Dave Rubin has done the country a service by airing the DM clip in which Assemblymember Zohran Mamdani drops the polite pretense and lays out a hard-left plan that would let government “take” buildings from landlords who don’t bend to the city’s will. Rubin’s segment frames what many conservatives have warned about for years: this isn’t about accountability so much as a political land grab dressed up as tenant protection.
Mamdani’s platform is brazen and broad — promising an immediate rent freeze for millions of rent‑stabilized tenants, a wholesale replacement of the Rent Guidelines Board, city‑owned grocery stores, and a vow that “when a really bad landlord refuses to fix it… the city is taking over the building.” These are not abstract musings; they are campaign commitments that would put municipal power over private property and markets.
We’ve seen this movie before. Past programs like the Third Party Transfer were sold as life‑saving interventions only to wind up stripping small owners, often in minority communities, of their property and opening the door to opportunistic developers. The history of municipal seizure programs is full of unintended consequences and lawsuits, and any honest discussion has to reckon with that record.
Beyond the constitutional alarms, the practical economics are frightening: when government competes with private businesses — whether by running grocery stores or imposing rent freezes while demanding landlords keep up maintenance — the result is less investment, worsening upkeep, and fewer places for people to live. Cities across the country that tried to run supermarkets or prop up loss‑making enterprises have paid dearly, with some municipal grocers bleeding money or closing entirely despite huge subsidies.
Politically this is classic class‑war populism: demonize small business owners and real estate owners as villains while offering the false comfort of a bureaucratic savior. That rhetoric might play well at rallies, but it ignores what actually makes neighborhoods livable — property rights, predictable rules, and safe streets — and it hands power to officials whose incentives are to expand control, not solve underlying problems.
Conservatives and independents who care about the rule of law and the American ideal of private ownership should be mobilized and loud. This debate isn’t just about landlords versus tenants; it’s about whether New York will reward entrepreneurship and steward neighborhoods or hand them over to centralized planners who believe the remedy to every problem is more government control. The choice couldn’t be clearer: defend property, defend families, and demand leaders who grow opportunity instead of seizing it.
