Can't escape the local politics

The last few years of local San Francisco politics has been tiring. We dealt with a handful of politicians that lacked common sense and it sent San Francisco into an awful few years especially post-COVID. Just as things started to turn around, I of course decided to move to New York.

As such, I’ve found myself in yet another brutal local political situation. With corrupt Eric Adams leaving office, we are now left to choose between Cuomo and Mamdani. I’ll be honest in that I just don’t know as much about this election given I have been in San Francisco.

My high level views are that Cuomo is that crafty politician that got things done, but was creepy and used his power to get away with being a creep. Whereas Mamdani is the classic young progressive who appeals to the younger generation by saying a ton of things that is just downright not going to work.

I suppose I still identify as a left leaning progressive and I welcome change, but I have also seen what happens first hand when these changes are not well thought out and we don’t analyze second order effects.

This ranges from common sense situations such as not prosecuting crime. Yes, that is unfortunately going to welcome more crime. We saw that in San Francisco. But it also extends to progressive policies such as raising the minimum wage to $30 which Mamdani wants to do.

Yes, I want people to get paid more and live better lives. But we perhaps have forgotten that many small businesses cannot survive running on a $30 minimum wage.

Again, some of these things Mamdani is saying sounds great. Fast, free buses. Freezing rent increases. I can see why young people like him. But I’m incredibly skeptical that any of this will happen. He sounds like an inexperienced individual who may win the election by saying a lot of things that just won’t work and we likely will be worst off from it.

I don’t have a vote in this election given when I moved, but I can see why New York is nervous right now given the two options.