‘That’s why this week, on the eve of a pivotal mayoral election, we are asking: is New York in trouble?’
Oct 29, 2025
Zanny Minton Beddoes recalls:
I can still vividly remember my first visit to New York. It was 1988. I was a student spending the summer in America. Like so many others, I found the city intoxicating, like stepping into a movie. Fast forward to today and I still love New York’s energy. But I can’t help being struck by how 20th-century and, dare I say it, dilapidated it seems. The potholes, the creaking subway, locked shelves at drug stores, the pervasive smell of marijuana. America’s pre-eminent city sometimes feels more like a relic of yesterday than top of the heap. That’s why this week, on the eve of a pivotal mayoral election, we are asking: is New York in trouble?
Who can forget Zanny Minton Beddoes guest shot, on The Daily Show with Jon Stewart? An aging Neo-Con in black leather pants, and former assistant to Jeffrey Sachs
Dr. Jeffrey Sachs, Shock Therapist
By Peter Passell
June 27, 1993
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General Pinochet was a tyrant, Sachs says, but he did represent the interests of the Chilean middle class and was thus a strong supporter of market reforms. In Russia, by contrast, an authoritarian government would undoubtedly serve as a front for the military-industrial complex, which Sachs believes is the primary obstacle to a capitalist rebirth.
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The first goal for reformers, says Sachs, is to get across the message that democracy and capitalism are inextricable. Sachs, as a matter of principle, refuses to advise unelected governments: When approached by Poland’s Communist junta to help renegotiate the country’s foreign debts, he turned them down flat. Sachs’s unbending stand, one must assume, has more than a little to do with the experience of his wife, Sonia Ehrlich, a pediatrician in Cambridge, Mass., who fled Communist Czechoslovakia with her family at age 12.
The Russian researchers accept Sachs’s interpretation of Chile and China without complaint, though it is difficult to know whether they are convinced or simply unaccustomed to challenging authority. At lunch over borscht, pork cutlets and cheese pastries, all the talk is about who is winning and who is losing at which ministries.
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Editor-in-Chief of The Economist, Zanny Minton Beddoes, joins Jon Stewart to discuss President Joe Biden’s 2nd term potential, the global spread of national conservatism, what former President Donald Trump doesn’t understand about the NATO alliance, and the Republican divide over support for Ukraine.
Editor : Beddoes present mission is to raise the political tempertures of her readers, who are New York voters, that Mr Mamdani is a clear and present danger! Yet the present Mayor Eric Adams was corrupt:
The Department of Justice’s order to end the corruption case against New York City Mayor Eric Adams has not come as a surprise to some elected officials.
Zanny Minton Beddoes
Editor-in-Chief
I can still vividly remember my first visit to New York. It was 1988. I was a student spending the summer in America. Like so many others, I found the city intoxicating, like stepping into a movie. Fast forward to today and I still love New York’s energy. But I can’t help being struck by how 20th-century and, dare I say it, dilapidated it seems. The potholes, the creaking subway, locked shelves at drug stores, the pervasive smell of marijuana. America’s pre-eminent city sometimes feels more like a relic of yesterday than top of the heap. That’s why this week, on the eve of a pivotal mayoral election, we are asking: is New York in trouble?
In the year that New York marks its 400th birthday, the city’s operating model—a booming financial industry supporting generous welfare benefits for its citizens—seems to be breaking down. Financial firms are moving jobs elsewhere, pushed away by high rates of corporate income tax, and the ultra-rich are also decamping to cheaper states. America’s biggest bank, JPMorgan Chase, now employs more people in Texas than in New York City. Pair the loss of these jobs and the tax revenue that they generate with New York’s extraordinary cost of living and the world’s financial capital starts to look shaky.
If you’re not a New Yorker, does all this matter? It’s a good question and one posed by several of our editors during Monday’s editorial debate. The city’s sheer heft (it anchors a metropolitan area that has a larger economy than Canada), cultural clout and the unique position that it occupies in the public imagination are important. But today it is most interesting to me as a battleground for two different approaches to government, advanced by two captivating New Yorkers: Donald Trump and Zohran Mamdani. Next week Mr Mamdani, a 34-year-old Democratic Socialist, is almost certain to be elected as the city’s next mayor. A peerless campaigner, he vows to make New York more affordable via rent freezes, housing investment, free child care and free buses.
In tomorrow’s show we’ll examine the style and substance of Mr Mamdani’s campaign. I’ll be joined by Edward Carr, deputy editor, Charlotte Howard, our New York bureau chief, and John Prideaux, our US editor. We’ll ask how many of his commitments Mr Mamdani can actually deliver and, crucially, what the potential combination of Mayor Mamdani and President Trump would mean for the future of New York—and America. We also want to hear your thoughts on New York and how it compares to other cities across the world. Cast your vote in our poll.
Editor: Beddoes intervention, is to say the least, a bit late in the political game!
Headline: A political drama for the ages, opening soon in New York City
Sub-headline : Zohran Mamdani v Donald Trump. What could go wrong?
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Meeting sceptics with smiles is a luxury Mr Mamdani appears able to afford. Polls and betting markets suggest he will very likely be elected mayor of New York City on November 4th. His nearest challenger, Andrew Cuomo, a former governor running as an independent, would have to defy a persistent double-digit polling deficit. If it is Mr Mamdani, voters will deliver one of the most stunning results in the city’s history. A 34-year-old Democratic Socialist with an eye-catching (and eye-wateringly expensive) progressive agenda, but no executive experience, would take charge of America’s largest city, with a workforce of about 300,000 and a budget of $116bn.
How did New York get here? To call Mr Mamdani “charismatic” understates the appeal he exerts on his supporters, many of them young and ethnically diverse. Mr Mamdani’s gifts as a made-for-TikTok video auteur are well-known, but his campaign’s message discipline has been as impressive. He has made his affordability platform—rent freezes, housing investment, free child care, free buses—the main story of the election, while avoiding culture-war traps and shouting matches with Donald Trump, who calls him a communist. “What his campaign did so well was to celebrate the city,” says Eli Northrup, an ally who is running for the state legislature next year. “It’s joyful. It’s positive.”
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Editor: In the above paragraphs The Economist writers, because this news magazine is carefully edited, by many hands, answers their own questions: as to the why of Mr Mamdani ! The Myth of Oxbridger superiority does not just stumble, it a pratfall !
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