the city and has spent his entire life seeking to make it safer for those who live and work in the five boroughs. This is why, in addition to multiple Republican endorsements, Sliwa has received glowing endorsements from current and former Democrat officeholders who care more about New York City than party.

Comrade Mamdani supporters who excitedly plan to vote for the communist are enthusiastic about free this, free that, free everything. However, with fewer police officers protecting them, the only thing that might be free in New York City will be crime sprees.

Robin M. Itzler is a regular contributor to American Thinker. She is the founder and editor of Patriot Neighbors, a free weekly national newsletter. Robin can be reached at PatriotNeighbors@yahoo.com.

Related Topics: Zohran Mamdani, Police, New York City

The New York Times And The Approaching New York Mayoral Election

October 23, 2024 By Francis Menton @ Manhattan Contrarian 

In the early days of this blog — say, prior to about 2020 — I made a regular sport of heaping scorn on the New York Times. Every week or two I would take a particularly preposterous article and attempt to analyze whether it represented incomprehensible ignorance of the world versus intentional deception of the readership. Or maybe both! More recently, the Times has gotten so crazy, and the craziness so widely recognized, as rarely to justify such an effort on my part.

But then, sometimes I can’t stop myself. Take today’s Times.

As background, yesterday was the occasion of the last televised debate in the three-way mayoral race among Zohran Mamdani (Democrat), Andrew Cuomo (Independent) and Curtis Sliwa (Republican). Election Day is only 12 days away, and early voting starts in two days. If you go to the New York Post, you will find that the front page and several internal pages are devoted to coverage of the debate, including key soundbites from all candidates. That seems about normal to me. The Post’s take is that Cuomo had a good night, and Mamdani not so good, which you can take for what it’s worth (given that the Post is strongly supporting Cuomo at this point). Here is the Post’s cover from today:

 

And then there is the Times. I continue to subscribe to the print edition. I have gone through today’s edition multiple times to verify that the following statement is true: There is not one word about the debate. There is not even a mention that it took place.

Now granted, in this internet age the print edition no longer represents the totality of content at the Times. So I have gone through the website as well, looking not only for information about the debate, but anything about the campaign. First, I go to the opening page at www.nytimes.com, where my subscription gets me behind the paywall. Then I scroll way, way down — past Weather, and past More News, and past Culture and Lifestyle, and past The Athletic, and past Cooking, and past Games, and finally I come to an area called “News,” which among multiple other topics has three articles under a heading of “New York.” One of those is about gambling and the NBA, one is about an ICE raid on Canal Street, and the third has the headline “After Remark About Mamdani and Sept. 11, Cuomo Faces Democratic Rebukes.” This article also mentions nothing about the debate; and indeed the event reported in this story occurred this morning, and thus could not have been covered in today’s print edition. It seems that Cuomo appeared on a radio talk show hosted by conservative host Sid Rosenberg. The Times reports the exchange as follows:

Former Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo laughed along with a conservative radio host on Thursday who said that Zohran Mamdani, a Muslim mayoral candidate, would celebrate another Sept. 11-style terrorist attack on New York City. Within hours, the exchange ricocheted across the campaign trail, where Mr. Mamdani and a cross-section of Democrats denounced the conversation as Islamophobic and outside the bounds of even a heated campaign.

The Times then proceeds to quote a litany of Democrats who are horrified and take the opportunity to cast Cuomo as an “Islamophobe.”

If you click the link and read this article, and make it all the way to the end, you will find a section headed “More on the N.Y.C. Mayor’s Race.” And in there is a link to this article: “N.Y.C. Mayoral Candidates Trade Zingers in Final Debate.” So yes, it does exist. I wonder how many people other than myself had the persistence to find it.

But getting back to the front page of today’s print edition, what we do find is a lengthy (some might say endless) puff piece about Mamdani’s days in high school, including the seminal moments of his political career running for class vice president: “How an Elite Public High School Set Mamdani on the Path to Politics. Zohran Mamdani’s time at the Bronx High School of Science expanded and helped shape his views of New York, from the cricket pitch to politics.” Here’s a good sample:

Cricket had never been recognized as an official sport in New York City’s public schools. Mr. Mamdani, like many South Asian schoolmates who had grown up around the game, wanted in anyway. And so, he and a friend effectively created a team themselves, with all the logistical fortitude available to distractible adolescents, amassing a cache of bats, pads and player sign-ups (“brown ain’t no requirement to play this game,” Mr. Mamdani urged on Facebook) and working to persuade enough students and adults that they were fronting a legitimate operation.

Just an innocent, enthusiastic, hard-working kid! And he promised free orange juice for all!

(Should I mention that my mother-in-law spent her career teaching at Bronx Science? She retired about 10 years before Mamdani got there.)

Getting back to what is actually on the front page of today’s Times, the biggest article in terms of real estate on the page has the headline “Pro-Palestine Activists Lament the Steep Cost.” (Slightly different headline online.). It’s all so sad:

For a time, the Gaza protests seemed to have the ingredients to grow into the next mass political movement for young Americans. The cause — which adherents saw as a struggle between a marginalized and dispossessed people and an oppressive global power — connected with university students, many of whom were already drifting to the left and had experienced their political awakenings during the racial reckoning in the summer of 2020. Many of them, in fact, started calling the Palestinian suffering “the moral issue of our time.”

And then, somehow, the American people just wouldn’t go along. It’s so inexplicable!

The other item taking up a big chunk of page 1 real estate is a picture of some activists gathering on an iceless King William Island in far-northern Canada to lament that global warming is making the Arctic more accessible to unwanted outsiders.

You get the picture. It’s not just that each article is more absurd than the next. It’s that none of them contain any actual useful information. They are all just the latest spin to promote one left-wing cause or another.

I apologize to the readers for continuing to spend money on this, but every once in a while it is useful to this blog to consult the Times to understand what the official party line of the left is on some particular subject.

Around the Nation and the World in Five Minutes

By Robin Itzler 

Editor's Note:  This is a commentary in Robin's weekly newsletter Patriot Neighbors.  If you wish to get the full edition, E-mail her at PatriotNeighbors@yahoo.com to get on her list, it's free. RK 

Around the Nation:

New York Mayoral Race: Ballot Position Matters - Americans who follow elections will search their ballot to find the candidate of their choice. Most everyone else, according to several studies, focuses on the top two or three names and picks the candidate from their party. Positioning on a ballot matters … A LOT! It matters a lot in this election.

