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DOUBLE TROUBLE IN NEW YORK AND SEATTLE Cartoon published 11/17/2025 New York City has a new mayor—Zohran Mamdani—and he’s an outspoken socialist. Now, on the opposite side of the country, another self-described socialist mayor has been elected in Seattle. We should not be surprised Seattle voters have elected a socialist mayor, and in fact she’s not the first one. In 1922, Seattle voters elected Edwin “Doc” Brown as their mayor. There was a general strike in 1919 in support of socialist shipyard workers who belonged to the socialist IWW, or “Industrial Workers of the World,” otherwise known as the “wobblies.” The socialist sentiment has lingered in Seattle through the decades, and now it has come full circle with the election of another socialist—Mayor Katie Wilson. Her plans for Seattle are similar to what Mamdani has in store for New York City. We lived near Seattle for 25 years, and I worked in Seattle for 15 of those years. I quickly learned not to reveal my conservative leanings because I realized what happened to those who did not fit into the leftist mindset. They got coldly shunned or called ‘crazy.’ Conservatives who weren’t quiescent were ridiculed and humiliated—ridden out of town on a rail, so to speak. This is how the left reinforces their cult of socialism. Otherwise, they were very nice people. Needless to say, all of my friends there have long since unfriended me. We were only in New York City one time. Somehow I managed to win a corporate award while in Seattle and Tina and I got to go on a three day all-expenses paid trip to the Big Apple. We stayed in the Essex House, right on Central Park. I expected to hate New York City, but I loved it. The food was terrific, we saw a Broadway show, and went to the top of the Empire State Building. People were friendly there and they seemed proud of their city. We did hear a cab driver swear at a jaywalker, which we found to be a funny cliché. Bear in mind, Rudy Giuliani was the Mayor of New York in the 1990s and he did a good job cleaning up the city and lowered the crime rate. Mamdani and Wilson do not have Giuliani’s mindset. They want social workers to help persuade criminals not to commit crimes. This is not going to work any more than Wilson’s plan to ‘protect’ the homeless. It will only attract more homeless people. Ordering landlords to lower rent and telling business people how to run their businesses will only drive them out of their cities—and they need corporate income to fund their socialism. Socialism does not work. Cuba and Venezuela are only two examples. As Margaret Thatcher once said, “The problem with socialism is that you eventually run out of other people’s money.” — Ben Garrison