Nothing grinds my gears worse than some hot-taking Canadian pundit insisting that this week’s hip fresh new political chaos abroad can’t happen here. Inevitably, the person writing doesn’t understand the chaos in question, and assumes that they, and all of Canada, are too smart to fall for whatever the rabble are going mad for. Fortunately, I don’t need to write columns to reassure myself of my own seriousness (because I have none). Therefore let me say frankly that for once, Canadian Jews can calm down and put their plans to decamp permanently for Florida on hold because there will be no Canadian Zohran Mamdanis.
In case you haven’t heard, let me fill you in: Mamdani, a one-term NYC Assemblyman and proud member of the Democratic Socialists of America who’s on the record as saying he wants to globalize the intifada, won a primary and is the Democratic nominee to become the next Mayor of Gotham. I could mention that he still has to win the actual election in November, but why bother? Some reading this will have panicked as soon as they read the words “globalize the intifada” and “won” in the same sentence. Immediately afterwards came the public crashouts and freakouts over Mamdani’s win that our enemies live for, reinforcing the perception that we Jews are a bunch of bagel-brunching softies who rely on establishment gargoyles to fight our battles for us.
Here’s what actually happened, if anyone’s interested: Vincent D’Onofrio’s Kingpin is a comic book villain from the Marvel Cinematic Universe who became NYC’s top public official in Daredevil: Born Again. Somehow, the fictional Kingpin was less awkward and (pending an investigation) less corrupt than Eric Adams, the actual Mayor since 2021. By contrast, Mamdani presented as an untainted, young, optimistic, flexible and solution-oriented candidate while leaving the goonery to his supporters. Those supporters, while not shy about demanding that all and sundry “bend the knee” to their candidate, constituted what looked like an organic movement of New Yorkers upset with the type of leadership they’d been getting.
That so-called leadership presented itself in the form of former Governer Andrew M. Cuomo, Mamdani’s main primary opponent and a man who has achieved the dubious distinction of being both MeToo’d and on the hook for killing grandmas during COVID. As for Mamdani’s other challengers, he got, and reciprocated, an endorsement from Jewish city comptroller Brad Lander, who took enough votes away from Cuomo to ensure Mamdani’s victory. And oh yeah: New Yorkers aren’t much different than Canadians in that quite a few of them wanted to send a Big Apple middle finger directly to Donald J. Trump, and they took this opportunity when it presented itself.
The number of not-in-Canadas contained in the above sequence of events effectively nullifies any possibility of someone like Mamdani. To begin with, we don’t do primaries here. Journalists anxiously wait each election cycle for a nomination race or off-script moment where the leader’s office egregiously and obviously puts their grubby fingers on the scale. A junior staffer would have summarily denied Mamdani’s application at the provincial or federal level without a second thought. We know this because Ontario NDP Leader Marit Stiles unwisely sent her congratulations to Mamdani on social media, only to be blasted by grassroots lefties over her party’s denial of Sarah Jama’s candidacy.
Ah, but what about the municipal arena? What about the wild rise of Rob Ford, charted in a Netflix documentary that dropped this month? Well, you might have noticed that any talk of the Conservative establishment figures like Nick Kouvalis and the involvement of Stephen Harper’s federal party was left on the cutting room floor, save for a blink-and-you’ll-miss it shot of Kouvalis flanking Ford. As someone who got plenty of flak from the powers that were for backing Liberal Rocco Rossi on the eminently correct assumption that Rocco wouldn’t be the subject of a Trainwreck documentary 15 years later, trust me when I say that there was a lot about Rob Ford that was cooked up by consultants.
Toronto’s current Mayor, Olivia Chow, shares with Mamdani the fact that she capitalized on dysfunction wrought by her predecessor John Tory. However, unlike Mamdani she won because the establishment sent a very clear signal that she would be carrying the progressive banner in the 2023 mayoral byelection. They correctly recognized that she, and not Josh Matlow, had the name recognition to best the gaggle of centre-right also-rans. The fact that she doesn’t have an organic cadre of backers or a particularly enlightened position on housing matters much less. And the fact that Tory would still win a conservative/centrist primary today two years later, even after resigning due to Cuomo-esque extracurricular activities, makes it even clearer that there’s no space for upstarts in Canada.
So while Canadian Jews can mostly breathe easy, they can forget about ever having a different class of politician, either.
Josh Lieblein can be reached at [email protected] for your response to Doorstep Postings. You can also submit a Letter to the Editor, in response to Doorstep Postings or any other content from The CJN, here.