The New York City Board of Elections announced the order that candidates will appear on the November 4 ballot. Note that two leading candidates are listed twice and although Eric Adams and Jim Walden dropped out, they remain listed on the ballot. Also, two candidates no one ever heard of (nor raised money or campaigned) are listed ahead of Andrew Cuomo. Here is the order:

1. Zohran Mamdani—Democrat Party
2. Curtis Sliwa—Republican Party
3. Irene Estrada—Conservative Party (Raised little money and has not done any campaigning.)
4. Zohran Mamdani—Working Families Party (aligned with the Democratic Socialists of America Party)
5. Curtis Sliwa—Protect Animals Party
6. Eric Adams—Safe & Affordable/End Anti-Semitism Party (Under New York’s rules, his name remains on the ballot although he has dropped out.)
7. Quality of Life candidate (Raised little money and has not done any campaigning.)
8. Andrew Cuomo—Independent, former Democrat governor

According to a UC San Diego report published in December 2024, New York City ranked 49th for turnout among U.S. major cities. New York City is comprised of five boroughs: Bronx, Brooklyn, Manhattan, Queens, and Staten Island with the island being the most conservative. (Personal note: Robin was born in Brooklyn, raised in Queens, married and lived one year on Staten Island before they moved to California, worked in Manhattan across from St. Patrick’s Cathedral and skipped the Bronx except when driving up to the beautiful Catskill Mountains.)

The City, an online site focusing on New York issues, analyzed the 2021 mayoral race that elected Eric Adams: Of the more than 4.9 million active registered voters for the general election that year, only 1.147 million cast votes, according to the CFB data. That’s just 23% of eligible city dwellers who actually exercised their right to vote.

Manhattan had the highest voter turnout during the 2021 primary, with 33.4%. The highest voter turnout in the general election, though, was the Republican stronghold Staten Island, with 33.7% voting.

The borough with the lowest turnout for the primary and the general was The Bronx — 19.1% came out in June and 17.5% voted in November. Brooklyn’s primary turnout was 27.5%, and Queens had 25%; their general turnout were both above 22%.

Congress —Doesn’t it seem that Democrat Congressional leaders are totally out of touch with commonsense Americans? It could be because of the districts/states they represent. Democrats should find leadership from non-blue cities and states. Here is the current leadership:

1. Senate Majority Leader Sen. John Thune South Dakota House Majority 
2. Speaker Rep. Mike Johnson Louisiana
3. Senate Minority Leader Sen. Chuck Schumer New York 
4.  House Minority Leader Rep. Hakeem Jeffries New York, Specifically, BROOKLYN, New York.

Pennsylvania —Thanks to five Republicans, gun control passed in the House (104-99). We hope the bill dies in the Senate so that it never reaches Democrat Governor Josh Shapiro’s desk. The Republicans who voted for gun control are: 

1. Rep. Joe Hogan—District 142 
2. Rep. Kristin Marshall—District 178 
3. Rep. Kathleen Tomlinson—District 18 
4. Rep. Martina White—District 170 
5. Rep. Craig Williams—District 160

California —Scott Pressler, who was largely responsible for Pennsylvania going red in the 2024 presidential election, and Nicole Shanahan, Robert F. Kennedy’s vice president nominee when he was running for president in 2024, are teaming up to get Voter ID on the California ballot.

Conservative Jews have had it with louder traitorous progressive Jews! Read How Far-Left Jewish Voices Misrepresent American Jewry.

Events From Around the Globe

Britain — Leftist Labour Prime Minister Keir Starmer continues calling conservatives names such as racists. (Gee, where have we seen that playbook before? How fast can you say, “deplorables?”) Nigel Farage’s Reform UK party widened its lead over the governing Labour Party as the names were hurled at commonsense folks who want to Make Britain Great Again.

Indonesia — Talk about surprises … Israel was surprised by Indonesian President Prabowo Subianto’s United Nations speech where he said the world must respect Israel’s right to live in security. Indonesia is the most populous Muslim country in the world and currently does not have relations with Israel. Subianto said: 

“We must also recognize, we must also respect, and we must also guarantee the safety and security of Israel. Only then we can have real peace,” 

Subianto said, adding once Israel recognizes Palestine, “Indonesia will immediately recognize the State of Israel.” Subianto ended his speech to the general assembly by saying, “Shalom.” 

Editor's Note:  I wouldn't give much credence to this as it's a poison pill statement.  There is no nation of Palestine and there never has been, but if Israel allows the world to create a nation of Palestine it will be to their suicide.  Have no doubt Subianto and all those promoting the creation of a Muslim controlled Palestine know that.  RK 

Czech Republic — Andrej Babiš’s ANO (YES) Party won the parliamentary elections. However, they didn’t secure a large enough majority must now form a government. Babiš is a billionaire, ex-premier and pro-Trump nationalist who pledged to work as a pro-Western, pro-European leader. The goal is for Babiš to be named prime minister.

Japan — Economic Security Minister Sanae Takaichi of the conservative Liberal Democrat Party has been elected Japan’s first female prime minister. Interestingly, all five candidates called themselves “moderate conservatives.”

The New York Mayoral Race: Sliwa, Cuomo, and Mamdani

By Robin Itzler 

Editor's Note:  This is a commentary in Robin's weekly newsletter Patriot Neighbors.  If you wish to get the full edition, E-mail her at PatriotNeighbors@yahoo.com to get on her list, it's free. RK 

 

The excitement for the communist Muslim Mamdani comes from the downwardly mobile – those who want others to pay for their basic needs. Should the communist win, New York City (like other blue cities) will see the rich and middle-class leave. It’s been happening in the Big Apple for decades and will accelerate. In 1965, 128 Fortune 500 firms were headquartered in New York City. Today, it’s about 50 firms. Texas boasts 54 Fortune 500 companies and Florida has 22. There are many memes of Florida calling Mamdani ‘realtor of the year.’

New Yorkers should rally around Curtis Sliwa. After all, when you think of someone who repeatedly stands up for New York’s working and middle-class residents, Sliwa’s name is among the first that comes to mind. He founded the now international Guardian Angels to protect New Yorkers when no one else cared – sort of how things are today. Every borough’s Republican Party has endorsed Sliwa, along with the Rockland County GOP. Former Republican New York Governor George Pataki was one of Sliwa’s earliest endorsements.

Sliwa is projecting its strongest fundraising stretch so far, reporting more than $421,000 raised in the last filing period. Moreover, he is gaining endorsements from both sides of the aisle. For instance, Democrat Assembly Member Jamie Williams and Democrat Council Member Robert Holden have endorsed the Republican Sliwa. Holden touts the Guardian Angels founder’s “decades of public service and straight talk.” “He (Sliwa) built the Guardian Angels into a global public safety force,” Holden wrote. “He has walked the streets, ridden the subways, and stood with victims when no one else would. His campaign has grassroots support, a serious platform, and the toughness to govern.”

Why would anyone want former New York Democrat Governor Andrew Cuomo, famous for “murdering” elderly nursing home residents during the “scamdemic?” Speaking on The View on October 6, Andrew Cuomo focused on President Trump: "Mamdani is a gift for him (President Trump) — a gift. He wants Mamdani, for two reasons. One, going into the midterms, he will take a picture of Mamdani, run around the country and say, ‘Here is what happened to the Democrats. They are now communists, they hate the police, they legalize prostitution, legalize drugs, they want to elect this Democrat, no experience whatsoever — being mayor of New York would be his first real job."

