By Vickie Paladino
The title of this article may sound dramatic, but it’s sadly and terrifyingly accurate. The fact is that New York City is now at a point where we’re either going to make some kind of change in how our government is run, or we’re going to continue our rapid slide into bankruptcy, lawlessness, and despair. This is a hard truth everyone needs to come to terms with.
The de Blasio era has been catastrophic for NYC, there’s no denying that. We have seen our economy destroyed, skyrocketing homelessness, open hostility to small business and homeowners, and a crime rate that has spun completely out of control. And all these trends were firmly in place before COVID hit.
Post-COVID, our single-party government took a difficult situation and turned it into a generational tragedy. The incompetence, ignorance, and naked malevolence of de Blasio, Cuomo, and our ruling party was on full display. They immediately and enthusiastically used the excuse of COVID to claim extraordinary dictatorial powers over our lives, and then used those powers to make everything worse. We’ve seen riots, looting, murder, and the total unplugging of our economy. Meanwhile ordinary citizens who resisted these destructive policies were targeted for prosecution, even as the doors of our prisons were swung open to release violent criminals back onto our streets scot-free.
New York is now hemorrhaging jobs, money, and taxpayers as citizens wake up to the fact that red states like Florida and Texas could be better options for people seeking a life of prosperity, security, and liberty. Needless to say, this is unsustainable for our city and our community.
We have one final chance to begin the hard work of turning things around. Our local elections in 2021 will quite literally determine whether our city returns to its former glory, or if we become another Portland, Seattle, or San Francisco — a once great city, now wracked with nightly riots, homelessness and drugs, and utterly paralyzed with corrupt single-party authoritarian rule by a bizarre quasi-religious progressive cult too obsessed with malignant identity politics and hatred of western civilization to solve even the most basic of municipal issues.
This is not an exaggeration. This is the choice we face. That’s where we’re headed. And I’m running for City Council along with other great candidates like Curtis Sliwa for Mayor to help bring about the change we all so desperately need.
It won’t be easy, and it won’t happen overnight. We have a lot of work to do, and we expect a fight every step of the way.
The GOP may not ever be a majority party in New York City — at least not anytime soon — but even relatively modest success in 2021 will be massively significant in the direction this city takes, in terms of desperately needed police funding, crime prevention, economic development, and tax relief for small businesses and homeowners. We must break the monopoly. I hope you’ll join me in our fight.
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Vickie Paladino is a Republican candidate for New York City Council, CD #19, and President of the Whitestone Republican Club.
