October 29, 2025
MARXIST/SOCIALIST WILL WIN IN NYC BUT REPUBLICANS WILL WIN NJ, VA GOV

This column is about something wholly meaningful – namely: the Nov. 4 elections in New York City, Virginia and New Jersey.

This is DEMOCRACY and it will have an impact on Trump and Trumpism. I follow polling daily on the RealClear Politics website and the president’s job approval is in the range of 45 percent -- higher than both Bush II and Obama at this point in their second term.

MY PREDICTIONS: Imagine you’re skydiving, plummeting earthward, scared mindless and can’t find the ripcord.  That’s New York City right now. Outright Socialist Marxist Zohran Mamdani is on the brink of winning the NYC mayoralty but has clearly peaked. Polling into late October had numbers averaging 48/32/13 for Mamdani (D)/Andrew Cuomo/Curtis Sliwa (R). The most recent poll (10/26) by Suffolk had it tightened to 44/34/11 with 11 percent undecided. The enduring consensus was that Mamdani would win with two opponents.

The fact of the matter is that 56 percent of New Yorkers don’t want Mandani’s inexperience and ideology to control their city. There is plenty of wealth in NYC and Mamdani wants to redistribute it from the HAVES to the HAVE-NOTS. He is offering lots to free stuff: Rent-control, free bus rides, free day care. Somebody will pay for it. It is unconstitutional to tax wealth, only income. The “billionaires” have already “earned” (or inherited) their money and can easily park it elsewhere. Mayor Brandon Johnson wants to do the same thing.

But all it will take is a movement of 60,000 votes, or 5 percent, and Cuomo can win 40-39. The 2021 mayor turnout was 1,148,177 out of 4,911,262 RVs. Plan B would be to have Sliwa endorse Cuomo. Bringing back Cuomo in NYC is like bringing back Lori Lightfoot in 2027 in Chicago in order to beat Brandon Johnson. Hold your nose, try not to regurgitate – but just do it.

I suspect Republican political operatives who are funding Sliwa have nixed Plan B. Mamdani will precipitate political and economic disruption in NYC  and that’s what Republicans want to exploit nationally and Woke/Left Democrats use internally. Mamdani will win by near 100,000 votes.

In both VA and NJ scandals combined with capitulation to Woke/Left orthodoxy have complicated what should be slam-dunks for 2 Democratic congresswomen in states that Kamala Harris carried in 2024 by, respectively, 51.8 and 51.8 percent. Jay Jones, the Black Democrat running for VA attorney general, emailed a few years ago that he wanted to put bullets in the head of the Republican House Speaker and then kill both his kids while his wife watched. INCREDIBLY, Jones is losing in recent polling to incumbent AG Jason Miyares (R) by just 4 points. And even MORE INCREDIBLY, no VA Democrat, including VA governor candidate Abigail Spanberger (D) and the state’s 2 senators (D), called for him to resign. They just mumbled that the words were inappropriate. You think?

And when asked whether she supported boys in girls’ sports and the trans-gender agenda, Spanberger said she would “follow the law.” That is not a NO. Northern VA is a bedroom community for Washington, D.C. bureaucrats and they were mostly military types up through the early 2000s. Now they’re about half civil bureaucrats and/or lobbyists with a vested interest in government maintenance/expansion and hard Left Democrats, both culturally and ideologically.

VA  is the only state with a one-term limit on governors, so every 4th year is a mad scramble. This is a throwback to the segregationist South where a governor, once elected, could hold office for 20 years and get rich from graft. Popular governor Glenn Youngkin (R) won by ----- votes in 2021 but cannot run. Lt. Gov. Winsome ---(R), a Black woman, ex-Marine and daughter of Jamaican immigrants, is polling within the margin-of-error. She will win by 15,000.

NJ has the highest property and corporate income taxes in the country. And Democrat Mikey Sherill is embroiled in 2 scandals. She made a $7 million profit on defense stock investments while in Congress – but can’t explain how and why. “Ask my husband,” she said, and she graduated from the U.S. Naval Academy in Annapolis but barred from the graduation ceremony for her alleged involvement in a cheating scandal. She never explained this. And she refused to promise NOT to raise taxes. Republican Jack Ciattarelli  lost by 84,286 votes in 2921. A 10/26 coefficient poll had it 48/47. He will win by 75,000 on Nov. 4.

DELUSIONAL RETREADS GALORE: As in the case of Cuomo, ex-ofceholders suffer from egotistical narcissism. They think they are somehow indispensable when voters have rejected them and, through hindsight, already concluded that they were incompetent and inconsequential. Are we better off without them? The answer is always resoundingly affirmative.

But that is not deterring cob-webbed has-beens like convicted felon Jesse Jackson Jr. (D), defeated congresswoman Melissa Bean (D) and 2022 governor candidate Darren Bailey (R) from launching 2026 comebacks. Jackson, as everybody remembers, was convicted of campaign fraud in 2013, a federal felony, and got 6 years in the slammer (as did his wife, a Chicago alderwoman). They used campaign donation to renovate their D.C. home fund a lavish lifestyle. But Junior has a universally-recognized name in an 8-candidate race and a 7/21 Lester poll had him first with 21 percent. There is no primary runoff so a simple plurality suffices. Junior, now age 60, will win.

A real oddity is the comeback candidacy of Melissa Bean, a 3-term congresswoman from the far northwest suburbs who got beat in 2010. Bean (D) spent the last 15 making big bucks as a lobbyist and investment banker for JP Morgan Chase and Mesirow and she certainly has the connections to raise big campaign dollars. There are 9 candidates in the primary (D) for the seat Raja Krishnamoorthi (D) is vacating to run for U.S. Senator. At age 63 why would Bean want a job that pays only $174K? But big egos remain big egos. Bean will lose.

And then there’s Darren Bailey (R), the Downstate farmer who lost to JB Pritzker (D) by 485,947 votes in 2022 and then lost a congressional primary (R) in 2024. He’s running for governor again in 2026 with DuPage County sheriff James Mendrick his principal opponent. Both are losers from the get-go. Our roly-poly anti-ICE- and Trump-hating governor will spend whatever it takes -- $75 mil, more, from his $4 billion fortune – to crush them. Then he will go on to run for president in 2028. I don’t know who is the most delusional of the trio. One thing I do know is that JB will not be moving to NYC.

KAMALA’S MISERABLE “107 DAYS”: Ex-VP –Harris (D) is on her don’t-blame-me book tour and is as mushy as ever. She said she has “public service in her bones,” some of which are above her neck. Is “not done” with politics and might run again for president. She claims she is a “leader” of her party and that she lost the closest election  – by exactly 2,284,967 votes to Trump – in modern times. Forget about the fact that Al Gore (D) lost the 2000 election but got 543,690 more popular votes than George Bush II and that Hillary Clinton (D) lost the 2016 election but got 2,868,686 more popular votes than Trump.

But the crème de la crème of her tour was the nugget in which she said “some people say” she is the “most qualified” candidate to ever run for president. She failed to mention those names.

Read more Analysis & Opinion from Russ Stewart at Russstewart.com

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