Every patriotic New Yorker who cares about safety, taxes, and common sense ought to be alarmed by what we just watched on Newsmax when real estate investor and CEO Grant Cardone bluntly warned that Zohran Mamdani “is going to gut New York City.” Cardone, who has put his money where his mouth is building businesses and housing, isn’t offering performative fearmongering — he’s sounding the alarm about a candidate whose agenda would hollow out the city’s economic engine. Conservative voices across the media are rightly asking what happens to public safety, private investment, and the hardworking people who pay the bills if radical promises become governing policy.
Make no mistake: Mamdani has already cleared the big hurdle, winning the Democratic primary and becoming the party’s nominee to lead the largest city in America. New York’s voters handed a 33-year-old democratic socialist a path to the general election, and that victory has national implications far beyond the five boroughs. The result is not abstract theory; it is a concrete pivot toward policies that promise big giveaways paid for by someone else — and taxpayers will be those someones.
The policy laundry list Mamdani ran on is the sort of progressive pipe dream that sounds soothing at rallies: free public buses, a freeze on rent for stabilized units, city-run grocery stores, universal child care, a $30 minimum wage by 2030, and higher taxes on those who succeed. These proposals, presented as guarantees to voters, ignore the math and the incentives at stake. When government promises to underwrite broad swaths of daily life, private investment recoils, buildings fall into disrepair without viable revenue, and services that once worked begin to crumble under unsustainable cost.
Experts who study housing and municipal finance have already raised red flags about the feasibility of Mamdani’s plans, warning that a rent freeze and massive public borrowing would not magically create 200,000 affordable homes without a staggering price tag. Borrowing tens of billions and attempting to commandeer markets will either force painful cuts to basic services or trigger tax hikes that drive families and businesses out of the city they love. New Yorkers who pay taxes and keep the lights on shouldn’t be forced into bankruptcy so politicians can bankroll utopian pet projects.
This is why conservatives and pro-growth business leaders like Cardone are vocal. They know that when a city weaponizes policy against success — freezing rents, politicizing groceries and transit, and squeezing employers — the predictable result is capital flight, closed storefronts, and fewer jobs for the people who need them most. If you doubt that elite-driven ideas have real consequences, look at the migration patterns: businesses and workers move where they can keep more of what they earn and raise their families in safety and dignity. That lesson is simple, and it ought to matter in the ballot box.
Conservatives must stop treating this as a left-versus-right academic exercise and start treating it as a question of survival for communities. We need mayors who champion law and order, discipline city budgets, defend property rights, and attract businesses — not ideologues promising free lunches that will be paid for by punitive taxes and endless debt. If New York flips to experiments in expansive socialism, the fallout will be visible in higher prices, fewer services, and a hollowed-out city where opportunity shrank and the middle class moved on.
The stakes could not be clearer as the general election approaches on November 4, 2025: this is a choice between restoring common-sense governance or handing control to a movement that wants to remake the city through heavy-handed government programs. Hardworking Americans who value safety, prosperity, and local control must make their voices heard before those plans become reality. The coming months are the last line of defense for a city that has been an engine of American greatness — and patriots should act like it.
