Kulturkampf

[benji]

Can this Zohran fella raise taxes? Is that what mayors do in america?

It depends on the city and state. NYC Mayor is basically President of NYC and there is an equivalent to Congress albeit with only one house: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_York_City_Council

Because it's such a one-party state, the GOP mayors (Giuliani and Bloomberg) have traditionally been powerful as able to operate above the party concerns and pursue majorities within the council on each individual issue. The Dems tend to get bogged down in the party shit because they're competing with each other for power within it. Mandami would be somewhat exempt from that too but wouldn't be able to command too many majorities without watering down his agenda. Even his primary percentage (44%) probably overstates his support. de Blasio got similar (41%) and had like a decade elected career including in the Council but wasn't able to abolish private property  and racism either. Although he is also a Zionist so was never really truly left-wing like he pretended. (Mandami is notably more left but de Blaiso at the time received much of the same criticism from Republicans and, Allah forgive me, centrists for having positions then that would now be to the right of Genocide Kamala.)

Cuomo is basically trying to position himself as if he'd be a Giuliani or Bloomberg. And relatively to Zohran that's not entirely false. You can win Mayor (or Governor of NY) this way because it's not a MAGA/Trump/Evangelical/etc. Republican. Trump used to be this too back when he was pro-abortion, pro-LGBT, etc. The other type of Republican is mostly limited to Staten Island and would probably lose even there to the other kind.

Eric Adams won the last Dem primary with basically the opposite, now Cuomo coalition. Anywhere else they'd be center-left at most but in NYC they're centrist and "far-right" Democrats. They're still like 40-45% of the party there, so if they can pick up the 10% of the city that's Republican they can win. Cuomo's problem is there's a Republican who won't drop out and rather consistently (in polls) gets almost all the Republicans.

Cuomo would almost assuredly have a stronger majority in the Council than Zohran except for the part where so many of them fucking hate him personally from his time as Governor.