At this point, the only debate is whether Mamdani is a socialist or a communist. Ayn Rand explained the difference: “There is no difference between communism and socialism, except in the means of achieving the same ultimate end: communism proposes to enslave men by force, socialism—by vote. It is merely the difference between murder and suicide.”

Cuomo’s ballot position, at the bottom behind someone who didn’t campaign with no name recognition is going to hurt him. The choice is now between a communist who has a platform to the left of Karl Marx and a man who has spent his entire life trying to make New York City a place where people can safely live and work. New Yorkers should elect Curtis Sliwa.

Click here for a mostly AI generated: Commietown – The Musical.

Keep New York City From Becoming New Marx City

October 10, 2025 By Robin M. Itzler

If you’re in New York or would like to donate to a New York mayoral candidate, there’s only one serious candidate who hasn’t caused thousands to die (that would be Andrew Cuomo) and isn’t allied to a political ideology that has historically caused tens of millions of people to die (i.e., Zohran Mamdani). The man who should win, of course, is Curtis Sliwa.

Americans who follow elections will carefully search their ballot to find the candidate of their choice. According to several studies, almost everyone else focuses on the top two or three names and selects the candidate from their party. Positioning on a ballot matters...a lot!

Image created using AI.

The New York City Board of Elections has announced the order in which candidates will appear on the November 4 ballot. Note that two leading candidates are listed twice, and, although Eric Adams and Jim Walden dropped out, they remain listed on the ballot. Also, two candidates no one ever heard of (nor raised money or campaigned) are listed ahead of Andrew Cuomo.

• Zohran Kwame Mamdani—Democrat Party
• Curtis A. Sliwa—Republican Party
• Irene Estrada—Conservative Party (Raised little money and has not done any campaigning.)
• Zohran Kwame Mamdani—Working Families Party (aligned with the Democratic Socialists of America Party)
• Curtis A. Sliwa—Protect Animals Party
• Eric L. Adams—Safe & Affordable/End Anti-Semitism Party (Under New York’s rules, his name remains on the ballot although he has dropped out.)
• Joseph Hernandez—Quality of Life candidate (Raised little money and has not done any campaigning.)
• Andrew M. Cuomo—Fight and Deliver Party, former Democrat governor
• Jim Walden – Integrity Party (Under New York’s rules, his name remains on the ballot although he has dropped out.)

According to a UC San Diego report published in December 2024, New York City ranked 49th for turnout among U.S. major cities. New York City is comprised of five boroughs: Bronx, Brooklyn, Manhattan, Queens, and Staten Island, with the island being the most conservative. (Personal note: Robin was born in Brooklyn, raised in Queens, and married and lived one year on Staten Island before she and her husband moved to California, once worked in Manhattan across from St. Patrick’s Cathedral, and skipped the Bronx except when driving up to the beautiful Catskill Mountains. She knows New York City.)

The City, an online site focusing on New York issues, analyzed the 2021 mayoral race that elected Eric Adams:

Of the more than 4.9 million active registered voters for the general election that year, only 1.147 million cast votes, according to the CFB data. That’s just 23% of eligible city dwellers who actually exercised their right to vote.

[snip]

Manhattan had the highest voter turnout during the 2021 primary, with 33.4%. The highest voter turnout in the general election, though, was the Republican stronghold Staten Island, with 33.7% voting.

The borough with the lowest turnout for the primary and the general was The Bronx — 19.1% came out in June and 17.5% voted in November. Brooklyn’s primary turnout was 27.5%, and Queens had 25%; their general turnout were both above 22%.

The excitement for the communist Muslim Mamdani comes from the downwardly mobile—those who want others to pay for their basic needs. Should the communist win, New York City (like other blue cities) will see the rich and middle-class leave. It’s been happening in the Big Apple for decades and will accelerate.

In 1965, 128 Fortune 500 firms were headquartered in New York City. Today, it’s about 50 firms. Texas boasts 54 Fortune 500 companies, and Florida has 22. There are many memes of Florida calling Mamdani ‘realtor of the year.’

New Yorkers should rally around Curtis Sliwa. After all, when you think of someone who repeatedly stands up for New York’s working and middle-class residents, Sliwa’s name is among the first that comes to mind. He founded the now international Guardian Angels to protect New Yorkers when no one else cared – sort of how things are today. Every borough’s Republican Party has endorsed Sliwa, along with the Rockland County GOP. Former Republican New York Governor George Pataki was one of Sliwa’s earliest endorsements.

Sliwa’s campaign is projecting its strongest fundraising stretch so far, reporting more than $421,000 raised in the last filing period. Moreover, he is gaining endorsements from both sides of the aisle. For instance, Democrat Assembly Member Jamie Williams and Democrat Council Member Robert Holden have endorsed the Republican Sliwa. Holden touts the Guardian Angels founder’s “decades of public service and straight talk.” He adds,

He (Sliwa) built the Guardian Angels into a global public safety force. He has walked the streets, ridden the subways, and stood with victims when no one else would. His campaign has grassroots support, a serious platform, and the toughness to govern.

Why would anyone want former New York Democrat Governor Andrew Cuomo, famous for “murdering” elderly nursing home residents during the “scamdemic?” Speaking on The View on October 6, Andrew Cuomo focused on...President Trump:

Mamdani is a gift for him (President Trump) — a gift. He wants Mamdani, for two reasons. One, going into the midterms, he will take a picture of Mamdani, run around the country and say, ‘Here is what happened to the Democrats. They are now communists, they hate the police, they legalize prostitution, legalize drugs, they want to elect this Democrat, no experience whatsoever — being mayor of New York would be his first real job.

At this point, the only debate is whether Mamdani is a socialist or a communist. Ayn Rand explained the difference:

There is no difference between communism and socialism, except in the means of achieving the same ultimate end: communism proposes to enslave men by force, socialism—by vote. It is merely the difference between murder and suicide.

Cuomo’s ballot position, at the bottom behind someone who didn’t campaign and who has no name recognition, is going to hurt him. The choice is now between a communist who has a platform to the left of Karl Marx and a man who has spent his entire life trying to make New York City a place where people can safely live and work. New Yorkers should elect Curtis Sliwa.

Click here for an AI-generated: Commietown – The Musical. Sliwa’s campaign site is here.

Robin M. Itzler is a regular contributor to American Thinker. She is the founder and editor of Patriot Neighbors, a free weekly national newsletter. Robin can be reached at PatriotNeighbors@yahoo.com.

Mamdani and the Muslim Invasion of New York

By Daniel Greenfield, @ Sultan Knish Blog

In 2023, Mohammed made its appearance on the list of the top 10 most popular names for boys in New York City. Anyone paying attention to this seemingly minor statistic could have predicted the emergence of Zohran Mamdani as the Democrat nominee in the upcoming mayoral election.

Mohammed had appeared as the sixth most common baby among ‘Asians’ in New York City in 2013. By 2017, the name of the genocidal warlord of Islam had become the most common baby name among ‘Asians’ in the city. The rapid growth showed the power of demographics.

