Tag: new york

New York City’s Ranked Choice Voting System Favors Socialist Mamdani

New York City’s mayoral race uses a unique system called ranked choice voting, which fundamentally alters how winners are determined. Unlike traditional elections where voters select a single candidate, New York voters can rank up to five candidates in order of preference on their ballot.

If no candidate receives more than 50% of the first-choice votes, a computerized elimination process begins. The candidate with the fewest first-place votes is eliminated, and those votes are redistributed to each voter’s next-ranked choice. This process continues through multiple rounds—potentially factoring in third, fourth, and even fifth choice, until only two candidates remain. The final winner is the one with majority support among the remaining ballots, though that may not be the candidate most voters originally preferred.

In the June 2025 Democratic primary, the ranked choice system significantly altered the initial results. Zohran Mamdani led on election night with 43.5% of first-choice votes, but after several rounds of eliminations and redistributions, he was declared the winner with 56%, while Andrew Cuomo finished with 44%.

This system creates a far more unpredictable election environment. Candidates who appear to hold solid leads on election night can end up losing, or winning, once all voter preferences are fully counted and redistributed.

Ranked choice voting can appear unfair because a candidate with fewer first-choice votes may ultimately win the election. A key technical flaw is “ballot exhaustion,” which happens when voters rank too few candidates to remain in the final rounds. If all of a voter’s selected candidates are eliminated before the last round, their ballot is no longer counted in the final outcome.

A 2015 study of 600,000 votes cast in four local elections in Washington State and California found that winners in all four elections received less than a majority of total votes cast. Studies have found exhaustion rates ranging from 9.6 percent to over 27 percent in some elections, meaning the winner may only represent a majority of remaining votes, not all votes cast.

The increased complexity of ranked choice voting is another major issue. It’s absurd that Democrats, who argue voter ID is too confusing for many people, somehow believe voters can understand and navigate ranked choice voting, and remember to rank enough candidates just to avoid having their ballot disqualified early in the process.

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Hochul: I ‘Have a Lot of Alignment’ with Mamdani ‘on Issues Like Affordability’

On Friday’s broadcast of MSNBC’s “All In,” New York Gov. Kathy Hochul (D) stated that New York City mayoral candidate Assemblyman Zohran Mamdani (D) has “taken a lot of positions that I don’t agree with, but we have a lot of alignment on issues like affordability.”

Host Chris Hayes asked, “In the 45 seconds I have left, the mayoral race is headed towards the general election in New York City. Zohran Mamdani won that quite surprisingly, but quite definitively, that New York City primary. You have not endorsed him as of yet. Other officeholders, Democrats have. What are you waiting for, what are you looking for to make the decision whether you’re going to endorse the Democratic nominee for mayor?”

Hochul responded, “We’ll have more conversations. I already started that. I went and I visited him just a couple of days after the election. He’s taken a lot of positions that I don’t agree with, but we have a lot of alignment on issues like affordability. He supports my efforts to build more housing so it’s not the most expensive purchase, … more supply, the prices go down. I understand what it’s like to be a struggling mom. I was that mom. I had to leave a job with Sen. Moynihan because I couldn’t afford childcare. I know what it’s like, and I’m there with him in dealing with the affordability issues. So, we’ll just have more conversations.”

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Mamdani Already Owes New Yorkers $1.3 BILLION

New York City is crumbling under failing schools, surging homelessness, and unsafe streets. But Mayoral candidate Zohran Mamdani, in his time as a state legislator, decided to sink the state even deeper—by wasting another $1.3 billion on ideological vanity projects with no measurable benefit for ordinary New Yorkers.

As a co-author of the so-called “People’s Budget” proposed by the Black, Puerto Rican, Hispanic, and Asian Legislative Caucus, Mamdani has backed spending proposals that read more like activist wish lists than responsible fiscal policy. Every dollar demanded in the name of “equity” is a dollar stripped from basic needs—needs that millions of New Yorkers, especially working-class families, continue to go without.

Take, for example, Mamdani’s push for an $8 million recruitment and training initiative to make New York’s teachers “more diverse.” 

The irony here is hard to miss. In New York City’s public schools—the largest district in the country—Black teachers already make up roughly 42% of the workforce, despite the city’s Black population being only 22%. The goalpost for “representation” has shifted away from proportionality and toward performative politics. 

What Mamdani labels as reform is, in practice, just another unnecessary layer of bureaucracy driven by race-based metrics instead of educational ones.

Mamdani’s caucus also proposed spending $250,000 to promote “racial and cultural inclusivity” in K–12 classrooms—without ever explaining how this helps students learn to read, write, or do math. Another $351,500 was allocated for conventions supposedly designed to help “underrepresented” educators, which is another way of saying the funds will go toward political networking events with no tangible classroom results.

