Trouble, Right Here in New York City
Zohran Mamdani is the latest incarnation of Prof. Harold Hill in 'The Music Man'
By Gary Weiss
Ever wonder why “The Music Man” retains its appeal 68 years after its Broadway run and 63 years after its film adaptation? It wasn’t just the great score and fab performances. It was the subject matter: It’s about a con man, and not just any old con man. The musical’s main character, Professor Harold Hill, is a successful con man. A charming con man. A lovable con man.
Professor Hill is a ruthless fraud, but his effervescent personality wins over River City. They “got trouble,” goes an early musical number, and he has just the fix—himself. Specifically, Hill falsely promises to breathe new life into the town by providing its citizens with the instruments, uniforms and training for a marching band. He’s lovable not despite his con but because of his con. He raises hopes. He has the solutions. He makes people dream. Their imaginations soar. Young people become his key allies.
America loves con men as long as they are reasonably charming. Think Harry Gondorff in “The Sting.” Think Frank Abagnale of “Catch Me If You Can.”
Think New York City mayoral candidate Zohran Mamdani.
I make a living writing about criminals (Mr. Abagnale was nice enough to blurb my last book), and I have a professional appreciation for a skillful con man. That is why I doff my hat to Mamdani. The man is good. He knows his craft. And I’m here to tell you about a simple way to grasp his essence: Study “The Music Man.” Therein lies the formula not just of his success, but of his defeat (if such a thing is possible).
Professor Harold Hill/Mamdani arrives in town as if from nowhere. He is friendly and outgoing. He has charisma. He has charm. He has a winning grin. He sees the problem and he has the solution. River City needs a boy’s band! New York City needs a rent freeze and lots of free stuff!
Everything about Harold Hill is phony, down to his name. While we never learn his real last name, his first name is Gregory. His credentials don’t exist. He’s no professor, and he can’t even read music.
Likewise, everything about Zohran Mamdani is phony except his radicalism and obsession with Israel. He can’t figure out what accent to use. His “work history” would not tax a resume-writing program. His “grassroots revolution” was bankrolled by leftist tech moguls. His “platform” is a lot of empty promises and hokum.
But man, like Hill, Mamdani can really talk! When his “credentials” are demanded, Professor Harold Hill changes the subject.When Mamdani’s refusal to condemn “Globalize the Intifada” is shoved in his face, Mamdani evades with his trademark grin and a wonderful show of faux sincerity. Responding to perfectly accurate accusations of using antisemitic tropes, he becomes emotional and plays the victim.
Both Hill and Mamdani have opponents who are loutish and ineffective. Of course they are. The flip side of America’s love of con men is its disdain for people who fight them. Ever notice that the villain in “The Music Man,” the creepy anvil salesman, is the guy who is onto Hill from day one? He is a blowhard and bully who sexually harasses Marian the librarian. Need I point out the similarity to the former governor of New York?
With the unappealing Andrew Cuomo sleeping through his campaign, Mamdani was able to win over clueless yuppies as adroitly as Harold Hill was able to hoodwink the suckers in River City. All he had to do was feed them one glib hunk of “progressive” baloney after another. And turn on The Grin.
His promised“rent freeze” is a great example. It would only apply to the minority of tenants whose apartments are subject to rent stabilization. Thus it would result in upward pressure on the rents of non-rent-stabilized apartments, which constitute the vast majority of rental housing.
But rent-stabilized tenants could wind up as even worse losers. Mamdani turns out to be the landlords’ best friend. If his hand-picked Rent Guidelines Board freezes rents no matter what—even if landlord costs are spiraling upwards—it could goad the U.S. Supreme Court into dismantle rent controls on the grounds that they violate the Fifth Amendment’s takings clause.
The high court hasn’t granted certiorari on rent control cases. But all it takes is four justices to agree to hear one of the many lawsuits constantly being filed against rent stabilization. If any court in recent memory is primed to tackle the issue it’s this one, with its solid six-justice conservative majority. In a 2024 opinion, Justice Clarence Thomas invited an “appropriate future case” against rent controls.
If Mamdani tees up an “appropriate case,” the conservative majority would tear the guts out of rent control. Rents for thousands of longtime rent-stabilized tenants, many of whom are poor or elderly, would go through the roof. There would be hardship, evictions and mass displacement for the most vulnerable New Yorkers.
