Washington Examiner columnist Joe Concha said New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani’s city-run grocery stores won’t make prices more affordable for New Yorkers.
“This was a campaign of a smiling socialist con-man from the very beginning, and 51% of New York voters fell for it,” Concha said on Fox News’s Fox and Friends on Wednesday.
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The first store will be in La Marqueta, a marketplace owned by the city’s government and located under elevated train tracks in a predominantly Latino neighborhood in East Harlem. It is expected to open in late 2027. All are slated to open before the end of the mayoral term.
The East Harlem store is being built from the ground up and comes with a $30 million price tag. The budget for the entire project is $70 million.
“Shut the front door here,” Concha said.
He argued that opening five city-run grocery stores with prices similar to other grocery stores won’t bring down the cost of groceries for consumers.
Mamdani took questions from reporters on these grocery stores Tuesday, responding to a Fox News reporter by saying, “When it comes to the products that we will be selling at these city-run grocery stores, there will be an essential basket of goods that will be guaranteed at a cheaper price.”
Concha pushed back on Mamdani’s proposal.
“I just don’t see how this makes a dent in a city that’s becoming increasingly unaffordable,” Concha said.
Concha also criticized Mamdani’s promise to deliver free child care and to make city buses free.
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The mayor acknowledged that the campaign pledge to make city buses free is facing funding roadblocks and won’t be fulfilled this year, as first reported in a Politico interview.
“Between this, and the free buses that may never come, and the free childcare that’s definitely never going to come — because the billions just ain’t there — Zohran Mamdani’s social media prowess and making the city more unlivable, and certainly not more affordable, that may well be his legacy,” Concha said.
