Zohran Mamdani ain’t the Big Apple Mayor…
He’s running for the job….
Yesterday the City had a horrific shooting go down….
Mamdani offered his regards from afar after 11 hours ….
And?…..Andrew Cuomo IS on the ground in the City….
(As Governor, Cuomo has been in these situations before)
And he IS reminding people that Mamdani has said he wanted to ‘defund’ the police in the past….
Eric Adams has made sure to be seen as the current Mayor of the city in charge, and being a former police Officer himself….
Mamdani is facing his first full-blown crisis on his way to the general election, which is just four months away. He is now contending with a timeworn tradition in New York City politics — the recriminations that almost inevitably follow a civic trauma and the expectation that elected leaders be present when such a rupture occurs.
“This is a reality check: public safety is literally a matter of life and death,” former Gov. Andrew Cuomo, Mamdani’s leading general election rival, said Tuesday in an interview with POLITICO. “His positions when it comes to public safety are abhorrent and wholly disconnected from any responsible government approach.”…
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Neither politician could reasonably be blamed for those deaths, but the emotionally charged ceremonies inevitably became political, replete with messages of who’s with the fallen officer, and who isn’t.
“Mamdani and certainly his supporters are going to have to be careful about how they engage this,” said Basil Smikle, Democratic political strategist who teaches at Columbia University. “It’s at moments like this where ‘defund the police’ — nobody wants to hear that.”
Since making his “defund” calls years ago, Mamdani has moderated his positions on policing, saying he has no plans to defund the NYPD. His platform instead pushes to reduce the department’s billion-dollar overtime budget and create a Department of Community Safety that would assume some responsibilities now handled by police, like responding to mental health emergencies….
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“Where he’s going to have issues involving unfortunate incidents like the killing of a police officer, it will resurface his support for defund the police,” she said. “That’s where he’s going to have that disconnect — not just with New York City residents, but with the NYPD itself.”
Todd-Medina didn’t fault Mamdani for being out of the country, but she added mayors are expected to be on call when a crisis strikes — like Rudy Giuliani following the Sept. 11 attacks.
“If there’s one area New Yorkers expect our mayors to step up is during a crisis. Because we’re a big city, our mayors have personality, they’re bigger than life and we expect a bigger-than-life result,” she said. “It’s how you respond and how you react to it.”…
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Mamdani was already scheduled to return to New York on Wednesday morning from his vacation in Uganda and plans to address the shooting, campaign spokesperson Dora Pekec said, adding that he will “of course” hope to attend Islam’s funeral….
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“If you’re Andrew Cuomo or Eric Adams, you’re going to absolutely use that as a tool to say ‘he’s not prepared to run this city, he’s not serious about going after criminals, and he’s not supportive of police,’” Smikle said…
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Adams himself rushed to the scene. He maintained a solemn, measured tone across the Monday night press conference and a series of media appearances Tuesday. While he’s often contrasted himself with “defund the police” Democrats before, Adams instead focused on gun control — touting his administration’s own record seizing firearms and calling for stricter laws on a federal level….
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“It’s a trauma that impacts every New Yorker, because when a cop gets shot, it makes people feel like it could happen to anyone.”….