See how much detail it took to address just two words blasted out by Team Mamdani? That is the essence of an effective con. Be simple while your critics are compelled to be complicated as they dig through the weeds, explaining why what you say is full of beans.
Mamdani’s other promises are also simplistic and also crumble upon scrutiny. One that has gotten a lot of attention, city-run grocery stores, would supposedly be financed by shifting money from elsewhere. The “from elsewhere” part is the product of an accounting error.
The rest of his “program” would require scads of borrowed money. Politico points out that “Mamdani would likely need to borrow tens of billions of dollars more than his plans call for, increasing the stakes for relaxing the city’s debt limit and increasing annual repayment obligations if he were to get it.”
Mamdani gets away with peddling balderdash for the same reason as Professor Hill’s success in River City: People aren’t paying attention.
Partly it’s Mamdani’s doing, his skill at changing the subject and evasiveness when asked the rare tough questions. But he must share credit with the people who oppose him. It’s only natural that Mamdani’s critics hone in on his many years of radical posturing, his “seize the means of production” Marxist babbling, his “defund the police” rhetoric. And of course there is his alarming record of anti-Israel extremism, which includes advocacy of the antisemitic Boycott, Divest and Sanctions movement; his refusal to condemn “Globalize the Intifada” tropes; his threat to arrest Netanyahu and a disgusting statement issued after the Oct. 7 pogroms that attacked Israel for “apartheid.”
Sure, that’s toxic stuff. Sure it’s hateful. Sure it’s nuts. Mamdani’s opponents are focusing on his character, and they are not wrong. Character is destiny. It’s a legitimate issue in the campaign. But it’s the wrong way to fight a skillful con artist. Every time his long record of far-left lunacy is raised, Harold Hill/Mamdani turns on The Grin and lies his way out of whatever is thrown at him. He probably loves such attacks, as they divert attention from issues that matter to voters.
So forget how he filled out his college application. Forget his loony dad and his nepo-baby, champagne-socialist upbringing. Focus on his con game instead. Emphasize the damage he will do to the city, because the similarities between Harold Hill and Zohran Mamdani only go so far. Mamdani is no money-hungry flim-flam man out to get into some “Iowa boodle bags.” He’s a power-hungry ideologue who, if elected, will have the power—and the desire—to turn New York into a socialist dystopia.
Some of his allies are even worse than he is. The infamous fire-alarm-puller Jamaal Bowman as schools chancellor? Could be. Want worse? Worse like a return to the bad old days of the 1970s and 1980s? He’ll be happy to deliver. “Violence is an artificial construction,” Mamdani has said. He means it too. He’s against hiring more cops.
Point to what is happening in Chicago, where a kind of Mamdani Lite is ruining the city. Point out that Mamdani would screw over the tenants he professes to adore, that his “rent freeze” pledge is a path to disaster. Explain how his city-run groceries would be a costly boondoggle and would squeeze out bodegas.
Detail how his loopy attitude toward crime would send cops fleeing from the city, and how his extremism, soak-the-rich promises and open antisemitism would cause an exodus of the city’s most productive, highest-taxed residents. And show that key businesses would take flight as well. Point out to voters that with the tax base shrinking, his costly pipe dreams could drive the city into bankruptcy.
Explain to River-City-on-the-Hudson, calmly and methodically, that they are being suckered. That Mamdani’s charm is a hollow artifice. That he is engaged in an intentional, cynical, carefully-laid-out plan to bamboozle the voters of New York.
But don’t get your hopes up. A powerful libretto is at work, more potent than Meredith Willson’s wonderful book and lyrics for “The Music Man.” The catalyst of the musical, the focus of Harold Hill’s con, is utter nonsense—a pool hall that just opened in River City. Mamdani’s confidence game, his fatuous “program,” is anything but nonsense. It targets “affordability.” It’s a real issue, and in his hands it’s a deadly one.
At the end of “The Music Man,” the people of River City realize Hill is a phony, but that’s OK with them. In the final number of the film version, they actually hallucinate, imagining that his lousy conducting is wonderful and the shabby band uniforms he’s provided are gleaming. River City knows it’s been conned, but they love it.
New Yorkers need to know that “they got trouble” too, and that its name is “Mamdani.”
Gary Weiss is a New York-based author and journalist. His most recent book is “Retail Gangster: The Insane, Real-Life Story of Crazy Eddie” (Grand Central Publishing). Follow him on X @gary_weiss.