The late Colin Powell, in an interview about the difference between governing and campaigning, invoked his long experience and humor to describe it this way: “I think any human being with an IQ over 40, who is a mammal, loves governing more than campaigning.”
It’s a shame that Powell, a top military leader and a secretary of state who died in 2021, isn’t available to counsel Zohran Mamdani.
If he were, perhaps he could get through to New York’s new mayor, who appears to be so in love with campaigning that he can’t kick the habit.
How else to explain Mamdani’s grating tendency to speak in ways that appeal only to his base of far-leftist supporters?
Though he’s been in office less than two weeks, his Socialist-echoing choices of words and topics are early warning signs of trouble ahead.
The 34-year-old mayor was in clear campaign mode last week when he parroted the radical mob condemning events in Minnesota and used the most loaded language possible.
‘Murdered’
“This morning, an ICE agent murdered a woman in Minneapolis — only the latest horror in a year full of cruelty,” Mamdani said in a statement on X.
“As ICE attacks our neighbors across America, it is an attack on us all. New York stands with immigrants today, and every day that follows.”
The stew of anti-ICE bile, the use of the inflammatory word “murder” and his habit of erasing the distinction between legal and illegal immigrants are all standard fare among far-left wackos.
Such fact-free remarks would not carry much weight if Mamdani were still a junior legislator in Albany, where nobody cares what newbies say.
But he is now the mayor of America’s largest city, giving far greater significance to all his words.
And because the vast majority of 8.5 million New Yorkers did not vote for him, it’s time he starts to behave as something other than a candidate and a junior back-bencher.
Most importantly, he is in charge of and responsible for the nation’s largest police force.
The NYPD has 35,000 men and women in its ranks, and they are trained extensively in situations where they must make crucial decisions.
They are armed because their No. 1 job is to protect innocent lives, and they have every right to expect that their mayor will back them in those life-and-death situations — unless and until the facts prove the officers acted improperly.
On that front, the first big tests came quickly, and Mamdani’s response earned him a big fat F — for failure.
Not long after he used the word “murder” to describe the ICE shooting in Minneapolis, he was confronted by two fatal NYPD shootings.
His initial reaction was not what cops have a right to expect, and not what Commissioner Jessica Tisch hoped for, The Post reports.
Both incidents took place Thursday, with the first in NewYork-Presbyterian Brooklyn Methodist Hospital in Park Slope.
Officials said a bloodied patient barricaded himself in a room with a sharp, broken piece of a toilet and was trying to hurt another patient and a member of the hospital’s security staff in a blood-smeared room.
After Tasers failed to stop the assailant, police fired their weapons, killing him.
He was later identified as 62-year-old Michael Lynch, a one-time police officer who resigned from the force some 30 years ago.
Major leagues
The second shooting unfolded six hours later when cops were flagged down at the scene of a road rage incident in the West Village.
They said a motorist, later identified as 37-year-old Dmitry Zass, walked out of a BMW, apparently with a gun in his hand.
When he refused to drop the gun, cops opened fire and struck Zass, who was pronounced dead at a local hospital.
Officers said his weapon was a realistic-looking imitation of a Sig Sauer handgun.
In a new social media post, Mamdani said the shootings were “devastating to all New Yorkers” and that “I know many are eager for answers. The NYPD is conducting an internal investigation — I will work with Commissioner Tisch to ensure this is as thorough and swift as possible.”
His use of the word “devastating” and the emphasis on an “internal investigation” were reportedly seen by many in the NYPD as casting doubt on the officers’ decisions.
While Tisch also noted that there would be internal probes, which are standard, she added that she believed the officers acted properly.
If nothing else, the incidents marked a “welcome to the major leagues” moment for Mamdani.
The size of the force and the huge civilian population mean citizen-police clashes are inevitable and frequent.
Not all lead to violence, but the potential is always there.
In 20234, cops made more than 260,000 arrests, and used some level of force more than 11,000 times, according to a department report summarized in The City.
Weapons-related arrests are the most volatile, and police were involved in 14 fatal shootings that year, the report says.
The vast scope of the encounters and the potential for violence is such that a mayor who instinctively distrusts the police will soon find himself undermining their performance and at war with the rank-and-file.
Don’t be de Blasio
That approach might initially play well for Mamdani’s political base, but long-term, it carries the seeds of political and civic disaster.
If he doesn’t have their backs, police officers, rookies and veterans alike, are more likely to walk away from trouble than tackle it.
That could lead to a city swamped by crime, which would doom Mamdani’s tenure.
Indeed, his past means he is already viewed with suspicion.
A key factor is that Mamdani has rarely if ever recognized the risks of policing, and identified himself as anti-cop years ago by calling them “racist” and supporting the “defund” movement.
In those ways, he resembles Mayor Putz, a k a Bill de Blasio, whom Mamdani foolishly called his favorite mayor.
De Blasio’s relationship with the NYPD became so toxic that cops turned their backs on him at a police funeral.
If Mamdani is as smart as his supporters believe he is, he will ignore de Blasio’s approach and learn from three other predecessors, Eric Adams, Rudy Giuliani and Michael Bloomberg.
They all wisely took the position that police, like all citizens, are innocent until proven guilty.
That stance is the minimum that law enforcement officers need and deserve.
After all, they are risking their lives to defend ours.
The least a mayor, or for that matter, any New Yorker, can do is give them the benefit of the doubt until the facts are gathered.
To do otherwise is to do what Mamdani did about the Minnesota incident.
His fact-free overreaction echoed the ICE-hating words of dopey Gov. Tim Walz and Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey.
Their far-left condemnation of law enforcement invites chaos and insurrection.
If that’s the path Mamdani follows in New York, Katie bar the door.
