Want to Stop Zohran Mamdani? Give Curtis Sliwa a Hand

On the menu today: Welcome to autumn. I know writing that will kick off one hundred posts in the comments section arguing that autumn doesn’t begin until September 21, but the pumpkin spice lattes are back at Starbucks, the Oktoberfest beers are starting to appear on the shelves of Total Wine, campaign ads are inundating the airwaves in New Jersey and Virginia, and professional football returns Thursday night. It’s autumn.

This just handed to me: Donald Trump is still alive, and he is scheduled to make an announcement at 2 p.m. Eastern.

I’ll concur that it’s a little odd for our current president, never a camera-shy guy, to go six days without appearing in front of the television cameras. But the furious speculation about some terrible secret ignored the fact that Trump gave an Oval Office interview to the Daily Caller on Friday, and whatever you think of that news organization, they seem capable of noticing if the president had suffered a stroke or had become a brain-eating zombie.

Elsewhere, why conservatives shouldn’t write off Curtis Sliwa in the New York City mayor’s race; Zohran Mamdani’s status as a “cadre candidate” of the Democratic Socialists of America; the history of questions about Lisa Cook’s honesty; and a football coaching legend learns it is not easy to start over.

Yes, Sliwa Has a Path to Win

The eighth guest in the history of the Three Martini Lunch podcast is the GOP’s mayoral candidate in New York City, Curtis Sliwa.

I would point out that in the right-of-center media nationwide, a ton of ink (electrons? Airtime?) has been spilled about the potential threat that Democratic mayoral nominee Zohran Mamdani represents to the city -- justifiably. But much, much less attention has been paid to Sliwa, the only right-of-center option to prevent that outcome. Friday’s podcast is an effort to remind conservatives inside and outside of the city that while there’s no getting around the fact that Sliwa is an underdog in the mayoral race, Mamdani’s victory is not a done deal yet. There’s still time to attempt to change the outcome.

As Sliwa discusses in our interview, he’s got a plan and strategy to build short-term, issue-based alliances with the heavily Democratic city council. He will appear as the GOP candidate and as the candidate on the Protect Animals line -- yes, he is seriously making a pitch for the city’s “cat lady” vote. And he wants to hire 7,000 new cops -- both uniformed officers and detectives to solve the crimes currently going unsolved, and catch the perpetrators currently uncaught.

And as he points out, he's the one candidate in the mayoral race who doesn't see Gracie Mansion as a steppingstone to some other higher office. While ineligible for the presidency, Mamdani is already being touted as “the Democratic Party’s future” and “a roadmap to beat Trump.” Andrew Cuomo’s presidential ambitions are the worst-kept secret in New York. And in the past, Eric Adams has “joked” about how he should run for president. Considering all the problems New York City faces, wouldn’t it be nice to have a mayor who actually wants to focus on his day job?

Second, dispel any thoughts that any of these candidates are going to drop out and endorse their opponents to stop Mamdani. It’s just not in their nature. Also note that the last five polls have put incumbent Adams between 7 percent and 11 percent, so even if Adams were to drop out, there’s not that much support to reallocate to other candidates.

If you're a right-of-center voter in New York City, the priority of stopping Mamdani is completely understandable. Giving your vote to Adams or Cuomo isn't. One's a failed incumbent, the other, in Sliwa's words, has a record of "slapping fannies and killing grannies."

And for what it’s worth, in quite a few polls, Sliwa's third place doesn't look that far back from Cuomo's second place. If the mid-July HarrisX poll has a good reading, and in a four-way race, Mamdani is at 26 percent, Cuomo is at 23 percent and Sliwa is at 22 percent, why should Sliwa be the one to drop out?

Finally, the argument that Mamdani, by being such a far-left ideologue, could help Republican messaging in 2026 midterms is not a crazy one, but it represents being penny-wise and pound foolish. Sure, Mamdani can become the new AOC or Nancy Pelosi, the unappealing face of left-wing extremism cited in GOP commercials in every swing district and every swing state. But in the process, Mamdani will be running New York City into the ground, and economically, what happens in New York City ends up having far-reaching effects for the rest of the country.

Elsewhere, this past weekend, the New York Times' Jeffery Mays wrote a bizarrely contradictory article entitled, “What to Know About Zohran Mamdani and Democratic Socialism” that insisted Mamdani was not a socialist, that “he is a democratic socialist, which means his beliefs are similar to those of socialists but not exactly the same,” that “the closest Mr. Mamdani gets to socialism is in his belief in treating people more equitably,” and that “the New York City Democratic Socialists of America describes itself as a branch of the national group, which says it is the ‘largest socialist organization’ in the country. Mr. Mamdani is a member of both.”

Even The Atlantic’s Michael Powell -- who wrote for the New York Times from 2007 to 2023, and would presumably be inclined to give his old colleagues the benefit of the doubt -- found the article unacceptably misleading. “Say what? Whatever one makes of Zohran, he is an insistent socialist. As an Assemblyman he has repeatedly declared himself a DSA cadre responsible to committees of comrades.”

Within the Democratic Socialists of America, there’s a specific meaning to Mamdani being a “cadre candidate”:

We have developed an internally democratic endorsement process and political culture that ensures close organizational alignment between our membership and our candidates, especially what we call “cadre” candidates like Zohran, meaning candidates who have become politically active through their engagement with NYC-DSA. . . .

