THE ESSEX FILES: The Shadow of Accountability in New York’s Mayoral Mess

AP Photo/J. Scott Applewhite

New York City’s mayoral race has devolved into a stark reminder of how far the progressive left will stretch to cloak its agendas in the language of reform. Zohran Mamdani, the Democratic Socialists of America darling and frontrunner for the nation’s largest urban pulpit, stands poised to claim victory. 

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Backed by a coalition of 110 of the most vile socialist groups — including labor unions, South Asian networks, and the activist machine co-founded by Linda Sarsour — his campaign promises a radical overhaul: city-run grocery stores, safe injection sites, and, most alarmingly, the dismantling of the NYPD’s Strategic Response Group.

Linda Sarsour says the pro-jihadists backing Zohran Mamdani “won’t let him do whatever the hell he wants when he gets to City Hall." She also bragged she’ll "hold Zohran accountable" to dismantle the NYPD’s SRG counter-terror unit.

This elite unit, formed in 2015 to counter terrorism, riots, and mass unrest, has kept the streets safer amid the chaos that followed Hamas’s October 7, 2023, invasion of Israel. Protests turned ugly in the city’s squares, and the SRG stepped in to maintain order. 

Now, Mamdani wants it gone, a move that would leave law enforcement hamstrung against the very threats it was built to face. Sarsour, the Palestinian-American activist who mentored Mamdani from their joint canvassing days in 2017, laid it bare in a recent Instagram livestream. “Voting for Zohran is not, ‘We’re going to vote for Zohran and just let him do whatever the hell he wants when he gets to City Hall,’” she warned her followers. Her coalition, she added, will lurk outside the levers of power, ready to pounce if promises falter. “Our job as a movement is we have to hold whoever goes to City Hall accountable.”

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Sarsour positions herself as the external watchdog, insisting she’ll call out Mamdani when he strays — particularly on retaining Police Commissioner Jessica Tisch, whom he has vowed to keep but bend to his will. “If Zohran says to Tisch, ‘You gotta do A-B-C,’ Tisch gotta do what the mayor says,” Sarsour declared. Yet this is no benign oversight; it’s a blueprint for perpetual siege. Mamdani’s inner circle already bristles with figures like cleric Siraj Wahhaj, once a character witness for an architect of the 1993 World Trade Center bombing. 

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How does a self-proclaimed Marxist square that with calls for theocratic leanings? Sarsour herself grappled with the contradiction, musing that one cannot be “a Marxist and a jihadist... all at the same time. You gotta pick a side.”


SEE ALSO: Report: Shady Shenanigans Continue to Surround Mamdani's Mayoral Campaign. Here's the Latest.

How Could Anyone Vote for This? Vile Mamdani Video From 2023 About NYPD Re-Emerges


Conservatives have long argued that such alliances erode the foundations of governance: accountability to the people, not to ideologues. Mamdani’s platform drips with disdain for law enforcement, a stance that experts say terrifies everyday New Yorkers already battered by crime waves. 

Defunding specialized units won’t build safer neighborhoods; it invites more disorder, handing reins to those who view policing as oppression rather than protection. Sarsour’s vow to “hold Zohran accountable” rings hollow when her network engineered his rise, fueled by Soros cash and anti-Israel and anti-Jewish fervor. 

It’s not stewardship; it’s subversion, a shadow government dictating from the sidelines. New York deserves better than this funhouse mirror of democracy, where radicals pledge fealty only to their cause. If Mamdani wins, as polls suggest, the real test won’t be his inauguration speech but the quiet erosion of public safety that follows. Voters saw through the gloss once before, ousting soft-on-crime experiments. They must again, lest the city that never sleeps becomes the one that can’t wake up.

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