Nearly 300 Mohammeds (under various spellings) were born in New York City in 2021 accompanied by over 150 Ahmeds, and dozens of Alis, Omars, Adnans and many others.

The Muslim population of New York City is still undetermined. While Islamist groups claim that there are over 1 million Muslims, they tend to exaggerate to build up their influence, but a Pew survey estimated Muslim settlers as making up 3% of the population of New York City.

Mamdani only won the votes of 5% of the population of New York City. That’s within 2% of the estimated Muslim population of the city. Whatever the actual size of the Muslim population of the city may be, it was more than enough to make the difference in a mayoral primary that few New Yorkers bothered to vote in because they found all the candidates repugnant even while mosques successfully turned out the bloc vote to rig an election for their candidate.

Mamdani was not a popular candidate, but he toured the city’s mosques and told the members of one Hamas-supporting mosque that this is “an opportunity — to tell the world that Muslims don’t just belong in New York City but that we belong in City Hall.”

That message, delivered in a mosque, combined tribal nationalism and Islamism.

How many mosques are there in the city? There were 285 in 2015. Some current estimates place the number at over 500 now. While Islamist groups do build mosques that they don’t need and can’t fill in order to build up influence with projects like the Ground Zero Mosque and other mosques in Manhattan (which unlike Brooklyn, Queens and the Bronx, does not have a significant Muslim population below 125th Street) they reflect a growing Muslim population.

The vast majority of that growth happened after 9/11. The old Arab Muslim population which cheered on the rooftops after the September 11 attacks and was responsible for pre 9/11 terrorist attacks like the World Trade Center bombing mainly lived in New Jersey and parts of Brooklyn are a minority now with the massive influx of Pakistanis, Bangladeshis and other Muslims from the vicinity of India colonizing the city.

One of the most important things to understand about Zohran Mamdani is that he isn’t just a Muslim, but he’s an Indian Muslim. His rise reflects the growing numbers of Pakistanis, Bangladeshis and Indian Muslims who have taken over entire neighborhoods in the city.

There are an estimated 100,000 Bangladeshis occupying parts of New York City. From around 35,000 in 2010, the colonizing population rapidly increased, taking over parts of Queens, once home to middle class Greek, Italian and Jewish populations, but now Mamdani territory.

The Queens district that Mamdani used as a springboard to seize power in New York had formerly been held by Aravella Simotas, a fairly typical representative of the next generation of old school Democrats, before being ousted by Mamdani using Muslim bloc votes.

On paper, both Simotas, a child of a Greek-American family who had lived in Africa, and Mamdani, the son of Indian Muslims also out of Africa, were both young ‘progressive’ Democrats who had all the right left-wing positions. Mamdani was backed by the Democratic Socialists of America while Simotas was backed by the Queens Democratic Party.

There was virtually no difference between their actual positions forcing Mamdani to adopt increasingly insane leftist positions that are now coming back to haunt him to stand out..

“I’ve worked with Aravella, and I’m not quite sure how you could be more left-leaning than she is,” a councilwoman said.

Simotas had lived her whole life in Queens while Mamdani, who had been living in Manhattan, wasn’t even from Queens but had moved there for the election. Why Queens? According to Mamdani, he moved to the area because he liked the Muslim population already there.

Mamdani had moved into Queens to run in a Muslim district against a fellow leftist Dem.

The 2020 Democrat primary came down to a narrow victory for Mamdani at 51.20% over 48.62% by a margin of around 400 votes. That began Mamdani’s career in politics.

Mamdani’s victory was part of a larger pattern.

Even while Mamdani used Muslim votes to seize control of District 36, ‘Mary’ Jobaida, a Bangladeshi Muslim immigrant, tried to take control of Assembly District 37 also in Queens. Jobaida, like Mamdani, ran on a hard left social justice platform, but still lost. She now wants to run for Mamdani’s seat if he takes over City Hall.

In Assembly District 24, David Weprin, who is Jewish, has been the target of repeated Muslim candidates running on leftist platforms including Misbaah Mahmood, Mahfuzul Islam and Mahtab Khan: an anti-Israel Islamic activist running on the slogan “Tax the Rich”.

Mamdani’s rise reflects a larger Islamic campaign in President Trump and David Horowitz’s former neighborhood.

In 2019, I warned that Queens was becoming ‘Queensistan” after describing the rise of Islamic terrorism and colonization in the borough. “Grand Central Parkway, where Awais Chudhary, the latest Islamic terrorist operating out of Queens, planned to drop bombs on passing cars, passes a few blocks from President Trump’s childhood home. There are 5 Islamic centers within a little over a mile of where Trump had grown up.” Now Queenistan has given us Mamdani.

And that’s not the end. Mamdani is a symptom of a larger crisis. Demographics is destiny and Muslim mass migration is proving a much greater threat to New York City than hijacked airplanes.

Daniel Greenfield is a Shillman Journalism Fellow at the David Horowitz Freedom Center. This article previously appeared at the Center's Front Page Magazine. Click here to subscribe to my articles. And click here to support my work with a donation.  Thank you for reading.

 

Taxpayer-Funded Megamosque Built by Hamas Supporters in New York

By Daniel Greenfield @ Sultan Knish Blog

Sometime after the 25th anniversary of September 11, the Muslim Brotherhood, whose members included Osama bin Laden, intends to build a megamosque in New York City.

And American taxpayers struggling to feed their children are the ones paying for it.

The organizers of the megamosque situated near the world famous Bronx Zoo, and across the narrow channel of Harlem River from Manhattan, boast that it will be the largest mosque in the state with four floors and 32,000 square feet overshadowing the mostly single-story houses and the occasional leftover Victorian from the neighborhood’s gentler past in the neighborhood.

Two of which the mosque has already demolished and whose residents it shamefully evicted.

The megamosque is being set up within the conservative Italian-American neighborhood of Morris Park which traditionally voted for Republicans before Muslim mass migration created the so-called ‘Little Yemen’ area inside it. It’s still the only part of the Bronx represented by a Republican councilwoman. But the growth of Little Yemen aims to make it fully Democrat.

And the building of the megamosque is backed by over $1 million in federal taxpayer funding.

The Bronx Muslim Center is a source of hate where speakers have mocked Christians, spread antisemitism and supported Hamas. The Bronx megamosque’s social media account cheered for “victory” in Gaza with pro-Hamas groups and urged followers to “disrupt” cities in protests for Gaza. A past NYPD intelligence document had warned that “individuals believed to be supporters/members of Hamas may have links to the Bronx Muslim Center”.

As reported last year, Hamud Alsilwi, the imam of the Bronx Muslim Center, praised Hamas founder Ahmad Yassin for “making the Jews sleepless”, backed stoning ‘adulterers’ and posted a message stating that the war “stirs jihad in the souls of Muslims, which terrifies the West.” Akram Omar, a supporter of Zohran Mamdani, of the Bronx Muslim Center had promoted Hamas propaganda and “reposted praise for the October 7 attacks, featuring video of cheering crowds.” In remarks at the mosque, he declared that Muslims are “willing to die” to defeat Israel.

