New Yorkers Are Getting What They Voted For: And They Don't Like It

Barack Obama once said “elections have consequences.” Boy, are New Yorkers finding this out the hard way these days. Of the five counties that make up New York City, the 2020 election results were as follows: Bronx 79% Biden; New York (Manhattan) 77% Biden; Queens 66% Biden; Kings (Brooklyn) 66% Biden. Only one NYC county, Richmond (Staten Island), voted Republican, awarding the hapless Biden just 39% of their vote. Apparently, the good people of Staten Island, a borough sometimes condescendingly mocked at Upper West Side cocktail parties, knew something the rest of their fellow New Yorkers did not. And their collective wisdom is now plain for voters in the rest of the city to see.

The crisis caused by the 10,000-per-month flood of both legal and illegal immigrants now inundating New York City is perhaps one of the most predictable in the history of the many crisis to have befallen this once-again decaying metropolis over the years—a city, I might add, that required two competent Republican mayors, Rudy Guiliani and Michael Bloomberg, to turn around after years of mismanagement from the Democrats who are at it again. Indeed, municipal negligence has now become a hallmark of hammerlock Democratic control of our once-thriving urban centers from Baltimore to Detroit to Chicago to LA and places in between. But I digress.

Back to Gotham. As recently as October 20, 2021, New York’s latest Democrat mayor, Eric Adams, Tweeted out:

“We should protect our immigrants. Period. Yes, New York City will remain a sanctuary city under an Adams administration.”

By last week, however, hizzoner was singing a decidedly less welcoming tune, all pretense of self-righteous hauter washed away with the reality of the disastrous consequences of the very immigration policies New Yorkers eagerly voted for—because they are more virtuous than you and I. Indeed, Adams’ once-welcoming rhetoric has been jettisoned with as much force as a brown person being catapulted off Martha’s Vineyard after the landscaping is done. At a town hall meeting on the Upper West Side, Mayor Adams spoke a harsh truth about the once-hailed migrants that contradicts his earlier politically correct speechifying:

“I’m gonna tell you something, New Yorkers, never in my life have I had a problem that I didn’t see an ending to. I don’t see an ending to this. This issue will destroy New York City.”

You don’t say? Who could have imagined that an influx of 110,000 and counting penniless, mostly uneducated, non-English-speaking foreigners pouring into his fair city might cause problems? Well, how about anyone living in El Paso and other cities along the US-Mexico border? But Mr. Adams apparently didn’t bother to consult with El Paso’s Mayor Leesor before doing his voters’ bidding by throwing open the gates of the Big Apple to anyone who could reach it, legally or otherwise.

Still, one must think that Mayor Adams, being a smart former cop who is no stranger to urban trends, certainly knew that should his city ever really have to endure the ramifications of his and his constituents’ sanctuary city affectations, this would happen. What he and the blue tide voters didn’t bank on was that Republican governors like Greg Abbott of Texas were more than willing to give New Yorkers a chance to live out their moral vanity by sending them migrants by the busload.

Suddenly, those same “All Are Welcome” New Yorkers are being faced with the rubber of their welcoming bombast meeting the road of actual unfettered mass immigration. Amusingly, Mr. Adams has called Gov. Abbott a “madman” for giving those who voted for them a taste of the very policies for which they giddily cast their ballots in 2020 and again in 2022. But Gov. Abbott is not “mad” at all. If anything he is merely helping the decent and righteous people of Democrat New York City (other than those racist xenophobes on Staten Island, of course) live out their beliefs. Abbott is doing them a favor in giving them a chance to open their own doors for a change and put some teeth behind the “Hate Has No Home Here” signage on their lawns or sidewalk lamp posts. So what’s the problem?

Strolling along leafy Central Park West one can almost hear the bewildered prattle among the café-goers murmuring in low voices amongst themselves: “They thought we were serious about all that?” Whether they truly meant it (doubtful) or not, I feel no sympathy for them. None. They knew what they were voting for. Although perhaps not all for the same reason.

I see them as three camps: First, those who genuinely believe their own inclusive declarations, the activists and clergy holding up signs welcoming all, even now, consequences be damned.

Second, are those who thought they believed their woke rhetoric but really didn’t think they’d ever have to put their money where their enlightened mouths were and actually take in the people they claim to welcome…they saw them as a problem for border states (“immigrants for thee, not for me”). And if those states raised concerns they were acting out of at best a lack of compassion, at worst vulgar white supremacy.

Then there were the DNC political operatives for whom mass illegal immigration is not a problem, as they live in gated all-white communities, but rather a way to turn red states like Texas purple and then blue in a disgustingly cynical political calculation that puts party above country. (One must imagine that if these same DNC operatives feared that the waves of illegals would, when eventually naturalized, end up voting Republican, we’d already have a border wall visible from space.)

I think the majority fall in the middle category. And now, too late, they are finally seeing the folly of their sanctimonious  ideology in practice. This month, Mayor Adams instructed every New York City agency to cut five percent from its budget to finance the overwhelming burden of taking on so many immigrants flooding set-aside hotels, shelters, even streets. The city’s already taxed public school system must now absorb some 20,000 new, mostly non-English speaking students, no matter their legal status. And, not surprisingly, as in other cities, the very same people who voted for this exact situation are suddenly demanding it be forcefully addressed. The latest Siena College survey shows that 82% of New Yorkers now say migrant influx is a “serious problem” while 58% of them want it halted. Yet, how many will vote Democrat again in 2024? Partisan affiliation, the hard left’s new religion, dies hard.

The Democrat Adams now rails against the Democrat Biden administration for opening the borders and then leaving those who voted for opening the borders to deal with the consequences. The same man who tweeted out his love of sanctuary cities now laments: “Everyone is saying it is New York City’s problem. Every community in this city is going to be impacted. We have a $12 billion deficit that we’re going to have to cut. Every service in this city is going to be impacted. All of us.”

All I can say is welcome to the open borders party, pal. Talk to the hand…

A broader, perhaps psychological question remains: At what point does ideology finally give way to common sense? At what point do New Yorkers decide that ridding their TDS-infected fever dreams of the Bad Orange Man and his mean tweets, who nevertheless while President saw immigration reduced to a trickle compared to their party’s deliberate open borders policy of today, is not worth the abject destruction of their city? Maybe next time, before they vote like turkeys for Thanksgiving, they should take the ferry or drive across the Verrazano Narrows bridge to Staten Island and ask how those New Yorkers plan to vote?

Mayor Adams warns, “The city we knew, we’re about to lose.” Funny, if you substitute the word ‘country' for ‘city' he could almost be mistaken for, dare I say it, Donald Trump in 2015?  Whatever the interpretation of Adams’ portents of doom from the strain of the tens of thousands of migrants descending upon his city, all that is really happening is that for the first time in many of their cloistered, insulated lives, progressive New Yorkers are actually being compelled to live out their belief systems. And they’re belatedly finding out that maybe there’s more to wanting a secure border than being “Hitler”.

Brad Schaeffer is a commodities trader, columnist and author. His latest book Life in the Pits: My Time as a Trader on The Rough-And-Tumble Exchange Floors, comes out in December.