Mamdani also supports an additional $8 million for a Fair Housing Testing Program—money that would go toward “paired testing” for housing discrimination that is already illegal under both state and federal law. 

New York already invests billions in housing and tenant protection. If discrimination occurs, there are legal pathways for enforcement. This new testing program is redundant and unnecessary. 

Meanwhile, New York City continues to face a staggering homelessness crisis. That $8 million would be far better spent building shelters or expanding emergency housing than funding an academic experiment in bureaucratic redundancy.

One of the largest items in Mamdani’s wish list is the $1 billion proposal for climate mitigation and adaptation over five years. This includes $75 million for electric school buses and another $80 million for centralized procurement of zero-emission buses and infrastructure. 

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Hochul: NYPD Shortage ‘May Be’ Because People ‘Derogatory Toward Police’

During an interview with LI News Radio on Wednesday, New York Gov. Kathy Hochul (D) stated that there is a decrease in the number of NYPD officers and “people are not opting for these careers anymore, and part of it may be the fact that people have been very negative and derogatory toward police officers in the last few years.”

Hochul stated, [relevant remarks begin around 2:45] “Our forces are down. Sometimes, recruitment is hard. I’m finding the same thing with even corrections officers and state police, but people are not opting for these careers anymore, and part of it may be the fact that people have been very negative and derogatory toward police officers in the last few years. And so, as a young person thinking about what career they want, do they really want to go into this? And we have to restore the nobility associated with careers in law enforcement.”

She continued, “My husband was a federal prosecutor working with police for 30 years and my son’s a prosecutor, and so, we are a strong law enforcement family and support them, but they need to feel supported by the community as well. But I agree with you, we need to increase the ranks of NYPD. There’s — they are the best and without a doubt, and they need to have more reinforcements, which is why, when it came to a spike in subway crimes last year, I took state money, which is unprecedented, to cover the overtime costs of NYPD on all the overnight trains.”

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Hochul Calls for Nationwide Ban on ‘Assault Weapons’ in Wake of NYC Shooting

Governor Kathy Hochul (D-NY) said Tuesday on CNN’s “Inside Politics” that a new federal assault weapons ban is needed in the wake of a mass shooting in Manhattan.

Hochul said, “I’m sitting in Midtown right now. My office is just a few blocks away and walking in this morning, and you see the security guards down there and everyone is just wondering, you know, is this is this a one-off? Could this happen again? I mean, that sense of security is shattered when someone comes from another state carrying an assault weapon designed only for battlefields, but using it, intending to use that to commit mayhem and mass murder in our cities.”

She continued, “This is happening because there are still assault weapons in our country.”

Hochul added, “If every state had the same laws uniformly, you could not have a situation where we fight really hard in the state of New York to make sure that we have the toughest gun laws in the nation. We have the lowest of all the large states homicide rate by guns. New York City, New York State, has the lowest homicide rate by guns in the nation for large states, and that’s because of laws that are working. We want that same sense of urgency to go out across the nation.”

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CNN Slammed For Labeling Black NYC Shooter “Possibly White” In Latest Example Of Fake News Lies

Leftist mainstream media outlet CNN is being blasted online for falsely labeling black 27-year-old New York City gunman Shane Tamura, who killed three citizens and a police officer on Monday, a “possibly white” suspect.

A photo of the suspect that was going around during a manhunt while he was still on the loose and a copy of his concealed firearms permit clearly show a non-white male.

Meanwhile, CNN anchor Erin Burnett told viewers that police knew “he is, a male, possibly white. He’s wearing sunglasses.”

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Blackstone Executive Wesley LePatner Among the Four Victims Killed in Manhattan Shooting

New details have surfaced of one of the four victims in the tragic Manhattan shooting that occurred on Monday evening.

As The Gateway Pundit previously reported, 27-year-old Shane Tamura from Las Vegas has been identified as the shooter who opened fire on the 33rd floor of the Manhattan building that houses the NFL and Blackstone headquarters.

A new report by Blackstone has revealed that one of its executives was killed in the shooting.

In an announcement, Blackstone wrote, “We are heartbroken to share that our colleague, Wesley LePartner, was among those who lost their lives in the tragic incident at 345 Park Avenue.”

Per The New York Post:

A Blackstone executive was among the four people shot and killed by the crazed gunman who shot up a Midtown office building, the company confirmed Tuesday.

Married mom Wesley LePatner, a senior managing director for the financial giant, was shot and killed in the lobby of the ritzy Park Avenue office tower when Shane Tamura opened fire in anger at the NFL, which shares the same building.

