New York City Deserves a Hot Mayor

Please.....we need this. And we've never had a better chance to get one.

Madison Swart/Hans Lucas/AFP via Getty Images

Today, we bring you a special guest post from Samantha Schuyler, research director at The Nation and friend of Discourse Blog, about a vital issue facing the people of New York City.

Friends—I come to you with a plea.

For years, New Yorkers have tolerated an astounding degree of fugliness in this city. Corruption scandals, an affordable housing crisis, the Vessel—these hideous things are our burdens to bear. So we do, trudging onward for the sake of our families, our aspirations, and the simple love we have for this great city.

But at what point do we say “Enough?” At what point, when we see ugliness, do we let ourselves say “gross”?

I say: that time is NOW. We deserve better than unconfirmed nipple rings. We deserve better than whining about the “food police.” And we certainly deserve better than the deceitful, embarrassing, self-serving eyesores that constitute the front-runner and the incumbent in this city’s godforsaken mayoral election. We deserve more than that.

We deserve a hot mayor.

You heard me correctly. A hot mayor. And not the one Hell Gate unearthed in the swamps of New York’s bewildering unconscious, but the extremely obvious one.

I’m talking about Queens assemblymember Zohran Mamdani.

Whether or not his hotness qualifies him for office, I believe we can agree, at least, on the fact of Mamdani’s hotness. He’s a handsome guy. Some might say a smoke show. At the very least, a confirmed cutie. A hunk, a dreamboat, a fox—whatever you call him, the simple, uncontroversial truth is that many people are saying “Awoooga!” or “Hummuna hummuna!” and in some cases “Hachi machi!” about this man. And that’s important.

Think of it this way: we New Yorkers have suffered so much. Just in the past four years, the city has seen multiple rounds of budget cuts. Public libraries have had to reduce service. Preschools lost about $400 million. We’ve endured reductions in garbage pickup and broken-down playgrounds. A mental health crisis has been met with an increase in arrests, not aid. We’ve closed shelters even as a homelessness crisis grows. Double-digit utility increases are on the way. Welfare recipients have grown by 50 percent, but application processing has plummeted, despite the expensive, taxpayer-funded website that Eric Adams commissioned. There’s been a skyrocketing increase in stop-and-frisks. Half-measures to fight climate change. A rent guidelines board approving rent hike after rent hike.

It sucks! Do we not deserve a fun treat, in the form of a hot mayor?

You need to remember that whoever is elected is going to constantly be forced into your line of sight whether you like it or not. For example, Eric Adams’s portrait has been so effectively seared into my mind’s eye that bowling balls have taken on a bad aura. Wouldn’t you prefer your daily barrage of news to come with great eyebrows and a dashing smile?

I would—because I have some self-respect. I know that the next four years of my one precious life will never be given back to me, and I want to spend them not feeling like shit. Something that makes me not feel like shit is looking at someone and going, “Nice.” If we deprive ourselves of the opportunity to say that about the most powerful person in the largest city in the country, then I have to wonder about our sense of civic responsibility and, at a deeper level, our belief in something better for ourselves and others.

You might be saying, “this is shallow nonsense, what about the ISSUES, etc etc.” But hotness is about issues too! It’s not just skin deep. It is an elusive constellation of characteristics, impossible to pin down, but at the very least not repulsive. It attracts and intrigues, inspires and generates rather than saps and depletes. It can fuel energy, curiosity, hope, desire.

With that in mind, we can pretty definitively say what is not hot. And that is former governor, current mayoral candidate, and gargoyle-faced goon Andrew Cuomo. Cuomo is the total embodiment of not hot. Diverting millions of MTA funds to an upstate ski resort? Not hot. Endangering nursing home patients during COVID, then deliberately hiding inconveniently horrifying data revealing the deaths that came from that endangerment? Not hot! Then writing a book about your heroism during the pandemic? You guessed it, not hot. Doing tons of sexual harassment? Do I even need to spell it out?

It is not hot to take your weird personal hang-ups and feuds out on others, whether that be female employees or a lost white tailed deer. It is extremely unattractive to have to resign in disgrace, actually. And, most recently, it’s not hot to engage in poorly concealed attempts at circumventing campaign finance laws and getting caught less than a week later. It’s pathetic.

And we must address the false consciousness of the “Cuomosexual.” Covid felt like the end of the world, and it bred delusion—people were scared and frantic. We can now look at Cuomosexuality for what it was: a perverse fantasy born out of desperation. But it is important to treat those who succumbed with grace and understanding. Better to guide the Cuomosexual through this dialectical stage so that they may transcend such an empty and bummer ideology.

Meanwhile, it is very cool and hot to want to help your neighbors. Trying to make the city affordable—for the New Yorkers with student loans, not the kind who need tax breaks for their yachts—is stone-cold sexy. So is making people and institutions pay their fair share to the city they benefit from. Cracking down on bad landlords and enforcing tenants’ rights; considering novel ways to deal with the skyrocketing price of food; making public transportation a real public good; and supporting workers’ rights to organize—sooo fine. That all these things are united by a real mission to understand how and why people need help, identify where the system is failing those people, and fix it is hard to describe as anything other than [wolf whistle].

Who wants to do all this? Hint: his picture is at the top of this post.

Plus, winding up the strongest-polling non-Cuomo candidate and receiving more individual donations than anyone else in the race on an unapologetically socialist platform is energizing, inspiring, electrifying, motivating. That is: hot.

I don’t presume to speak for everyone’s subjective tastes—because this goes beyond “type” or preference. This is about recognizing a good thing when it appears. Like a potential hot mayor.

Finally, according to Discourse Blog’s extensive research department, New York has almost never had a hot mayor. Who else would fit the bill?

Bloomberg? UGGO

Wagner? UGGO

De Blasio? INCREASINGLY EMANATES THIS VIBE

O’Dwyer? UGGO

Giuliani? FRIGHTENS CHILDREN

The last hot mayor we had was probably John Lindsay. But that was 60 years ago! 60 years and nary a babe in sight. So let’s make history. First hot mayor in our lifetime.

Though it is a special characteristic of New Yorkers to be able to withstand great amounts of discomfort and hassle, that should never be mistaken for complacency. Uggos like Eric Adams and Andrew Cuomo should be scared shitless. After all, they’re losers. Their days are numbered. As the great scholar of hotness Jenna Maroney once said, “Goodbye forever, you factory reject dildoes.”