As November approaches, and with it the New York mayoral race, opinion polls continue to show socialist Zohran Mamdani and his torrent of (so-fanciful) unicorn promises in the lead.
Those who were surprised that a successful businessman like Donald Trump would run for president of the United States because he was an outsider haven’t batted an eye when a failed rapper is running for mayor of the country’s most populous city.
If Mamdani’s barely three years in office included praising the Hamas financiers known as the Holy Five and supporting open-border policies, now his entry into politics includes praising the socialist model.
The latter raised alarm bells among members of the New York community. It was the reason why Joseph Hernández, 52, entered the race. He escaped Cuban socialism with his family at the age of seven from the port of Mariel in the 1980s. With his parents cleaning houses and washing dishes to restart their lives in the new society, Hernández began learning English (the language of the “enemy” in Cuba), enrolled in elite American universities, and became a successful entrepreneur heading Blue Water Venture Partners, a biotechnology investment firm in Manhattan.
Hernández, who announced his independent mayoral candidacy June 16, left no doubt about his ideological vision in an interview with El Diario de Nueva York: “In countries where socialism took root, like Cuba and Venezuela, people were convinced that their problems were the fault of the rich. They were promised that they would take from the rich to give to the poor. And we already know the results.”
Hernández’s program is the antithesis of Mamdani’s. He promises not to raise taxes for New Yorkers, and while he’s also concerned about affordability, his proposal is different: streamlining building permits. To reduce the city’s high crime rates, he seeks to ban the use of masks in businesses and on public transportation, aiming to deter crime, create patrol networks in each neighborhood, and strengthen alliances with federal agencies like the FBI and the Department of Justice to combat organized crime and arms trafficking.
Hernández isn’t the only Cuban-American who has spoken out against the dangers of socialism.
At a “Fighting the Oligarchy” rally in Brooklyn, a Cuban-American citizen interrupted the event by shouting “You’re a communist!” “This isn’t Cuba, idiot!” and “No to communism!” at mayoral candidate Zohran Mamdani and Bernie Sanders, who were also on stage.
Maria Elvira Salazar, a Republican congresswoman from Florida and first-generation American whose parents came to Miami as political refugees, stated in a recent interview with the Daily Mail: “Let’s talk about the misery Mamdani will bring to New York City. When he says he’s going to defund the police, who will help you when you’re raped or robbed? And what about the supermarkets that will be run by the government? Cuba tried that, and now the supermarkets are empty and dirty.”
The natural concern that one of America’s great cities will fall under the rule of a socialist electrifies millions of expatriates of red totalitarianism. Our only wish is that Americans don’t have to discover firsthand how collectivism destroys a city of gold in the name of the always romantic and deceptive “equity” and “equality.”
Editor's Note: This article originally appeared here.
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