[Orig to FB]
Imma up this from my comment on a post by [AR], on the outcomes of the ballot initiatives in NYC’s mayoral election:
your analysis seems 🎯, so thank you for sharing it. My impulse was to vote no, as I did, for the reasons you mention (though you understand them much more deeply) but also for another. No one who hadn’t put real effort into understanding how development has worked over time understood the initiatives; on the contrary, everyone seemed very confused, so the electoral outcomes might as well have been random. Except they’d be ‘random’ at a time when Mayor Adams is universally despised and Mamdani was bringing a wild new energy and optimism we haven’t seen in many decades. I was hoping people would vote against mayoral power on the basis of their hatred for Adams, but it seems like the result was an accidental coalition of ‘conservative’-leaning types who support aggressive development and progressive types who want to give Mamdani more power. Weird
What I didn’t add there — because [he] knows it as well as anyone — but I will add here: the initiatives basically rolled back decades-long efforts to devolve powers over real estate development (a) away from the mayor, and (b) toward the city council and the boroughs. Why? Because over time people learned that centralizing powers of this kind in the mayor’s hands is extremely dangerous. I expect that Mamdani will use these new powers well, and that he’ll need to in order to get real estate (which hates him with the heat of a thousand suns) on board. So guess what, my progressive friends: that means that we’ll be hearing a lot about how corrupt he he is and how he’s abusing those powers on a preferential basis — (a) because he’s damned if he does and damned if he doesn’t, and (b) because he actually will be doing it. And that kind of thing will play a huge role in shaping attitudes toward him as the honeymoon period comes and as reactionary forces try to undermine him. AND THAT IS WHY I’VE BEEN CRITICIZING ALL THE “HOLD HIM ACCOUNTABLE” RHETORIC, which is mostly coming from the easiest group in the world to fool: men. Specifically, performatively progressive ones who’ll grasp at any and every straw to establish their imagined moral superiority.