With New York about to embark on a dangerous voyage piloted by Zohran Mamdani, a singularly radical mayor hell-bent on shredding the policies that have kept Gotham afloat, now is a good time to explore how the city got into and out of earlier mayoral-made crises.
Over the past 50 years, national recessions, Wall Street crashes and the horrors of 9/11 took turns challenging New Yorkers’ legendary toughness.
But during that span, there have been just two clear brushes with civic collapse.
These were not solitary events, nor did they result from national policies or mistakes made by people living outside the five boroughs.
Rather, the two crises were caused by policies that originated in City Hall.
As such, they offer case studies in how much damage bad mayors with bad ideas can cause, and how it can take years to clean up the mess and get back on track.
Brush with bankruptcy
The first of these crises was the financial calamity of the 1970s.
The city’s brush with bankruptcy was the fault of two mayors: John Lindsay and Abraham Beame.
Lindsay’s misguided rule over “Fun City” lasted for two terms, from 1966 to 1973.
Beame then served a single term in City Hall, but his main contributions to the fiscal disaster came during his previous two terms as city comptroller, where he was supposed to make sure the books were balanced.
Had he done his job properly, the numbers would have been written in red ink.
The two men were polar opposites in many ways.
Lindsay was a handsome, dapper Republican from Manhattan’s East Side, while the short, rumpled Beame was a numbers man straight out of the Brooklyn Dems’ clubhouse culture.
Unfortunately, they shared a belief that it wasn’t necessary for revenues to match spending, and neither saw the need to let the public know how out of whack the books were.
The shenanigans and the disastrous results are captured in a 2024 documentary called “Drop Dead City.”
The title plays off the famous 1975 Daily News headline of “Ford To City, Drop Dead,” which followed President Ford’s rejection of a federal bailout.
Thankfully, that scope of financial trickery is not possible today because of a ban on deficit spending and the role of monitors.
The severe damage caused by the near-collapse included massive layoffs of police officers, firefighters and teachers, sharply reduced services and a white flight to the suburbs.
The era stands as a stark reminder that what happens in City Hall doesn’t stop there.
Political career-enders
The consequences ended the careers of Lindsay and Beame.
Lindsay switched parties in his second term and ran for president as a Dem.
In his last interview, in 1996, he told me that the switch was the biggest mistake of his career because Republicans never forgave him and Dems never accepted him.
His White House bid quickly fizzled and, similarly, Beame never recovered from the financial crisis.
He lost his bid for re-election in the 1977 primary, with Ed Koch winning it and then the general election.
It was only after years of Koch’s fiscal prudence that the city gained enough credibility to return to public-debt markets.
The second major crisis the city faced in the last half-century was an explosion of violent crime, which surged mercilessly in the early 1990s.
A police force that remained too small was part of the problem, but more important was that Mayor David Dinkins was slow to react to the carnage.
Even as murders soared to record highs of 2,200 a year, and 8,340 total during his term, he hesitated.
City Hall’s lack of urgency inspired a brilliant Post front–page headline in September of 1990.
“Dave, do something!” it demanded.
The City Council, under the leadership of Peter Vallone, picked up the baton and pushed the mayor to hire thousands of new cops and create new social programs.
But it was not until after Rudy Giuliani was elected in 1993 that the cops were effectively deployed.
Putting into practice the theory of “Broken Windows,” the mayor and top cop Bill Bratton proved that addressing signs of vandalism and disorder would help prevent more serious crimes.
With commanders held responsible for every crime on their turf, the turnaround was miraculous.
Serious-crime reports plunged and the number of murders fell by two-thirds over Giuliani’s first term alone.
Safer under Bloomberg
Michael Bloomberg and his top cop, Ray Kelly, followed similar ideas and the city grew steadily safer for 20 consecutive years.
This historic turnaround is also the subject of a documentary called “Gotham: The Fall and Rise of New York.”
The 2023 film captures the rebirth made possible by the war against crime and disorder.
Even now, Mayor Adams and NYPD Commissioner Jessica Tisch, using similar approaches, are producing stellar results, with this year’s murder total 84% lower than that of 1993.
And now comes Mayor Mamdani, the socialist nepo baby and former Queens Assembly member who’s never held a real job.
Being in the state Legislature has prepared him only to recite leftist nostrums without having a clue about how the real world works.
His plan to feature two lefties, Sen. Bernie Sanders and Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, at his Thursday inauguration symbolizes his mind-boggling commitment to policies that have brought poverty and suffering wherever and whenever they were imposed.
His glib rhetoric, spiced with antisemitism, and a roster of dicey aides illustrate that he doesn’t understand how fragile public safety and the economy are.
Nor does he seem to realize how much easier it will be to make things worse than to make them better.
If he did, he would move very cautiously before overhauling key services.
For example, his pledge to stop dismantling homeless encampments guarantees that filthy outposts will pop up around the five boroughs.
Similarly, his willingness to let Albany control city schools reveals a blind spot about the need for the mayor to be responsible to parents and taxpayers for the learning and safety of 1 million students.
Most alarming, Mamdani appears oblivious to the clear possibility that his pie-in-the-sky policies could produce versions of the fiscal and crime crises the city suffered through.
His big-spending, high-taxing agenda threatens to undercut economic expansion and his anti-NYPD background and pro-criminal sympathies are a warning that New York could be facing a new crime wave.
It counts as good news that Mamdani offered to keep Commissioner Tisch on the job and she accepted.
But it’s bad news that he rejected her request to hire 5,000 more cops.
Similarly, he has talked about reducing enforcement of anti-prostitution laws and most misdemeanors, which includes shoplifting.
After Koch was defeated in 1989, he was asked if he would run again.
“No,” he answered.
“The people have spoken and they must be punished.”
What’s old is new.
Even before Mamdani takes the oath, it feels as if New York is about to be punished again.
This story originally appeared on NYPost
