If the travails of a certain Left Coast city are any guide, Zohran Mamdani’s plan to paint New York red is not only bound to fail but also to alienate voters once they get a real taste of his socialist “utopia.”
The mayor-elect wants to hand out everything from frozen rents and free buses to subsidized trans surgeries even for kids. He wants the so-called 1% of wealthy New Yorkers who already pay for most of the freebies to pay even more to foot the bill.
That message won him the mayoralty, but what he left out of his pitch is what happens next. Just how much do people really like progressive government, and what happens to local economies and standards of living when lefty pols go there?
Take Oregon. The state is one of the most progressive in the country, providing a suite of social welfare benefits courtesy of super-high taxes on business and a state income tax. In recent years it has embraced various methods to defund and defang the police — all stuff supported by our new mayor.
Its largest city, Portland, has embraced various forms of socialism, the same stuff spouted by our mayor-elect. It also has become a poster child of urban decay, a smoldering mess of crime, businesses fleeing and homelessness. People have had enough.
According to the survey conducted by Public Opinion Strategies (financed by the pro-business advocacy group Save Our Cities), here are the results:
- 67% say Oregon’s economy is “pretty seriously off on the wrong track” because of mountainous taxes, regulations and homelessness.
- Independents are the largest voting bloc and 73% believe the state is on the wrong track.
- Portland, of course, has been one of the epicenters of social justice since 2020. Massive protests and various government programs to provide equity. But people in the state say they now care more about jobs and the economy than this lefty fad by a margin of 62% to 15%.
The numbers don’t lie. Oregon was once a burgeoning tech hub, but big employers like Intel have been cutting staff. Its unemployment rate is growing to 5%, the highest since COVID. The Wall Street Journal recently reported about the difficulty in leasing space in downtown Portland: The US Bancorp Tower, “once a premier address in the city, was afflicted with ‘vagrants sleeping in hallways of vacant office floors.’ “
As the Journal reported, the vagrants were “starting fires in stairwells, smoking fentanyl and defecating in common areas,” citing a so-called lease-termination lawsuit by a former tenant.
The building, with a 60% vacancy rate, was recently sold for $45 million. In 2015, it had fetched nearly $400 million.
Charlie Gasparino has his finger on the pulse of where business, politics and finance meet
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Yes, Oregonians (like New Yorkers) put the lefties in power, but now, after living with all of the above, there is growing evidence that they’ve had enough.
It should provide a stark warning to the ruling Democratic Party: Go all in on socialism by supporting the extreme policies of Mamdani, and you will likely face a continued exodus from your states — and a revolt from those voters who stick around.
