Who’s Afraid of Zohran Mamdani?

October 28, 2025

Dave Gonigam

Who’s Afraid of Zohran Mamdani?

Is it just me or does it seem a lot of people outside New York City feel really invested in the outcome of the mayor’s race there?

The election is one week from today. The front-runner is a 34-year-old self-described “democratic socialist” named Zohran Mamdani. His top challengers are former Gov. Andrew Cuomo and Guardian Angels founder Curtis Sliwa. (Remember him?)

On one level, I get it. Out of every 200 Americans, five live in New York. It’s the financial capital of the country. To some extent it’s still the media capital.

But an awful lot of people who live outside the five boroughs seem frightened by Mamdani.

I mean, the MAGA “influencer” Rogan O’Handley — one of the people who beclowned himself with the “Epstein binders” last winter — has an X profile that says he’s based in Tampa. But he sure has strong opinions about events in New York…

DC Draino

And then there’s the hedge-fund billionaire (and pro tennis player!) Bill Ackman — recently described by Tucker Carlson as “not particularly intelligent” but “hyper aggressive and well connected.” While Ackman owns at least a couple of penthouses in New York, his residence is in Westchester County.

But there he is on X, frequently lashing out at Mamdani, saying for instance that his policies will “result in increased crime, diminished public safety, fewer jobs and reduced tax revenues.” He’s endorsed Cuomo — and days ago he dropped $1 million on a “super PAC” opposing Mamdani.

To be sure, there’s much to not like about Mamdani’s economic policies.

He supports a rent freeze that would make affordable housing even more scarce than it already is. He wants city-run grocery stores. He proposes taxpayer-funded daycare. He advocates for fare-free city buses.

Of course he wants to raise taxes on “the rich” and on corporations to pay for it.

But Mamdani is also the only candidate who even acknowledges that living in New York is nigh-unaffordable for everyday folks.

Take a look at the viral video that by many accounts put him on the map. It runs only 93 seconds.

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Pretty persuasive, huh? You don’t even have to buy into the socialism thing! You can be a 100% free marketeer like me and be totally on board with Mamdani here. New Yorkers pay $10 for a plate of chicken and rice that’s worth $8 — and the only reason is that a corrupt NYC government doles out favors to special interests with clout.

Who other than scum of the earth like Andrew Cuomo would be for that?

Just as important, Mamdani comes off in this video like a real human being and not an animatronic blow-dried creation of a campaign consultant. He’s the anti-Cuomo.

“We don’t just see him talking. We see him listening. And responding in ways that prove he is listening,” writes the media coach and consultant Barry Nash.

“His delivery is unscripted and unrushed. Authentic energy isn’t about just going fast and being louder. That’s performed energy, and viewers can see right through it. Authentic energy generates from clarity about what matters — and being present enough to respond in the moment.”

[Editor’s disclosure: I worked briefly with Mr. Nash during my TV news career.]

Here’s what you need to know today: In the same way that the misrule of the Bushes and Clintons opened the door for Donald Trump… Mamdani’s rise was inevitable in light of events that took place in New York long ago. Read on…

New York 2025: No Place for the Middle Class

The story of New York in 2025 is a story of “the decades-long creation and maintenance of a financialized, factionalized city of free market distortions and middle-class displacement,” researcher Matt Wolfson writes for the Libertarian Institute.

It started during Nelson Rockefeller’s days as governor of New York State in the 1960s — a series of schemes that resulted in New York City’s bankruptcy in the 1970s and a reorganization that redirected city funds “to support financial development via investing in a real estate boom driven by a handful of connected players that attracted new ‘talent’ to the city.”

With that came the rise of Big Apple financial titans in the 1980s like the Tisch brothers, the Bronfman family, the sons of Estee Lauder, Hank Greenberg (the guy who ran AIG into the ground during the 2008 financial crisis) and Michael Milken, among others.

The process was put on steroids during billionaire Michael Bloomberg’s tenure as mayor from 2002–2013.

“Bloomberg’s projects pushed in one direction,” Wolfson writes: “using government policy and finance capital to redevelop the city to create a tourist and tech mecca. His opening gambit was rezoning 40% of the city. He then filled those rezoned spaces with public-private projects — parks, high-rises, high-end department stores — displacing middle- and working-class New Yorkers and driving up rents for everyone else.”

Wolfson doesn’t mention it in his article, but COVID lockdowns starting in 2020 were the proverbial last straw.

As author Naomi Wolf wrote on her Substack page last year, “The big developers had never previously managed to get their hands on Chinatown — with its prime real estate that was in the hands of small landlords — because the local culture and community and the small businesses that sustained the small landlords had been too strong.”

But lockdown killed those small businesses.

The rest was history. Chinatown today? “Gleaming new storefronts, with $400 jackets and $700 shoes, all curated and lit up like sculptures. Little art galleries, selling $12,000–25,000 works of modern art to wealthy, young, hip collectors. Chain bubble tea shops. Chain hotels.”