At a rally at the terror mosque, Mamdani had urged that in the election, the congregation had “an opportunity — to tell the world that Muslims don’t just belong in New York City but that we belong in City Hall.”

Behind the hate megamosque is the Muslim American Society. The MAS’s co-founder and documents seized in a raid on a Hamas associate identified the organization as a Muslim Brotherhood operation. MAS admits that the Muslim Brotherhood or Ikhwan was behind its founding, while claiming that “many immigrant organizations would likely have had some founders who had some involvement or even membership in the Ikhwan.”

The Muslim Brotherhood or Ikhwan is the organization behind numerous international Islamic terrorist groups including Al Qaeda and Hamas. Osama bin Laden had first traveled to Pakistan as an envoy of the Muslim Brotherhood. One of Al Qaeda’s founding organizations was a splinter group of the Muslim Brotherhood known as Egyptian Islamic Jihad. Ayman al-Zawahiri, Bin Laden’s successor and the thinker behind much of Al Qaeda’s operations came from a Brotherhood family and was inspired by Muslim Brotherhood ideologue Sayyid Qutb to join EIJ.

MAS president Esam S. Omeish had been forced to step down after video of a speech in which he declared that, “you have learned the way, that you have known that the jihad way is the way to liberate your land.”

15 years ago, the MAS had been at the epicenter of the plan to build a three story mosque in Sheepshead Bay which had torn apart that Brooklyn community. Around that same time, work also started on the project to build the Bronx ‘megamosque’ to secure control over the area.

MAS locations have been sources of disturbing advocacy and training for Islamic terrorism.

The Philadelphia chapter of the MAS posted videos of children at an MAS school singing “chop off their heads” and vowing to be “martyred” in the Islamic Jihad.

Now American taxpayers have been forced to contribute over $1 million to the construction of a megamosque preaching hate, terror and death in a former Republican district. In contrast to the $1,050,000 appropriated for a foreign organization’s mosque that preaches hate and terror, the Word of Life Community Center, which helps the borough’s African-American community received less than half of that as did the roof repair projects of two local libraries.

But they matter less than the megamosque.

In his 2023 appropriations request for the megamosque, Rep. Ritchie Torres claimed that the money is “an appropriate use of taxpayer funds because the construction of the Bronx Muslim Center will allow the center to increase its social services to the community.” But the Community Development Block Grant under which Rep. Torres applied bars the use of federal funds for any religious activities. And the vast majority of the Center’s activities appear to be religious.

The mosque’s fundraising site shows that it was trying to raise $1.5 million (of which it only appears to have raised less than $500,000) after $2 million in previous spending suggesting that the $1 million federal grant actually makes up much of the current funds for the mosque’s construction. The Bronx Muslim Center’s fundraising focuses on the need to find space for 2,000 Muslim settlers to attend services and study Sharia, not aiding non-Muslims. It describes its mission as conveying “Islam with utmost clarity”, not providing social services to the borough.

And rather than improving life for non-Muslims in the Bronx, the mosque evicted the residents of two houses to demolish them and make way for their four-floor temple of hate. Even before it’s completed, the megamosque is already making life worse for New Yorkers.

The ACLU would be suing if federal funds were going to churches or synagogues, for example, the ACLU sued to block funds from going to the Princeton Theological Seminary and a New Jersey Yeshiva school, it has filed lawsuits in numerous states to block funds from going to Christian institutions, but it has done nothing about the federal funding of mosque construction in New York because in this, as in so many other things, the rules are different for Islam.

But the rules shouldn’t be different. And taxpayers shouldn’t be funding terror and hate.

American taxpayers are being compelled to fund a megamosque that preaches hate toward Christians and Jews, that supports lawless assaults on businesses, whose leaders cheer on terrorism and whose origins lie in organizations intertwined with Al Qaeda and Hamas.

As the 9/11 anniversary approaches, New Yorkers are reminded of who’s really winning the war. 

Daniel Greenfield is a Shillman Journalism Fellow at the David Horowitz Freedom Center. This article previously appeared at the Center's Front Page Magazine. Click here to subscribe to my articles. And click here to support my work with a donation.  Thank you for reading.

 

 

The Climate Cult Takes On "Resiliency" In Manhattan

August 08, 2025/ Francis Menton, 49 Comments, @ Manhattan Contrarian

Here in New York City, in the grip of the hysterical climate cult, we are undertaking a massive transformation of our energy system without anyone in authority having done the simple arithmetic to check whether the plans have any chance of succeeding. A big theme of this blog has been pointing out the obvious problems that mean that these “net zero” schemes can never work. But maybe it’s not really important whether they will ever work or not. Maybe the real point is just to spend a lot of (somebody else’s) money to show that you, somehow, “care.”

A very similar scenario is now playing out in the closely related category they are calling climate “resiliency.” The word means getting ready for the impending climate armaggedon. The armaggedon isn’t coming, of course, but we will anyway spend vast sums supposedly to show we are “doing something” about the problem. Whether the scheme in question might actually work is beside the point.

And thus a couple of days ago there debuted at the southern tip of Manhattan a completely remade Wagner Park. Wagner Park, originally opened in 1996 as part of the Battery Park City development, was previously just a pleasant waterfront lawn of about 3.5 acres. Then the eco-zealots came into the picture, and advocated that the park was at grave risk of inundation from the sea level rise attendant to anthropogenic global warming. The park needed to be raised up to save both itself and the larger inland areas of our fragile island.

About two years ago they began a massive earth-moving project to raise this park up about ten feet to stave off the sea. Now that the newly-renovated space has just re-opened, Steve Cuozzo at the New York Post has a piece reporting on the results, headline: “Wagner Park’s disastrous $300M eco-zealot makeover is an insult to downtown New York City.” Here is a picture from the Post of what the new space looks like:

 

You can see that the previous lawn has been mostly replaced by a series of terraces rising steeply from the waterfront. Cuozzo has nothing but harsh criticism for the aesthetics of the project:

The “new” Wagner Park in Battery Park City opened this week after a two-year closure and a nearly $300 million redesign. . . . Mature London plane trees were uprooted. The park’s central area was elevated 10 feet in order to conceal a buried flood wall. Much of the lawn was sliced and diced into a ziggurat of paver-surfaced ramps and stairs that have no clear entry points. The park’s once-level, river-facing side swelled into a stepped cliff of wooden, bleacher-like seats where I saw precious few users on two sunny afternoons this week.

And exactly why did they build this huge project to revamp a perfectly nice little park? Cuozzo:

Besides enriching a legion of architects, engineers and landscape designers, the mutant “park” is supposed to protect against a theoretical, worse-than-worst case, one-day-or-someday “100-year” flood caused by rising sea levels. In fact, no such catastrophe has ever occurred. The  original park was so securely engineered that Wagner Park suffered no damage whatsoever when superstorm Sandy caused the city’s highest sea level rise ever recorded.

