At Risk: New York City
We have owned and published the Insurance Advocate for 39 of its 172 years – established as it was in 1889 in New York after being introduced originally in 1853 in Philadelphia. It has been – remarkably – and continuously published for those many years and will continue over the years ahead, regardless of the fate of its hometown..
This publication has never endorsed a political candidate, believing that our readers are best served by sustaining our focus on risk management, risk transfer and risk financing and all of the attendant insurance issues facing professionals and institutions in the tristate area.
This year, however, the race that has taken shape in New York actually involves serious risk management decision making on behalf of the citizenry
As we go to press, Andrew Cuomo and Zohran Mandani are the two Democrats seeking election in November. One will win.
Say that again. One will win. There is no ex machina hero anticipated, so these two men are the serious choices. Curtis Sliwa is the lone Republican, but the electoral demographics give him a slim chance.
Between the two leading candidates, there is a clear cut difference that any underwriter or actuary or anyone guilty of good common sense would recognize quite readily.
Andrew Cuomo, while beset by problems of past performance and a spate of personal matters, is simply the better candidate based upon experience, upon part of his track record and pedigree given the long time Cuomo family participation in the life of Queens, the State and the City I do not mean to hail any dynastic claims or to offer this for any purpose other than to signify that he is not new to power nor likely to be swayed by it any more than an ordinary veteran of the public forum. His family and his background provide familiarity with the City, its systems, the law, the State and the players on every level – a shortcut in getting to the work that lies ahead on day one. The Cuomo’s do not think dynasty–having known his father and having served with his mother on the board of directors of a school for many years. I know them to be ambitious, but not insufferably so. True, Andrew might very well have advanced too quickly in his career, jumping up to HUD and then the Governor’s desk in a kind of succession that would make an observer believe that perhaps he might feel anointed to serve in government, i.e. as a l leader with an assumed mandate. I hope he is over any such idea. That is a misleading kind of assumption for anyone, especially for a human being seeking office where real service is the modicum, not self actualization- so common these days.
Cuomo has done good work in certain areas, despite the foibles of Covid and some other failed endeavors. He has hurt some people along the way and has not enamored himself to a public which should clamor for him as an individual who might succeed in the seat so ably occupied by names like Giuliani, Koch, Bloomberg, Walker, Beame, LaGuardia, and the host of others who occupied Gracie Mansion in the public’s good graces. It should be otherwise, but sadly, our preference and that of voters may come down to the old Latin saying that among the blind, a one eyed man is a leader (inter caecos luscus regnat). For sure, Cuomo is better than that but needs to be seen reining in his ego and any self righteousness and power hunger to be totally work focused. I believe he has a practical sense that can attach to administrative experience and actually get the job done–a job that is crying out for an executive who will be pragmatic and set upon deliverables more than the announcement of deliverables or the usual symbolic gestures posturing as policy and progress.
He is clearly more competent than Assemblyman Mandani, whose experience in executive and administrative pursuits is next to nothing. Like so many candidates, he has created a brand that sparks some excitement for its newness and some attraction for his youth, wealth, and good looks. His promises of “free this and free that” are as attractive as impractical. His problem as a candidate may be measured in one other critical term, and that is that you cannot run a city by experimenting with pseudo communism–it will not keep the buses running or the streets clean. Nor can you find sources among such principles that may be invoked and applied to problems that are quite solvable with traditional hard work and focus. Imagine trying to apply pseudo communist principles to the running of the subway system, to the education system, to getting the city clean again – getting rid of the ubiquitous rats- and the host of other problems at the top of whose list is public safety. There is no special approach in pseudo-communism for any of these problems. In fact, the closeness of his party to unions might actually exacerbate the difficulty in getting things done. Since I was in high school in the late 1960s, Bruckner Boulevard has been under construction, traffic has regularly been snarled and crime has regularly increased except for some periods during the Giuliani administration. Public schools, renamed as centers of excellence or magnets and the rest are not up to even a reasonable par. Will a pseudo communist fight fewer school days, teacher leaves of absence, or lesser work loads? How would the application of pie in the sky principles from a Marxian playbook written in the late 1800s and revised by Lenin in the early 1900s be able to solve any of these problems meaningfully? His seductive suggestion that there be a city owned supermarket says to some “free food“, but it is clearly a nowhere idea designed simply as a great talking point in the absence of any concrete plans. What does it say to bodega owners in Brooklyn? Competition from a source funded by your taxes? His program for handcuffing the police is a foolish play out of some deep seated sentiment that law-enforcement cannot be trusted – although in a communist world it is believed that government itself can be!
For the insurance industry, dear readers, there is a great stake in the solving of New York City’s crime crisis, affecting its boarded up retail stores, middle class population decrease in the five boroughs, the sense of calm and safety that is baked into the reality of “neighborhood”, the housing stock and its upkeep, vehicular transport, construction, and schools.
Whether an underwriter, an actuary, or, again, an individual with common sense, there is really no choice. Mandani would be a tremendous experiment, Cuomo, the far more reliable selection.
One need not love Andrew Cuomo to respect him and to believe he has the equipment for this role. But if he succeeds and avoids the quick celebrity and other temptations that undid Adams and made Di Blasio a punchline, he just might become lovable after all.
We commend readers and voters to study this further and to use an underwriter’s point of view.
Limit the causalities of risk; reduce the units of exposure.
