Ross Barkan is a Jacobin columnist based in New York City. He is the author of The Prince: Andrew Cuomo, Coronavirus, and the Fall of New York.
Disgraced New York governor Andrew Cuomo has finally left office. We look back at his emperor-has-no-clothes record, in which flashy infrastructure projects took the place of real improvements to the lives of working-class New Yorkers.
Andrew Cuomo’s record as New York governor was marked by an undisguised personal contempt for public university education. His ouster offers a chance to roll back the attacks on higher ed.
After electoral breakthroughs in the 2020 state legislative elections, New York City’s Democratic Socialists of America have had a disappointing 2021 so far. But the prospect of more major DSA upsets in the near future keeps getting brighter.
In this year’s New York City Council elections, the Democratic Socialists of America chapter elected two of its six candidates after the Democratic establishment entered the elections fully prepared to fight the Left. It’s a stark reminder of how hard it will be to take on elite interests and win.
New York City mayoral election was bizarre. And it’s not over: Eric Adams’s unique blend of supposedly anti-racist law-and-order politics, pro-landlord policy, and appeals to outer borough resentment of liberal Manhattan elites won the first round.
Polling places open tomorrow in New York City as the race to succeed mayor Bill de Blasio effectively comes to an end. The campaign has been endlessly frustrating for the city’s left — but its chances in other upcoming races look quite good.
It’s not surprising that New York’s centrist governor, Andrew Cuomo, would nominate a vocal opponent of criminal justice reform to the state’s powerful court of appeals. But why is a supposedly progressive state senate confirming her?
Diane Morales has managed to secure the endorsements of groups like the Working Families Party behind progressive campaign promises. But she’s also a landlord, a supporter of “school choice,” and someone who “probably” supported Andrew Cuomo in 2018. How should we understand her contradictions?
The one major issue that the progressives in New York City’s mayoral contest have failed to address with any degree of radicalism is also one of the city’s most important problems: the lack of affordable housing.
Next month, a little-discussed election will decide who will occupy one of the country’s most powerful offices: the Manhattan district attorney. But a divided left could throw the race to a Wall Street–funded opponent of criminal justice reform.
This year’s race for New York City mayor is off to a disappointing start as Andrew Yang hoovers up media attention while the Left lacks any unifying favorite in the race. But NYC socialists are honing their electoral skills and deepening their bench of candidates for the long haul.
Real estate titans and landlords might just be New York governor Andrew Cuomo’s last base of support. The embattled governor is rewarding them handsomely for their loyalty.
Socialists have punched above their electoral weight lately, sending candidates to state legislatures and city councils across the country. But to win the kind of power it will need to transform the country, the Left will need to run credible campaigns for governor.
West Virginia senator Joe Manchin is an embodiment of centrist Democrats’ worst instincts. He says he wants to win over Republican-voting workers, but he is consistently on the wrong side of populist economic issues like a minimum wage hike that are wildly popular among those workers.
After more than two decades, New York’s storied tabloid, the Daily News, finally has a staff union again. But with the paper’s sale to Alden Global Capital, a rapacious hedge fund notorious for crushing newsrooms, the union is going to have its work cut out for it just keeping the paper alive.
For the better part of a year, New York governor Andrew Cuomo has basked in an absurdly undeserved, media-driven reputation as a wise and competent COVID-19 statesman. Now reality is finally catching up with him.
From GameStop to COVID-19 relief, the past year has given us an abundance of reasons to ignore the advice of neoliberal economists like Larry Summers. There are tentative signs that the Biden administration might do just that.
The forgotten war in Afghanistan, a senseless waste of money and lives, will soon turn 20, and there is no sign that Joe Biden is serious about ending it. When it comes to US militarism, the much-heralded leftward shift in American politics has so far had little effect.
Governor Andrew Cuomo’s failure to contain the virus in the earliest weeks of the outbreak doomed New York to far more suffering than it needed to endure. Now, with a vaccine here, he is again proving his unfitness to lead his state through the worst crisis it has faced in modern history.
For the Left, the historic contribution of Christian socialism was its ability to relate the values of modern socialism to the time-honored themes of traditional religious teaching. The Left would do well to recover those lessons today.