Cuozzo correctly belittles the idea that sea level rise caused by global warming is going to inundate Manhattan any time soon. But even if it were, this project would still be ridiculous. That’s because if the sea were to rise up, it would rise up everywhere, not just along this tiny stretch of downtown Manhattan.

The part of Manhattan south of Central Park, from 59th Street on the West Side to 59th Street on the East Side, is quite flat, with little elevation gain in the areas near the waterfront. (Above 59th Street the terrain is much hillier.). This southern part of Manhattan has about 10 miles of shoreline along the Hudson and East Rivers, all of it equally subject to flooding if the sea level were to rise. This Wagner Park project deals with only about 400 feet of this shoreline, or less than one percent. Here is a map of southern Manhattan showing the location and scope of this project:

 

The red arrow has been inserted to be sure that you can find the tiny red mark that indicates the portion of the shoreline represented by Wagner Park. So if the sea level were to rise up, how is that 400 feet of raised land going to prevent the water from coming inland along the rest of the 10 or so miles of waterfront?

So they have spent $300 million for a project that will inevitably fail at its stated mission, while ruining what was previously a perfectly nice park. This is not really much different from spending hundreds of billions of dollars on an energy transition that can’t possibly work. Or, for that matter, from spending a trillion or so dollars per year on the project to cure poverty, without ever putting a dent into the poverty rate.

The New Unofficial Communist Party of America

“When you hit rock bottom, there’s only one direction to go, and that’s up, and that’s what we’re doing.” — Democrat National Committee Chair Ken Martin

By Robin Itzler

Editor's Note:  This is one of the commentaries selected from Robin's weekly newsletter Patriot Neighbors.   If you wish to get the full edition, E-mail her at PatriotNeighbors@yahoo.com to get on her list, it's free.

Have no doubt there is no space between Karl Marx and Zohran Mamdani.  In 1963 the 45 communist goals to destroy America was listed in the 1963 Congressional Record, with Goal number 15 being:  

Capture one or both of the political parties in the United States.

If you're listening to what Democrat mayoral candidate Zohran Mamdani says you will quickly recognize he is spouting many of Karl Marx’s communist beliefs. You can hear the same from Los Angeles’ communist Democrat mayor Karen Bass who visited Castro’s Cuba many times and was saddened when the sadistic dictator died. Below are Karl Marx quotes. Compare them to what Mamdani, Bass and other leading Democrats (AOC, Crockett, Sanders, Omar, etc.) say:

1. “The theory of Communism may be summed up in one sentence: Abolish all private property.”
2.  “My object is to dethrone God and destroy capitalism.” 
3. “Take away a nation’s heritage and they are more easily persuaded.”
4.  “Keep people from their history and they are easily controlled.” 
5. “The education of all children, from the moment that they can get along without a mother’s care, shall be in state institutions.” 
6. “Communism begins where atheism begins.”
7.  “We have no compassion and we ask no compassion from you. When our turn comes, we shall not make excuses for the terror.”  
8. “The meaning of peace is the absence of opposition to socialism.” 
9. “The first requisite for the happiness of the people is the abolition of religion.” 
10. “A heavy or progressive or graduated income tax is necessary for the proper development of Communism.” 
11. “Communism abolishes eternal truths, it abolishes all religion, and all morality, instead of constituting them on a new basis; it therefore acts in contradiction to all past historical experience.” 
12. “As socialism grows, religion will disappear. Its disappearance must be done by social development, in which education must play a part.”

If you think it can’t happen here in America, look at what is happening in New York City and Minneapolis mayoral races.

Click here to watch a short video on Joseph Stalin.

Read Democratic Socialism – The Philosophy of Poverty by Alexander G. Markovsky

Elect Curtis Sliwa New York City Mayor

By Robin M. Itzler @ American Thinker

Curtis Sliwa CAN win New York City’s mayoral race in November.

Let’s go back to June 2015, in the days immediately after Donald Trump descended the Trump Tower escalator and announced he was running for president. Do you remember all the “knowledgeable” people who wrote off his campaign as a vanity stunt? Or the others who believed Trump had no chance of winning the nomination, much less the presidency. And the rest, as they say, is history.

Keep that in mind for all those brushing off Guardian Angels’ founder, Republican nominee Curtis Sliwa’s New York City mayoral campaign. Perhaps it was true in past years when the Democrat nominee would automatically go on to win the general election; however, 2025 is not a typical year since Democrats nominated a communist. Mamdani might not call himself a communist, but he says all the communist mantras. For example, as Mark Lewis wrote:

Karl Marx: “The theory of Communism may be summed up in one sentence: Abolish all private property.”

Recent Breitbart headline: “Zohran Mamdani Pushes for ‘Abolition of Private Property’”

This November, Republican nominee Sliwa has a very good chance of an upset victory in the New York mayoral race.

Sliwa, who has spent his entire life tirelessly protecting New Yorkers since founding the Guardian Angels in 1979, understands the Big Apple. He knows that many New Yorkers have no choice but to ride the city’s crime-infested subways, walk its crime-infested streets, and send their children to its crime-infested schools. Former three-term GOP Gov. George Pataki is confident that the Republican mayoral nominee can win City Hall. In a New York Post interview, Pataki said:

“This is the weakest Democratic field ever. Curtis knows the city better than anyone else. He knows the neighborhoods better than anyone else. He knows the subways better than anyone else.”

In “Adams Must Drop Out – Curtis Sliwa is the Only NYC Candidate Who Can Beat Mamdani,” Bob Capano writes:

Sliwa’s campaign and life align with the Republican Party’s Trump-led shift toward appealing to working-class voters, emphasizing law-and-order and grassroots community engagement. His decades leading the Guardian Angels have earned him credibility across party lines. He notably achieved record-breaking support among Asian American voters in his unsuccessful 2021 mayoral bid.

Mamdani’s campaign is built around free this, free that, rent control this, control that, and the city competing with private businesses (i.e., grocery stores). Like a true communist, Mamdani says someone else will pay for all of it: rich, white folks. (Ha—those are the ones that will be moving!)

Mamdani is also anti-police. In one of his many anti-police tweets, he wrote:

We don’t need an investigation to know that the NYPD is racist, anti-queer & a major threat to public safety. What we need is to #DefundTheNYPD. But your deal with @NYCMayor uses budget tricks to keep as many cops as possible on the beat. NO to fake cuts – defund the police.

Among Curtis Sliwa’s proposals when elected mayor:

• Hire 7,000 more police officers and more to bring back public safety.
• Make housing more affordable.
• Fix the broken education system.
• Revive the city. (Let’s all sing, “I love New York...”)
• Remove New York City as a sanctuary city.
• Repeal the state’s bail reform law.
• Reduce illegal immigration as municipal resources can’t handle the influx, and it takes money from citizens.
• Create no-kill shelters. (Sliwa and his wife care deeply about protecting animals.)

The two other “leading” mayoral candidates had their chance and should now gracefully bow out.