Mamdani’s organizational discipline points toward one of the most important parts of this organizing machine: the big, scary “S” word, socialism. A membership-run democratic organizing machine works best because all of us are accountable to a specific approach to politics, a specific ideology of democratic socialism, and an ongoing historical tradition much broader than any individual. Our members insist that our candidates identify as democratic socialists not as a purity test, but as an accountability test.

Grace Mausser, co-chair of New York City Democratic Socialists of America: “Before he ran for assembly, he was deeply involved in other DSA races and was a well-known entity in the chapter. And then he’s also been a leader in our Socialists in Office committee with other state-level legislators. You can’t disentangle Zohran from DSA at this point.”

She added, “This is a huge opportunity for leftists, not just in New York City or New York State, but really around the world, to come in and try to put their ideas about municipal socialism into action.”

Lisa Cook, Pinocchio

Federal Reserve Board of Governors member Lisa Cook, in an interview with the International Monetary Fund in 2021, discussing her Spelman College years:

This is a very heavy political time. South Africa was on the cusp of becoming a multiracial democracy and all colleges around the country were protesting our investment in South Africa. We led a protest that wound up being in the New York Times. We locked up the board of trustees to engage in divestment.

Also, back in 2013, after the death of Nelson Mandela, Cook tweeted, “Like many colleges, Spelman College's Board of Trustees voted for divestment . . . after we locked them up.” She included a link to that April 25, 1986, New York Times article.

But as the Washington Free Beacon noticed . . . there’s nothing in that Times article about the students locking up the board of trustees:

Spelman's board of trustees voted on April 27, 1986, to divest shares of South African companies, but there is no record of students detaining officials before the vote. At the time, the New York Times and other outlets reported that trustees voted for divestment a day after then-Atlanta mayor Andrew Young encouraged historically black colleges in the region to do so. A search of Times articles through the paper's "Timesmachine" archive returns no articles mentioning the incident Cook described.

Cook's story about Spelman trustees does match an incident that occurred in 1976, when Cook was around 12 years old. The New York Times reported at the time that Spelman students locked up 14 trustees for 26 hours to pressure them to choose a black woman as the school's president.

Is that a faulty memory conflating two separate events, or a deliberate exaggeration?

Cook’s declaration, “I agree with Angela Merkel that free speech has its limits. It should not be used to spread hatred and violate the dignity of other people” is bothersome but not particularly related to her role at the Federal Reserve.

But other matters are, including whether she and the Biden White House accurately described her qualifications when she was nominated. As Chris Brunet of the Daily Caller wrote in January 2022:

Cook claims that she is a macroeconomist, but a review of her published work does not show any peer-reviewed macroeconomic publications.

When asked about her qualifications as a macroeconomist, a White House representative told the DCNF that among other qualifications, “[Cook] is on the Board of Directors of the Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago.” Cook was appointed to that position on Jan. 10, days before she was nominated to the Federal Reserve Board of Governors.

In opposing her nomination, GOP Senator Pat Toomey of Pennsylvania stated:

Democrats have claimed that Professor Cook is “a leading economist” with years of experience in “monetary policy, banking, and financial crises.” Now, these claims are simply untrue.

First, 75 percent of Professor Cook’s assignment at Michigan State, including her tenure, is in the international relations department—not economics. Second, her experience in monetary policy is literally nonexistent. Not a single one of her publications concerns monetary economics.

When asked to highlight for the Banking Committee her top works on monetary policy, she provided only one: A book chapter on Nigerian bank reforms, originally published 11 years ago.

At issue in her potential firing is the allegation that Cook committed fraud on mortgage applications. As Reuters reported:

A public records search identified a $203,000 mortgage in Cook's name in Washtenaw County, Michigan dated June 18, 2021, and a $540,000 mortgage, also in her name, in Fulton County, Georgia, dated July 2, 2021. The mortgages were originated by the University of Michigan Credit Union for the Michigan property and Bank Fund Credit Union for the Georgia property.

Spokespersons for the two credit unions did not reply immediately to a request for comment.

Documentation for both contains an identical occupancy clause that requires the borrower to, within 60 days, "occupy the property as borrower's principal residence for at least one year after the date of occupancy, unless lender otherwise agrees in writing, which consent shall not be unreasonably withheld, or unless extenuating circumstances exist which are beyond borrower's control."

When it comes to mortgages, primary residences are eligible for a wide variety of advantages: lower interest rates rates, flexible loan terms, greater home loan options, tax-deductible mortgage interest, tax-deductible property taxes, and lower capital gains taxes.

In the span of two weeks, Cook listed two separate properties in two separate states as her “principal residence.” As Megan McArdle writes over at the Washington Post, if there is an innocent explanation for why Cook did this, it would be nice to hear it. The fact that we have not heard any innocent explanation by now will convince some people that there is no innocent explanation and that this is exactly what Cook’s critics say it is: a misrepresentation of her residency status on official documents, or fraud, to obtain the better terms available to primary residences.

If Cook is convicted of fraud, everyone would and should agree that President Trump has more than sufficient cause to fire her.

ADDENDUM: Tough night for Jordon Hudson’s University of North Carolina Tar Heels, starting off the season with a 48-14 loss to the Horned Frogs of Texas Christian University.

Had TCU scored just one more point, they would have had as many points as the age difference between 73-year-old head coach Bill Belichick and the 24-year-old true mastermind and power behind the throne, Hudson.