It may very well be a case of deja zoo.
Zohran Mamdani may very well be the second coming of former lefty Mayor John Lindsay if elected to Metropolis Corridor — a controversial and polarizing tax-and-spend determine through the Nineteen Sixties-Nineteen Seventies blamed for the notorious fiscal disaster that almost bankrupted town.
Historians and veteran politicos cite Mamdani and Lindsay’s similarities — charismatic figures who attracted younger folks to their trigger and having liberal, massive authorities agendas.
It was Lindsay who proposed and received Albany to approve New York Metropolis’s first earnings tax that Mamdani desires to lift on the rich.
“They each impressed younger folks. They each tapped into the concept town is in hassle and large change is required,” mentioned Vincent Cannato, writer of “The Ungovernable Metropolis: John Lindsay and His Battle to Save New York.”
“Each Mamdani and Lindsay are full outsiders,” he mentioned.
Cannato mentioned former Mayor Invoice de Blasio was a “pink diaper child” who nonetheless labored contained in the Democratic Celebration institution, working for HIllary Clinton and within the Invoice Clinton’s administration.
By comparability, Mamdani is a “radical” outsider as democratic socialist, Cannato mentioned.
He did say that Mamdani is to the left of Lindsay, a congressman who served within the Navy throughout World II.
Lindsay was a “Kennedyesque” patrician, Citizen Union-type Republican outsider working towards the Democratic machine.
He can be an oxymoron in the present day — a liberal Republican in step with President Lyndon Johnson’s “Nice Society” applications.
He was one of many first main public figures to come back out towards the Vietnam Conflict and have become so unpopular with Republicans that he misplaced his occasion main and received re-election on the Liberal Celebration line in 1969 and would ultimately swap to the Democratic Celebration and flame out in an ill-fated run for president.
Lindsay, who championed civil rights and was involved about police brutality towards minorities in what waa nonetheless a majority white metropolis, was despised by cop unions for pushing a civilian grievance overview board.
Sound acquainted? Mamdani advocated defunding the police, although he backed away from that mantra because the Democratic nominee for mayor.
Each campaigned towards inequality.
Each got here from rich households — Lindsay’s father was an funding banker and Mamdani’s mother is a fil director and his dad a Columbia U. professor.
Each Lindsay and Mamdani might be moralistic and naive, observers.
“It’s a truthful comparability,” mentioned Joseph Viteritti, a Hunter Faculty public affairs professor who edited the e-book “Summer time in The Metropolis: John Lindsay, New York and the American Dream” and who was a volunteer in Lindsay’s administration.
“There was a naivete to Lindsay. It was naivete and precept. It was a mixture of each,” he mentioned.
Critics say the identical of Mamdani, claiming a few of his proposals are impractical — together with main tax hikes on the rich and companies to fund fare-free buses, youngster care and housing.
Viteritti credited Lindsay with strolling by means of black neighborhoods to defuse tensions after the assassination of civil rights chief Martin Luther King Jr.
“Historical past has not been sort to Lindsay. He has justifiably taken his share of blame for the discrepancy between revenues and expenditures that led to the 1975 fiscal disaster and the gimmicks that went together with it as effectively,” he mentioned in a preface to his e-book.
Strict state fiscal oversight by means of the Monetary Management Board and extra stringent accounting practices imposed on town to stop one other fiscal calamity.
And Mamdani or every other candidate who wins the mayoralty will face constraints that Lindsay didn’t, together with a federal authorities with hardline stances on spending and a governor, Kathy Hochul, who’s working for re-election subsequent yr and opposing Mamdani’s tax hikes.
Mamdani’s tax hikes would want approval from Hochul and the state, which is taken into account a protracted shot significantly throughout an election yr.
“Lindsay wasn’t from the Tammany Corridor,” mentioned former metropolis Comptroller and Brooklyn Congresswoman Liz Holtzman, who labored within the Lindsay’s Metropolis Corridor as a 26-year-old lawyer.
“Younger folks have numerous idealism and need to see the world a greater place. They recognized with Lindsay,” Holtzman mentioned.
“Mamdani has the identical sort of attraction from younger folks.”
