Zohran Mamdani is a horrible pick for mayor

Photo courtesy of Bingjiefu He/Wikimedia Commons

With Eric Adams’s recent dropout, it is important to reevaluate the New York City mayoral race. For the longest time, the race was between four people: former governor of New York, Andrew Cuomo; Republican nominee, Kurtis Lee; current New York City mayor Eric Adams; and newcomer Zohran Mamdani. As far as betting odds go, Zohran Mamadani is favored to win the election. I believe this would be absolutely terrible. 

Zohran Mamdani is the pick for the Democratic party of New York City, a 33-year-old self-described “Democratic Socialist.” And though, having never worked in the private sector, all his policies are based on a faux understanding of the private sector and how money works. The legitimacy campaign promises are just like his job experience: completely and utterly non-existent. Let us go point by point with his campaign promises.

The first point in his agenda is his advocacy for a “freeze in rent” strategy, where all tenant rent would be frozen at its current rate. If you did not know anything about economics, I could see how this would look good. Housing in the city is notoriously unaffordable and if someone came along saying they had the answer, I would, of course, go along with it. Unfortunately, that is not the case. 

If you freeze rent, there is no incentive for developers to go in and build more housing. Building new projects is a long-term commitment which requires a lot of money, and if you have inflation progressively eating into your profits while having a cap on how you can charge, you are just not going to build. With limited supply comes an increase in price, because housing becomes inherently more valuable. Without these kinds of restrictions, housing would become more apparent and higher quality. But it is not just my word. A study from Cambridge in 1995 showed that without needless regulation, housing quality increased and more housing was produced. In 1994, Cambridge terminated their rent policy which had been running since 1970. After removal they saw a massive influx of new houses being built and the quality rise.  

Another point in his plan is to create government-run grocery stores for the less fortunate. Again, like all his ideas, these ideas are good on surface value alone. Let’s look more into these ideas to show how awful they really are. 

According to The Food Industry Association, grocery stores operate at a 1-3 percent net profit margin. In fact, the aggregate profit margins among food retailers is 1.7 percent; this is among the lowest among all industries. If you were to open a government grocery store that does not operate on any profit incentive and can be infinitely-funded by a government that does not want to give up on their obsolete passion project, who will go out of business? The small mom and pop stores or the Walmarts of the world. Although the intended effect was not inherently pro-big business, the actual effect would be, because the plan undercuts small businesses—their direct competition. 

Now, let us examine the effect on the individual, because I’m sure the individual who votes for Zohran Mamdani rarely concerns themselves with things like the intricacies of business. The fact is, the individual would be affected far more than the business would be and there are plenty of examples of this happening. We can first talk about the USSR, who in the end of their reign were infamous for empty shelves. They could barely feed their citizens due to their communist run grocery stores which were as barren as the stomachs of their citizens were; but we do not have to go that far from home to see why this idea doesn’t work. Let’s take “Baldwin Market,” in Florida, for example, which is set to shut down after five years because they could not sustain themselves, or the Kansas City-run grocery store “Sun Fresh,” which also had to close due to monetary issues and reportedly had a “rancid odor” and “bare shelves.” There is not a single example of a publicly-run grocery store that even competes with any privately-owned one.

These are just two of Zohran Mamdani’s terrible policies. I hope for the city’s sake that he either does not win or he swivels on his policies. The people of New York City, the financial capital of the world, are at a turning point. They can either embrace his horrendous socialist policies or choose a better path. Choose wisely, New York.