Fellow Democrat, former New York Governor Andrew Cuomo, lost to Mamdani in the primary. Cuomo admitted that he ran a lousy campaign as he hoped name recognition would be enough. Many New Yorkers recognize Cuomo...for “killing” elderly residents during the pandemic when he sent COVID patients to nursing homes where they infected everyone with the China-created disease. Maybe Cuomo should hold a rally at a cemetery.

Incumbent Mayor Eric Adams is as popular as mosquitoes at a picnic. The former Republican, former Democrat, now independent Adams did not run in the June primary. On the July 25 broadcast of Fox 5 New York’s Good Day New York, Hizzoner said, legal or illegal, if they are within the city, they deserve whatever services they need.

Unlike the insane ranked-choice primary, the general election is based solely on which candidate gets the most votes. Curtis Sliwa can do it! Even with some pointing to New York’s corrupt voting system, Sliwa has a very good chance of winning if New Yorkers show up and vote.

The HarrisX poll released on July 15 has the mayoral race tightening. Poll results: Mamdani received 26 percent of the vote in a four-way race. Cuomo was at 23 percent; Sliwa at 22 percent, and a distant Adams at 13 percent. At a minimum, the HarrixX poll shows that many New Yorkers do not want Mamdani. However, the communist nominee is counting on the split non-Mamdani vote to get him into Gracie Mansion.

This is why Republicans must rally and unite behind Sliwa, who has already been endorsed by every New York City Republican County party.

In the meantime, “hammer and sickle” Mamdani can keep sprouting his communist gibberish. He can share his video explaining how, as a 33-year-old man, he's happy to let his parents financially support him. He can also voice a favored slogan, “globalize the intifada!” (a phrase he refuses to disavow), which is another way of saying, “Let’s kill all the Jews.”

Many Democrat leaders remain silent. They understand that if New York elects the communist Mamdani, it will prove what President Trump and other Republican leaders have been saying: the Democrat party has morphed into the communist party. According to Washington, DC insider Mark Halperin, who recently spoke to some people close to House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries, “ Hakeem Jeffries strongly believes that if Mamdani wins, he [Jeffries] can’t win the majority.”

In the late 1970s, Americans happily sang along to the jingle “I Love New York.” The song encouraged tourism and showed the city’s resilience. It was revised following the Islamist terrorist attack on September 11, 2001. Should communist Mamdani win, the iconic song might be revised to ♬ “I Left New York!”♬

Sliwa is moving up in the polls and continues to attract both Republicans and moderate Democrats, along with independents who don’t want the communist Mamdani but have soured on Adams and Cuomo. From Queens to Staten Island, from the Bronx to Brooklyn, and on Manhattan, many New Yorkers are humming ♬ “I Love New York and am voting for Curtis Sliwa.” ♬

Curtis Silwa can win! Get on board and help him with a donation. If you care about saving the United States of America from a communist takeover from within, start by supporting Curtis Sliwa for New York City mayor.

Image made using AI.

Former New Yorker Robin M. Itzler lives in California and is a regular contributor to American Thinker. She is the founder and editor of Patriot Neighbors, a free weekly national newsletter. Robin can be reached at PatriotNeighbors@yahoo.com.

Curtis Sliwa for New York City Mayor

By Alan Jefferson — Former New Yorker

Editor's Note:  This is one of the commentaries selected from Robin's weekly newsletter Patriot Neighbors.  If you wish to get the full edition, E-mail her at PatriotNeighbors@yahoo.com to get on her list, it's free.

Several weeks ago, Patriot Neighbors published the transcript of a radio interview that Executive Director of Liberty and Prosperity Seth Grossman had regarding the New York City mayoral race. I vehemently disagree with Grossman’s take on the mayoral race. He lives in New Jersey, but I am from New York. I know the city, the people and want to share a different analysis. I was a native of New York City. It is a very diverse place.

Everyone is talking about Mamdani Shamamdani but very few are talking about his very capable challenger, Republican Curtis Sliwa, who has an excellent reputation and will be a great mayor. If New York City (like other blue cities/states) has honest elections, and honest, equal reporting by the media, Sliwa will easily beat this other guy. Sliwa would also easily beat the two independent candidates: incumbent Mayor Eric Adams and former governor Andrew Cuomo.

What made Grossman's analysis worse was that he mocked Curtis Sliwa. That is a great way to keep sham-mam (Mandani) as the leading mayoral candidate…mock the great candidate (Sliwa) who is on the ballot.

Grossman lamented that sham-man has a 73% chance of winning, and put down those who say, “he will mess things up and we get to say, ‘I told you so.’” And then Grossman blamed the immigrants and college students for putting Mamdani in place. But Grossman never gave a solution.

The solution is to promote Sliwa (NOT mock him)!!!

Sliwa is a great candidate and will make a great mayor. Guardian Angels is an outstanding organization that does great things and is now worldwide. They certainly should not be mocked. · Sliwa has protected New Yorkers, and this includes the Jewish communities in New York City. · Sliwa has run a very successful worldwide crime fighting organization for decades – he has the qualifications for being a great mayor. · Sliwa should be shouted from the housetops, and sham-mam Mamdani… should be ignored.

New Yorkers who care about the city are looking for an alternative to Mamdani, Adams, and Cuomo. None of them are liked. Primaries have low turnout and Mamdani only won a small percentage of the actual votes. Only 30% of Democrats voted in the primary but with the ridiculous ranked choice voting Mamdani was able to secure the lead.

During the primary Mamdani only received 8% of the vote of registered NYC voters. This is certainly not a mandate, or a slam dunk win, or show that NYC has lost its mind when only 8% of the registered voters (only 5% of the whole NYC population) voted for him in a primary, many of them ignorant because of the lack of true reporting before the primary.

But to listen to most pundits it sounds like 100% of the city voted for him. Slow down, it was only 8% of voters, only 5% of New Yorkers. The sky has not fallen. Not everyone in New York City is nuts.

If the machines are not rigged and if Silwa receives the MAGA support, I think Silwa will win.

Right now, no one outside of New York City even knows about Curtis Silwa. All the “conservative” news outlets are only talking about Mamdani. If they talked about Silwa and if he received financial support, and name recognition, I believe Republican Curtis Silwa could be the next mayor of New York City.

Curtis Sliwa, with our help and support, and with 100% of the Republican votes, and a large chunk of independents, and disenfranchised democrats will crush this 8%’er to overcome even a rigged election.

Stop crying and lamenting, and stop talking about Shamami, and start supporting Curits Sliwa.

Read Is Zohran Mamdani Really the Anointed One? by Rich Kozlovich.

Settler-Colonialist Zohran Mamdani Calls For "Seizing The Means Of Production"

June 30, 2025 Francis Menton @ Manhattan Contrarian 28 Comments

Last week I invited readers to get a good laugh out of New York Governor Kathy Hochul’s plan to avert impending energy disaster by green-lighting one nuclear power plant that optimistically might solve 5% of the problem when it is ready to operate in the 2050s. Now this week brings an even superior farce: A video clip has emerged of our settler-colonialist Democratic mayoral candidate Zohran Mamdani calling for “seizing the means of production.”

