Jun 30
2025
Much ado about the mayoral primary in NYC
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Nationally, Zohran Mamdani’s upset victory in the Democratic primary for New York City mayor was the electoral story of the week.
Five takes:
- The City covers the election results.
- Politico shares the thoughts of eight political types about what it all means.
- New York Focus explores whether state government is likely to go for Mamdani’s agenda.
- The New York Times and The Intercept weigh in on what lessons the Democratic establishment should take from Mamdani’s victory.
Writing for The Times, Rebecca Kirszner Katz, a political consultant who worked on Mamdani’s campaign, lamented “the party establishment’s impulse to stifle and ignore some of its most exciting emerging voices.”
Winning elections is about addition. We need a big tent. That’s why instead of writing off candidates who resonate with voters because we disagree on an issue or two, Democrats should be asking why voters were drawn to them in the first place.
I’m not saying Democrats should try to run candidates exactly like Mr. Mamdani everywhere. That’s not going to work for a lot of reasons.
But I am begging Democrats to embrace candidates who can authentically speak to the electorate they’re running to represent, whether they’re in red, blue, urban or rural areas. And we should not be so quick to squash exciting candidates just because they seem risky, look different or challenge the status quo. Sometimes we have to try new things.
And when we do find candidates who resonate, we should welcome them into our tent — and try to figure out how they do it.
The Intercept insists progressives left-oriented candidates can win:
The core question is simple: Can a young, Muslim, card-carrying Democratic Socialists of America candidate beat powerful establishment figures anywhere in the country? Is this a New York phenomenon, or a sign of a shift in the Democratic electorate as a whole?
The answer is yes.
Yes, the failure of the “too big to fail” mayoral candidacy of former New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo, armed with millions in establishment cash, in the face of a volunteer-driven challenge from the left, can happen anywhere.
I’ll reserve judgment on the latter assessment, at last until we see what happens in November.
I mean, India Walton won Buffalo’s Democratic mayoral primary four years ago running as a Democratic Socialist, only to lose to Byron Brown in the general election, in a write-in campaign, no less. Subsequently, Walton also came up short when she ran for a district seat on the Common Council.
But anything that likely ends Andrew Cuomo’s political career and infuriates Rupert Murdoch and his New York Post is a good thing.
The Supreme Court last week denied a motion by lawyers for Lou Ciminelli, Alain Kaloyeros and other defendants to stop a retrial of their Buffalo Billion corruption case. The court had previously tossed out their conviction, but federal prosecutors want to re-try the case. In the meantime, Kaloyeros, after a 12-year hiatus, has resumed tweeting, mostly spewing right-wing blather. He’s got all of 90 followers.
The Buffalo Bills are being coy about how exactly they’re spending the $3-million-plus-a-year in community benefits that was part of the deal for them getting oodles of taxpayer funds to build their new stadium in Orchard Park.
The Empire Center warns that New Yorkers are heading for an energy crisis. There’s the high prices we’re already paying for electricity — the sixth-highest in the nation. But that’s only part of the problem.
Instead of the green energy revolution, New York is slowly losing the capability to make energy. In a brand new report, NYISO warns since 2019 New York has retired more electricity generation capacity than it added. Federal data show similar trends: from 2019 to 2024, while New York’s electricity generation dropped, the U.S. added 4 percent, Texas ramped up production by 16 percent, and Florida by 8.
Meanwhile, New York is relying on increasingly outdated infrastructure to produce electricity. A quarter of New York’s electricity generation capacity has been in operation for more than 50 years, and some — for more than 70 years.
This may explain why Gov. Kathy Hochul has announced her intention to build a nuclear power plant in upstate. Officials in Chautauqua County quickly chimed in that the abandoned NRG plant in Dunkirk would be a suitable site.
I don’t know … a nuclear power plant on the shore of Lake Erie?
The Washington Post ranked the nation’s top 50 airports. Buffalo didn’t make it. Topping the list were airports in Portland, Oregon; Long Beach, California; and Reagan National in Washington, D.C.
PS: I think our airport is perfectly fine.
Buy your tickets now for our July 31 benefit concert
Down the road, the University of Toronto is working with Harvard University to accommodate select foreign students in the event visa restrictions prevent them from re-entering the United States. U of T is also starting to hire top-shelf professors from American universities in the wake of Trump’s assault on academia.
The Atlantic writes at AI is making things that much worse for the beleaguered news industry.
“AI is already crushing the news industry,” author Alex Reisner writes. “Suddenly, fewer people are traveling outside the generative-AI sites—a development that poses an existential threat to the media, and to the livelihood of journalists everywhere.”
Adds Eric Schere of France Télévisions: “Our house is burning, but we’re looking the other way. After Google and Facebook capture advertising, generative AI goes further by depriving media outlets of their audience.”
In the wake of Supreme Court rulings last week, it’s apparent the court’s majority is following the lead of Republicans in Congress and capitulating to Trump.
ICE is arresting, on average, more than twice as many people a day since Trump took office. Arrests in New York State are up 79 percent. In a lot of states, the arrest rate has doubled or even tripled.
The surge in arrests has stressed detention centers, according to The New York Times.
Some immigrants have gone a week or more without showers. Others sleep pressed tightly together on bare floors. Medications for diabetes, high blood pressure and other chronic health problems are often going unprovided. In New York and Los Angeles, people have been held for days in cramped rooms designed for brief processing, not prolonged confinement, and their lawyers and family members have remained in the dark about their whereabouts.
Migrant Insider reports that ICE has a history of deporting more people than just the undocumented. The Government Accountability Office (GAO) found that between 2015 and 2020 — which covers Trump’s first term as president — ICE arrested 674 potential U.S. citizens, detained 121, and deported 70. I imagine the trend has continued since he retook office in January.
Donate to support our nonprofit newsroomHere’s an interesting headline from Semafor: Steve Bannon goes to war with Fox News.
“People on the right are now confronting an unpleasant reality, a great unmasking: The Murdochs don’t put America’s interests first,” Bannon told Semafor Sunday. “There needs to be a thorough FARA investigation into Fox’s relationship with a foreign power.”
He added that “their audience is geriatrics — it’s people 70 and over,” and that Fox has “no stroke because it’s not an activist base.”
RIP, Bill Moyers. An intellect, voice of conscience and champion of democracy and public media. Quite a career.
I attended a lecture of his at the Chautauqua Institution in 2019. On Friday, I looked up my notes from his speech, whose topics included the dangers of disinformation and the media diets of many Americans. Among his sage words of advice: “Be careful of what you subscribe to, be careful of what you read.”
His comments from an earlier appearance at Chautauqua are worth a read. Here’s the full text.