“We are heartbroken to share that our colleague, Wesley LePartner, was among those who lost theor lives in the tragic incident at 345 Park Avenue,” Blackstone told The Post in a statement.

“She was brilliant, passionate, warm, generous, and deeply respected within our firm and beyond.

“She embodied the best of Blackstone. Our prayers are with her husband, children and family.”

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Gunman who killed 4 in New York was trying to get to NFL offices and claimed to have CTE: Officials

A gunman who killed four people at a Manhattan office building before killing himself claimed in a note to have a brain disease linked to contact sports and was trying to target the National Football League’s headquarters but took the wrong elevator, officials said Tuesday.

Investigators believe Shane Tamura, a Las Vegas casino worker, was trying to get up to the NFL offices after shooting several people in the skyscraper’s lobby on Monday but entered the wrong elevator bank, Mayor Eric Adams said in interviews.

Four people were killed, including an off-duty New York City police officer, Didarul Islam.

The gunman blamed the NFL

Tamura, who played high school football in California nearly two decades ago but never in the NFL, had a history of mental illness, police said. In a three-page handwritten note found in his wallet, he claimed he suffered from chronic traumatic encephalopathy and accused the NFL of concealing the dangers to players’ brains for profit. The degenerative brain disease has been linked to concussions and other repeated head trauma common in contact sports such as football, but it can only be diagnosed after someone has died.

In the note, Tamura repeatedly said he was sorry and asked that his brain be studied for CTE, according to the police department. It also referenced former NFL player Terry Long, who was diagnosed with CTE, and the manner in which Long killed himself in 2005.

The NFL long denied the link between football and CTE, but it acknowledged the connection in 2016 testimony before Congress and has paid more than $1.4 billion to retired players to settle concussion-related claims.

NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell called the shooting “an unspeakable act of violence in our building,” saying he was deeply grateful to the law enforcement officers who responded and the officer who gave his life to protect others.

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Inside socialist Zohran Mamdani’s posh wedding bash at secluded Uganda compound — complete with phone jamming system, armed guards

Socialist NYC mayoral frontrunner Zohran Mamdani celebrated his recent nuptials with a lavish, three-day affair at his family’s ritzy, secluded Ugandan compound — complete with masked security guards and a cellphone jamming system, The Post has learned.

The gates of the bustling, private compound, which sits in the wealthy Buziga Hill area outside the capital city of Kampala, were heavily guarded by military-style, masked men this week, with guests streaming in and partying until midnight, according to sources in the town who wished to remain anonymous for security reasons.

Mamdani, 33, eloped with artist and animator Rama Duwaji, 27, in February.

He told his social media followers Sunday he was heading to his homeland to celebrate with his wealthy filmmaker mom and professor dad, who own the Buziga Hill property.

The neighborhood is home to some of Uganda’s richest, including billionaire businessman Godfrey Kirumira, a city tycoon with stakes in real estate, tourism, petroleum and infrastructure, and houses neighboring the Mamdanis easily fetch more than $1 million.

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New York Teachers Fired for Refusing COVID Vaccines Take Case to U.S. Supreme Court

A group of 19 teachers who sued the city of New York after they were denied religious exemptions from COVID-19 vaccine mandates are asking the U.S. Supreme Court to review lower court rulings, which they allege unconstitutionally favored some religious beliefs over others.

In a petition filed Monday, the teachers allege that New York City granted religious exemptions only to people who belonged to religions whose leaders had not publicly endorsed COVID-19 vaccination.

The city denied requests by teachers who applied for exemptions based on personal religious beliefs that contradicted their religious leaders’ official support of the vaccines, the appeal said.

Michael Kane, a plaintiff in the case and founder of Teachers for Choice, said:

“What New York City did was so egregious. To allow this to stand sets a horrendous precedent for my children and grandchildren. The discrimination was so intense and constitutionally shoddy it must not be permitted.”

According to Kane, most of the teachers are “still out of work or doing odd jobs, making half their previous income.”

Although New York City Mayor Eric Adams rescinded the mandate in February 2023, the city didn’t rehire the teachers.

The case stems from two lawsuits filed in 2021 challenging New York City’s COVID-19 vaccine mandate and its denials of the religious exemption requests: Kane v. de Blasio and Keil v. City of New York. Children’s Health Defense is supporting the combined lawsuit.

Several lower courts, including the 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in November 2024, ruled against the teachers.

The New York City Department of Education, its Chancellor, Melissa Aviles-Ramos, and New York City Health Commissioner Ashwin Vasan are among the defendants named in the combined lawsuit.

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