Mamdani’s victory in last week’s Democratic primary has led researchers to dredge up a treasure trove of his old tweets and video clips, each one more ridiculous than the next. An excellent roundup can be found here at Legal Insurrection. Some choice examples include: 

“Violence is an artificial construct"; “Under capitalism, housing is a commodity from which landlords & developers extract huge profits while our communities suffer eviction, foreclosure & displacement.”; “We need to dramatically curtail the power & presence of the NYPD.”; and “[A] statue of Columbus remains in Astoria, in defiance of the values of humanity, empathy & justice that we stand for.”

But my favorite is a clip from a speech Mamdani gave at a Democratic Socialists of America conference in 2021. The New York Post today quotes some excerpts from the speech, among them Mamdani’s statements that issues socialists “firmly believe in,” include “boycotts, divestment and sanctions against Israel” and “the end goal of seizing the means of production.”

“Seizing the means of production” — now there’s a retro concept. The “means of production” was good commie talk back in the 19th century, when Karl Marx and his followers looked around and saw things like steel mills, railroad engine factories, iron foundries, coal mines, textile mills, and other such big facilities to make lots of stuff. It seemed obvious that those facilitie were where the greedy capitalists got their wealth.

But has Mamdani even looked around the New York City of today? What even exists today that you could call a “means of production”?

In New York City today, we produce almost nothing that is tangible. I wonder if Mamdani has noticed that.

In May 2016 I did a big post with lots of research titled “The Devastation Of New York City’s Economy.” The post documented the complete transformation of New York City’s economy from the 1950s to the time of the post, and in particular the almost complete disappearance of manufacturing. As noted in the post, in the aftermath of World War II, New York City’s economy had over 1 million manufacturing jobs, distributed among some 37,000 different companies. 

Those companies and people made a huge variety of products, most famously women’s clothing, where New York City was completely dominant and supported about 231,000 jobs. By the time of the post in 2016, the total number of manufacturing jobs in New York City in all industries was down to about 80,000. According to the most recent statistics from the New York State Department of Labor, the current number of manufacturing jobs in the City (May 2025) is only 57,700. That’s out of total private-sector employment of some 4,248,300.

Such manufacturing as continues to exist in New York City is reduced to a few specialized niches. For example, there continue to be specialized clothing manufacturers to make things like costumes for Broadway shows and samples for runway fashion shows. Are their sewing machines what Mamdani means by the “means of production”?

In the way of mass production of physical goods for human consumption, almost none of it occurs in New York City. Food? Obviously, we don’t grow that here. Clothing? Almost certainly, nothing in your wardrobe or mine was manufactured in New York City. Housing or other buildings? They are put together on site, but the materials almost all come from elsewhere (structural concrete is one exception). Automobiles? There are no assembly plants in the five boroughs; and if you know of a manufacturer of some kind of parts for the auto industry in New York City, I would like to learn of it.

But aren’t there some kind of “means of production” to make all the wealth that gets generated in the hundreds of big office buildings in Manhattan? I would love to see Mamdani’s plans to seize whatever this may be. When he sends in his shock troops to make the seizures, all he’s going to find are a bunch of laptops no different from what you could get at the Apple store.

How about the investment bankers and traders and hedge funders who make millions of dollars per year dealing in the capital markets? I suppose that their “means of production” mainly consists of the proprietary software that they use in their businesses. The bankers may know how to make big money using this software, but seized and distributed among the masses, it would be almost completely useless. It’s really quite funny to contemplate.

Anyway, these are the levels of ignorance and foolishness that we are dealing with.

What’s the Most Important Election of 2025?

June 24, 2025 by Dan Mitchell @ International Liberty

Today, voters in New York City may elect a lunatic leftist as Mayor, following Chicago into the toilet of statism. Is that the most important election of 2025?

Later this year, voters in Argentina will decide in mid-term elections whether to give Javier Milei a governing majority in the legislature. Is that the most important election of 2025?

In November, Swiss voters will be voting whether to adopt a class-warfare nationwide tax on inheritances. Is that the most important election of 2025?

I’m not sure if there is a correct answer to these questions. For purposes of today’s column, though, let’s focus on the Swiss referendum. The good news is that the Swiss have a very good track record of making sensible decisions.

• In 2001, the people of Switzerland voted by a 5-1 margin in favor of a spending cap.
• In 2010, nearly 60 percent of the electorate rejected a class-warfare income tax proposal.
• In 2014, Swiss voters overwhelmingly killed a minimum-wage mandate.
• Also in 2014, the voters of Switzerland rejected single-payer healthcare by a landslide margin.
• And in 2015, more than 70 percent of voters rejected a federal death tax.
• In 2016, there was a landslide vote against a scheme to provide universal basic income.
• In 2021, Swiss voters overwhelmingly rejected a referendum for higher taxes on saving and investment.

Heck, even the French-speaking regions of Switzerland are sensible.

But good voting habits in the past are no guarantee of good voting habits in the future. Based on excerpts from this report by Mercedes Ruehl for the Financial Times, people are worried.

 

The Alpine nation is due to hold a popular vote in November on the introduction of a federal tax on inheritances and gifts worth more than CHF50 million ($61 million). …the proposal does not include an exemption for spouses or direct descendants. The looming vote comes after the UK sparked a rush for the exit among wealthy foreigners by making the global assets of non-domiciled residents liable to inheritance tax – a move it is now considering reversing. Meanwhile, jurisdictions such as Dubai and Italy have stepped up efforts to lure the rich. … 

The new tax was proposed by the far-left Young Socialists party in 2022 as a way of raising money to tackle the climate crisis. Under Swiss law, such proposals go to a public vote if they are backed by 100,000 signatures. …The proposed tax would also affect those running the thousands of small- and medium-sized businesses, as well as entrepreneurial families, spread across the country, many of whom have their money tied up in the business…  

The new levy would place Switzerland above other jurisdictions such as Italy where inheritance taxes range between 4% and 8%, or Dubai and Hong Kong which have no inheritance or gift tax. Business lobby group Economiesuisse said this week that the initiative “endangers Switzerland’s position as a reliable and stable business location internationally”. …The federal council, the country’s executive branch, has rejected the initiative, as have the two houses of parliament.

Sadly, some damage already is occurring.

Lombard Odier had “seen Swiss-based families that have decided not to take any risk and to relocate ahead of the vote taking place”, while overseas clients had decided not to move to the country… Another Zurich-based private banker said a top client had relocated to Liechtenstein ahead of the vote.

 Since Liechtenstein is also a sensible nation, I certainly can understand why successful people think it’s a good place to live.

But hopefully Swiss voters will avert any possible exodus by delivering a crushing defeat to the class-warfare referendum.

There are very few countries in the world with good public policy. Switzerland is one of them (see here and here), and it would be great if it continued to be a role model.

It has a wide range of good policies, such as low taxes, private retirement savings, and federalism.

My personal favorite is the country’s spending cap, which has been incredibly successful.

Let’s hope November’s vote doesn’t put the nation on a downward spiral.