Set aside for a moment the real estate price controls, the government groceries, even the growing stack of missed opportunities to forthrightly condemn antisemitic violence—New York mayoral Democratic Party nominee Zohran Mamdani this week reminded us anew about the awfulness of his candidacy by receiving the enthusiastic endorsement of (shudder) the local teachers union.
"[Mamdani] has clearly broken through to the people of this city," United Federation of Teachers (UFT) President Michael Mulgrew said at a celebratory press conference on Wednesday. "The politics of old are no longer working…. It is time for the city to say to everyone across this country, that [it] is the workers, it's the poor, it's the middle class, who have been getting the shaft throughout, and we're going to lead the way in this city."
The "politics of old" is actually an apt descriptor of the UFT, New York City's second-largest union, whose 200,000 members include around 60,000 pension-drawing retirees. As in so many other Democratic-run big cities, NYC politics and policies have for the past decade-plus been disproportionately misshapen by the parochial professional concerns of a monopoly-seeking guild.
