Zohran Mamdani’s DSA allies are flexing power in Albany — and no corner of the state is safe

Zohran Mamdani’s win Tuesday sends tremors far beyond New York City: From Buffalo to Amagansett, no corner of the Empire State will be spared the damage. 

The victory gives a huge political boost to his Democratic Socialists of America comrades embedded in New York’s state Senate and Assembly.

They are already poised to ignite wholesale legislative attacks on property owners, charter schools, law enforcement and businesses statewide. 

In New York, the big decisions about criminal law, education, rent laws and taxation are legislated at the state level, not locally.

New Yorkers, brace yourselves for crazy laws and huge tax hikes with Mamdani and the DSA calling the shots in both Albany and City Hall.

Mamdani, a member of the state Assembly until he is sworn in as mayor, gathered endorsements from the state’s top legislative leaders and sizable blocs of 27 Assembly members and 16 state senators in the run-up to Election Day.

His conquest Tuesday elevates him to national stature — and sets him up as the de facto head of the state’s Democratic Party, with far more sway than Gov. Kathy Hochul.

Her approval rating is in the basement, and she’s fawning desperately over Mamdani to curry favor with the left.

Mamdani’s power at the Capitol means moderate Democrats will fall into line, insiders say. 

They are “willing to enact a lot of his wish list,” says Assemblyman Jake Blumenkranz, a Long Island Republican. 

Blumenkranz calls it “a perfect storm” about to hit the entire state.

Decarceration — putting criminals on the streets — is at the top of Mamdani’s and the DSA’s wish list.

Pro-criminal DSA legislators led the effort to pass the Less Is More Act in 2021, which allows many violent criminals who violate parole to remain free. 

That law explains why James McGriff, despite his parole violations, was able to invade the home of an elderly Queens couple in September, torture them to death, then set their house afire with them in it.

Now DSA legislators are moving to loosen criminal penalties even further.

They’re pushing to decriminalize prostitution under a state Senate bill titled Cecilia’s Act for Rights in the Sex Trades, and to eliminate all criminal and civil penalties for possession of illegal drugs under Senate Bill S2513.

The Assembly has already passed a bill, now championed in the Senate by Mamdani ally Zellnor Myrie, to extend youthful offender status to alleged criminals ages 19 to 25, sparing them from criminal convictions and sealing their arrest records. 

That will magnify the mistakes made by the disastrous Raise the Age law, which pushed the age of criminal responsibility from 16 to 18.

Raise the Age has led to a quadrupling of homicides committed by juveniles and an 81% increase in teen shooting victims, among other harms, says NYPD Commissioner Jessica Tisch. 

Mamdani’s allies in Albany are poised to worsen the carnage. It’s crazy.

Mamdani and the DSA are sworn enemies of charter schools, preferring to let thousands of low-income and minority students languish in lousy district schools that are nothing but failure factories.

Granting new charters is within the power of the State University of New York trustees, who generally favor them, and of the Board of Regents, who are appointed by the Legislature and reflect the Democratic Party’s slavish acquiescence to the teachers’ unions; the entity that issues the charter becomes the school’s primary regulator. 

Senate Bill 6800, sponsored by Mamdani ally Assemblywoman Rodneyse Bichotte Hermelyn of Brooklyn, would strip the SUNY trustees of these powers, leaving all existing charters at the mercy of the hostile Regents. 

Students will be the losers.

Property owners are in the DSA’s cross-hairs: The party is aiming to take rent regulation — which has doomed New York City to housing shortages and dilapidated conditions — statewide with Senate Bill 4659, and to extend it to commercial properties like stores with Senate Bill 8319.

Candidate Mamdani promised NYC voters free bus rides, free child care and other freebies — and once he’s mayor, he’ll want the entire state to foot the bill.

His campaign proposed hiking the state’s corporate tax rate by almost half, to 11.5%, and his ally Sen. Brad Hoylman-Sigal has already introduced a bill to do so, though by slightly less — to 9%. 

Corporate taxes are ultimately passed on to employees and customers — and sink economic growth.

New York state already ranks dead last, 50 out of 50, in economic outlook, thanks largely to high taxes.

Mamdani’s money-hungry mayoralty will suck the Empire State dry.

Now is the time to mobilize a counteroffensive to prevent this socialist takeover.   

We can’t wait for next year’s statewide elections. 

Leaders from the nonprofit sector — the Business Council, the Chamber of Commerce, the New York State Bar Association and more — need to flood the Legislature with warnings about the impact of Mamdani’s extreme policies, acting as reinforcements for the outnumbered Republicans and beleaguered moderate Democrats.

Mamdani has taken New York City. Now the battle moves to the state Capitol.

Betsy McCaughey is a former lieutenant governor of New York and co-founder of SAVENYC.org.