If You Can Make It Here…

 

We’ve all been there—after a particularly hard bar crawl, you wake up with the mother of all hangovers. After some Tylenol, greasy eggs, and a gallon of coffee, you expect to return to a lucid, if not productive, state. And yet, the day goes by and nothing seems to improve. Then it hits you—yes you went out to hard, but you actually are starting to get a cold or the flu, and nothing you eat or drink is going to stop nature taking its course. Yesterday in New York City was the realization that you wished you merely had the mother of all hangovers.

Tuesday’s mayoral election offered voters a candidate who so despised free markets that he advocated the practical freezing of rents on already rent-controlled and rent-stabilized apartments. The same candidate felt that bail laws were so unjust that bail should be eliminated except for the most extreme and serious offenses, and even then it was a crap shoot. There was also another candidate named Zohran Mamdani.

If the left suffers from what the right derisively calls “Trump Derangement Syndrome,” then opponents of Mayor-Elect Mamdani suffered from Cuomo Salvation Syndrome. I had many friends—intelligent, politically knowledgeable, and full of energy—speak of Cuomo not only as the better candidate, but also as someone who would be good for the city. Maybe 12 years of mayors de Blasio and Adams have so brainwashed New Yorkers that the man singularly responsible for the city and state’s destruction could be seen as something good. His greatest hits of paralyzing the city’s apartment rental market (and crushing landlords), giving crooks free reign to steal from stores, and mishandling every aspect of the Covid crisis somehow is lost in the collective memory. And let’s not forget groping more money by increasing taxes and groping innumerable women, including a state trooper on his security detail. Maybe all of that pot smoke in the air means everyone is just too stoned to think clearly.

Speaking of not thinking clearly, nobody can explain how even one Jewish voter in the city could pull the lever for a rabid and open antisemite. Mamdani isn’t just some rabble-rousing university student, he’s a full-blown enemy of the Jewish people and Jewish faith. Outside of the stalwart ultraorthodox Hasidim, there was plenty of Jewish support for Mamdani. Whatever drugs they were taking, pot smoke for those voters was the least mind-altering thing in their bodies.

It seems that there are two key lessons from Mamdani’s victory. First, the words and actions of “power brokers,” be they moneyed Wall Street types or party leaders, are not to be feared as they once were. Even after winning the primary, New York Democratic party leaders played coy with their endorsements, trying to project an image that Mamdani wasn’t really a serious option until they gave their stamp of approval. Of course, they were really hoping was that, somehow, Mamdani would lose and they wouldn’t be shown up by an upstart younger than their own children.

Second, urban political candidates seem to have a winning formula—call it the Instagram AOC method. First, be young. Second, use that youthful energy to hustle, hustle, hustle. Actually these two things go hand-in-hand, as Democratic Socialists probably don’t have anything else to do (think bartender AOC or back-bench Assemblyman Mamdani). Third, make a billion Tic Tok videos. Finally, blame the rich, demand they pay their fair share (whatever that might be) and promise to provide all of society’s goodies for free. The whole process is low cost (and even if you need a few campaign posters, George Soros will pay for them), avoids any press scrutiny by cutting out the press, and lacks any accountability because “the rich will pay for it.” On top of it all, it scares the crap out of the Democratic establishment because they can’t control any of it and gives patriarch Bernie Sanders even more airtime.

I don’t wish for more crime in New York City, primarily because it means more innocent victims. I don’t wish for communist-style housing, because nobody goes to communist countries for the great apartment living. And I certainly don’t wish for higher taxes, as the current government doesn’t spend what it has very well. But over a million New York City residents voted for a candidate who is happy to make this so. It may be a four-year hangover that no amount of coffee can cure.

© 2025 Alexander W. Stephens, All Rights Reserved.

Send Up A Signal

 

The word came down from on high—no more recipient auto fill allowed when sending emails from our Outlook. Yes, one of the world’s largest technology companies (the kind you only know about by walking past their innocuous yet omnipresent ads in most major airports) was banning one of the most common, and time-saving, features in modern communications. Unsaid was why, but everyone knew that somebody had accidentally copied the wrong person on an email.

The unfolding story about the Trump administration’s national security team’s unwitting inclusion of a hostile reporter to their Houthi bombing text chain has caused an international stir. Screaming headlines of “Leaked Classified Information” started every story, with cabinet officials dancing around what the definition of is, is, when it comes to classifying battle plans. Getting past the emoji bro-boasting, there was some interesting substance to the conversation. While bashing Europe is a daily pastime for this administration, it highlights an important problem for the U.S.: why are we swatting $10,000 drones out of the sky with million-dollar missiles? The right of freely navigating international waters is important, but this plan can’t work financially in the long term—other countries have to share in this cost or launch their own million-dollar missiles. Perhaps the mighty Belgian navy can splatter high-quality chocolate against these enemy menaces.

Yet it seems to me that nobody is asking the most critical question: Why was anybody having a conversation in the first place, other than to confirm operational success?

During my time working for the Giuliani administration, I was hardly the guy who was in the room where it happened (even though City Hall was barely a half mile from Alexander Hamilton’s grave). But I did have plenty of meetings with the folks who were in that room. One such time was with a Deputy Mayor and his staff, with my boss and I joining in (our part of the administration reported to a different Deputy Mayor). Over the course of our meeting, the increasingly agitated Deputy Mayor blurted out in anger, “But this agency reports to me!” My boss, a master of managing internal politics, gently but firmly reminded him, “The MAYOR asked our Deputy Mayor to run with this.” Some might refer to this as a “power move,” but it really was a reminder that this meeting was about moving forward and that the decision on who was leading it had already been made by the boss. Implicit was also the message that the offended party could go back to the Mayor, but it wouldn’t end well bringing it up again.

Which brings us back to text chains and bombing Houthis. I have no doubt that Trump’s national security team had prepared policy memos and made presentations to the President, weighed the options, and been given the final go-ahead. I’m also sure that some advisors were annoyed that some of their views weren’t adopted, and I’m also equally sure there are corridors in the West Wing or sulky staff offices where these folks could blow off some steam. The collective leadership failure, then, was not knowing when to stop talking, through a text app or otherwise, and move on to the next issue. Going back to the boss was not an option.

As to the consequences of this app-driven SNAFU, my own feeling is that whoever added the errant journalist’s name to the group chat, and increasingly it seems to be National Security Advisor Mike Waltz, needs to be fired. There was no subterfuge or ill will in his actions, but he utterly screwed up with the most sensitive of information.

And what ever happened to sending emails from my former consulting company employer? A few weeks later another note came through that the auto fill restriction had been lifted. There was an admonition to check your sender’s list very carefully going forward, a concept more than a few people in D.C. should be taking to heart.

© 2025 Alexander W. Stephens, All Rights Reserved.