With the dispossession of New York’s middle class and working class, the path was open for someone — anyone — who would give voice to their frustrations.

In other words, the Mamdani phenomenon is more complex and nuanced than “free stuff” and “tax the rich.”

The candidates beholden to New York’s power elite were caught flat-footed — namely Cuomo and current mayor Eric Adams, who dropped out of the race a few weeks ago and threw his support to Cuomo.

That said, it looks as if Mamdani is willing to reach an understanding of sorts with the existing power structure.

During a debate last week, he said he would retain the current police commissioner Jessica Tisch — a favorite of the city’s elites because she’s one of them, a scioness of the aforementioned Tisch family.

But outside New York, both MAGA Inc. and the billionaire class seem united: Anyone but Mamdani. Even Andrew Freaking Cuomo.

Reminder: At the outset of COVID, Cuomo shoved elderly sick people out of hospitals and back into nursing homes — where they infected other people and where mortality rates shot through the roof. And he had the gall to publish a book about his “leadership” during that episode.

And this is the guy “DC Draino” says is a better alternative than an actual conservative like Curtis Sliwa who’s polling 20%!

None of it makes any sense.

If you really believe the socialist agenda is doomed to fail and you live outside NYC, would a Mamdani win be that bad? Yes, it would suck for New Yorkers for four years, but then New York would serve as an object lesson to the rest of the country for decades to come about the failures of socialism.

Why don’t Mamdani’s most vocal critics adopt this stance?

Or does their virulent opposition spring from some other source that has nothing to do with economics?

We’ll let that question hang as we move on to other matters…

Three Days in October

Three things will dominate the market action from tomorrow through Friday — the Federal Reserve, earnings and the Trump-Xi summit.

The Fed has begun two days of meetings. At the conclusion of the meeting tomorrow afternoon, the benchmark fed funds rate will be lowered another quarter percentage point to 4%. No drama there.

Less publicized but arguably more important is that the Fed will likely announce an end to its “quantitative tightening” or QT program after 3½ years.

“QT is the opposite of quantitative easing or QE,” says Paradigm’s macroeconomics authority Jim Rickards. “Under QT, the Fed lets securities in its portfolio mature without investing the proceeds in new securities. This shrinks the Fed’s balance sheet and is a kind of monetary tightening.”

After the insane COVID-era ramp-up, the Fed has shrunk its balance sheet from nearly $9 trillion in mid-2022 to about $6.6 trillion today.

assets

“By ending QT,” Jim goes on, “the Fed will buy new securities as old ones mature. They will print money to buy those securities. The end of QT is really QE in disguise although the Fed will not call it that.

“This ease is in addition to the interest rate cut and shows just how worried the Fed is about rising unemployment.”

A couple of hours after the Fed makes its move, Microsoft will report its quarterly numbers along with Google parent Alphabet and Facebook parent Meta. Thursday brings Apple and Amazon.

As noted here yesterday, the Trump-Xi summit Thursday is a potential wild card.

The major U.S. stock indexes sailed higher yesterday on expectations of a final deal between Washington and Beijing covering not only tariffs but also TikTok, fentanyl and rare earths. Any deal that falls short of those expectations could deliver a jolt to markets.

But that’s a later-this-week story. For the moment, the indexes are reaching still higher into record territory. The S&P 500 is the weakest of the bunch, up microscopically at last check to 6,878. But the Nasdaq is up over a quarter percent and the Dow nearly a half-percent.

Precious metals are stabilizing, sort of, after the latest smackdown yesterday. Gold is down about $22 to $3,958 while silver is up 11 cents to $46.94. Elsewhere in the commodity complex, crude is sinking back toward $60.

Crypto has been mostly quiet the last 24 hours, Bitcoin just over $115,000 and Ethereum back over $4,100.

The Cost of Dying

In recent years, “most states have been moving away from estate or inheritance taxes or have raised their exemption levels,” write the analysts at the Tax Foundation.

All else being equal, “these taxes hurt states’ competitiveness and create incentives for costly and economically inefficient tax avoidance.”

But these taxes remain in effect in 16 states and the District of Columbia — either estate taxes paid before the heirs get anything, or inheritance taxes paid directly by the heirs. (Maryland, home base for Paradigm Press, imposes both!)

Here’s another one of the Tax Foundation’s terrific maps. Click on the image and it takes you to a page where you can mouse over to see the exact amounts.

Estate Tax

Junking these taxes, the analysts say, would “promote the stability of family businesses, minimize economic distortions and prevent government overreach during an already difficult time for the friends and family of the deceased.”

The good news is that on the federal level, the estate tax exemption of recent years will remain in effect indefinitely — or at least until Congress changes the tax code again.

The Trump tax cuts of 2017 raised the thresholds at which estate taxes kicked in. But those thresholds were set to revert to Obama-era levels at the end of this year if Congress didn’t act.

The “One Big Beautiful Bill Act” made those higher thresholds permanent — and they will continue to be adjusted for inflation. For tax year 2026, the exemption rises to $15 million.