Since the loss of the New York State Senate back in 2018, New York has been under one-party rule by the Democrats. It has, without a doubt, been an unmitigated disaster. Radical regulation, hyper-spending, scandals, sky-high taxes, failing schools, a massive exodus, and a concerted effort to take all the most left-wing policies from around the country and implement them. From New York City to Albany, the leaders of this once-great state have been failing us, and voters must take the opportunity in 2026 to fix it.
The problems in New York stem from both the ideology of the people in charge as well as their preferred policies. The ideology of hatred of American and Western values and adoration for radical terrorist action to undermine and obliterate those values leads to policies that destroy Western and American civilization. This is also known as “progressivism.”
The trouble begins at City Hall with Mayor Zohran Mamdani and the controversies surrounding his wife, First Lady Rama Duwaji. Investigative reporting, including detailed exposés from the Washington Free Beacon’s Jon Levine, has revealed Duwaji’s long history of racist and antisemitic social media activity dating back to her early adulthood. Posts from 2017 show her celebrating Palestinian terrorists, among them Leila Khaled, the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine plane hijacker classified as a terrorist by multiple governments. One image of Khaled carried the caption: “If it does good for my cause, I’ll be happy to accept death.” Other content glorified Shadia Abu Ghazaleh as the “first Palestinian woman to fight in resistance” after 1967 and praised the First Intifada, the violent uprising responsible for hundreds of Israeli deaths and the rise of Hamas-style tactics.
Additional posts included casual use of the N-word, descriptions of American soldiers as “mercilessly slaughtering 3rd world civilians,” calls to boycott Israel, denials of Tel Aviv’s legitimacy, and keffiyeh-clad tributes to the PLO. Following the October 7, 2023, Hamas attacks—the deadliest assault on Jews since the Holocaust—Duwaji liked Instagram content that celebrated the massacre as “breaking the walls of apartheid” while dismissing documented reports of mass rape as a “hoax.”
These were not isolated or youthful missteps. During Mamdani’s mayoral campaign, Duwaji provided illustrations for essays written by Susan Abulhawa, a Palestinian-American author known for extreme rhetoric: labeling Israeli Jews “rootless, soulless ghouls,” “Jewish supremacist vampires,” and “monsters,” and describing October 7 as a “spectacular moment.” Abulhawa’s language recycles classic blood libel in activist packaging. Yet Duwaji contributed her artwork to that material at the very time her husband campaigned on a promise to safeguard New York’s Jewish community—the largest outside Israel.
When the connections surfaced, the response from Mamdani consisted of denials, deflections, and deletions. He described Duwaji as a “private person” who “held no formal position on my campaign or in my City Hall,” yet he did not express rejection or even disagreement with the posts or opinions. The accounts where these posts were found were deleted, showing that it is still too politically disadvantageous to be seen consorting with terrorist admirers.
The mayor’s broader record reinforces the concern. His Democratic Socialists of America background, refusal to recognize Israel as a Jewish state, and public statements threatening to arrest Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu if he visits New York all point in the same direction. Hate crimes against Jews have surged, synagogues face regular threats, and record numbers of Jewish families are leaving the city because safety feels uncertain under current leadership.
The dysfunction extends beyond City Hall to Governor Kathy Hochul in Albany. In 2022, Hochul openly urged Republicans—naming figures such as Donald Trump, Lee Zeldin, and Marc Molinaro—to “jump on a bus and head down to Florida where you belong,” framing conservative flight from New York as a welcome cleansing. Today, with millionaires and businesses continuing to exit for lower-tax states like Florida and Texas, the state budget faces serious pressure. Hochul’s response has been a reversal: public pleas for wealthy residents to travel to Palm Beach, network, and “bring them back home,” because “our tax base has been eroded.” The same governor who once mocked those departures now begs for their return to sustain what she calls “generous social programs”—programs that helped drive the exodus in the first place.
The economic damage is clearest in energy policy. Hochul’s aggressive push toward renewables has produced electricity rates that outstrip mortgage payments in parts of the state, forced businesses to close or relocate, and left households struggling with blackouts and unaffordable bills. Recent backtracking includes talk of an “all-of-the-above” approach, approval of select gas pipelines, and finger-pointing at federal Republicans. Yet the governor remains firm against fracking, even as neighboring Pennsylvania benefits from responsible natural gas development that creates jobs and keeps energy costs down. Ideology continues to override practical solutions.
New York suffers because a decade of unchallenged Democratic rule has removed accountability. Rising antisemitism receives an inadequate response, wealth creators flee, radical elements face little pushback, crime persists in subways and streets, migrant shelters overflow, and schools fail generations of children. A recent study of IRS returns shows that New York lost $10.6 billion in net migration. This trend is consistent throughout the country. States that voted for Trump in 2024 gained $37.2 billion, whereas states that Harris won in 2024 lost $40.8 billion. People are voting with their feet.
The 2026 election offers a genuine opportunity to break the one-party grip. Bruce Blakeman, the Nassau County Executive and Republican nominee for governor, has demonstrated the ability to govern effectively: reducing taxes, improving public safety, and maintaining fiscal discipline in a high-cost region. Blakeman supports policies aligned with restoring New York—prioritizing law and order, pursuing energy independence through responsible development, ending wasteful congestion pricing experiments, slashing bureaucratic red tape, and ensuring government protects all residents, including the Jewish community, rather than shielding those who harbor hatred.
Voters no longer have to accept decline. The scandals at City Hall and the reversals in Albany expose the costs of unchecked power. Electing Blakeman would introduce competition, accountability, and a focus on the issues New Yorkers actually face: affordability, safety, and basic competence. We still have several months to go before election season, but it’s never too early to ask a simple question of ourselves: “How much more of this can we take?”
Moshe Hill is a political analyst and columnist. His work can be found at www.aHillwithaView.com and on X at @HillWithView.
