When I first ran for Erie County Comptroller in 2012, my late mother was nervous before Election Day.
“Honey, I don’t know if I can vote for you,” she said.
“Why not?”
“Because you’re a Republican.”
She was dead serious. I was floored.
I explained she could vote for me on the Independence or Conservative lines. She sighed with relief.
“Thank God,” she said. “Now I can.”
That was my mother: a moderate Democrat, pro-life, pro-labor, pro-union, blue collar to the core. In today’s Democratic Party, she wouldn’t be welcomed. She’d be sneered at, ostracized, lectured, and shoved aside by the socialist scolds who now run the show.
I won that race in a 2-1 Democrat county where they also held an 8-1 enrollment advantage in the City of Buffalo.
It was the first time in 40 years that a Republican won a county-wide race in Erie County in a Presidential election year.
If Tuesday's primary night election results are a sign of things to come, it won't ever happen again.
The tea leaves also show us there's a new Commie King in town who reigns over the New York State Democratic Party.
Make no mistake: Zohran Mamdani now runs the show.
The New York Democratic establishment got steamrolled by Mamdani’s red brigade.
In New York’s 10th Congressional District, Mamdani-backed Brad Lander crushed incumbent Rep. Dan Goldman. In the 13th, Darializa Avila Chevalier toppled Rep. Adriano Espaillat, a five-term incumbent and chair of the Congressional Hispanic Caucus. In the 7th, Claire Valdez beat Antonio Reynoso for the seat being vacated by Rep. Nydia Velázquez.
That is not a protest vote. That is a hostile takeover.
Kathy Hochul may still have the title of Governor, but politically she looks like a hollowed-out husk of an empty suit. Her establishment wing of the party got exposed as weak, timid, and terrified. The real energy is with Mamdani and the socialists who have figured out how to bully, organize, and primary their way into power.
And it did not stop at the five boroughs.
In Buffalo, Jon Rivera beat incumbent State Sen. Jeremy Zellner by more than 10 percentage points. Zellner was not just any incumbent. He is the Erie County Democratic chairman. He had the backing of party brass, including Hochul, Erie County Executive Mark Poloncarz, and Congressman Tim Kennedy. Rivera beat the chairman of the local Democratic machine in a Democratic primary.
Read that again.
The machine got mugged in broad daylight.
From the Bronx to the Big Apple, to Binghamton, to Buffalo, the big winner was Commie Mamdani.
The Democratic Party my mother knew was a party of workers, cops, firefighters, union halls, church festivals, and kitchen-table economics. Today’s version is obsessed with socialism, identity politics, anti-police rhetoric, anti-business economics, and making taxpayers foot the bill for every fantasy cooked up by activists who never met a payroll.
Hard-working New Yorkers should be furious.
They are already crushed by taxes, energy costs, housing costs, crime, and Albany arrogance. Now the party in power is being dragged even further left by candidates who think government is the answer to everything and taxpayers are an ATM with no withdrawal limit.
That creates an opening for the New York GOP.
Republicans can win big if they speak to conservatives, independents, and the moderate Democrats who feel politically homeless. The GOP does not need to chase socialists. It needs to welcome the forgotten Democrats Mamdani’s movement has abandoned.
People exactly like my mother.