Captured Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro is many things. He’s a dictator who has violently suppressed opposition and rigged elections in his favor. He’s an inept, bumbling leader who turned his once prosperous, oil-rich nation into a pariah state. And he’s an alleged drug trafficker who has allowed corruption and graft to run rampant throughout his government.
But one thing Nicolás Maduro is not is Mayor Mamdani’s problem.
Mamdani’s problem is dealing with the issues facing New Yorkers and those that he campaigned on: from the affordability crisis and staggering rent prices to providing health care to all city residents.
Yet, after being in office just days, Mamdani seems more intent on tackling the world’s problems than he does New York’s, with the mayor saying that he personally called President Trump to voice his opposition to the U.S. military operation that led to Maduro’s capture.
New York City may be the capital of the world and it may be home to people from nearly every country on Earth — including about 230,000 immigrants in the last four years, many from Venezuela — but Mamdani’s job isn’t to weigh in on every issue affecting the countries where New Yorkers hail from but instead to identify and address those issues in the five boroughs.
Given the vast amount of national press coverage Mamdani received during last year’s election and since —along with the prominence of New York City on the global stage —it’s maybe no wonder why the mayor feels obliged to weigh in on the capture of Maduro and U.S. foreign policy. But, especially during the nascent days of his administration, his focus should be on New York City and the problems he has vowed to address.
Mamdani’s call to Trump is also puzzling, as he recently and very publicly vowed to work alongside the president to tackle issues like affordability in the city where both men grew up. Mamdani even told NBC’s Kristen Welker on “Meet the Press” back in November that the two had a “productive” meeting, where they agreed “to focus on what it could look like to deliver on a shared analysis of an affordability crisis for New Yorkers.”
The then-mayor-elect went on to add that he hoped to “establish a productive relationship” focused on issues that New Yorkers care about.
For a mayor confronting rising rents, strained public transit, public safety concerns, and looming budget pressures, inserting himself into a volatile geopolitical dispute appears, at best, a distraction from the immediate work of governing. So, it’s unclear how ringing up the president to berate him over the capture of Maduro will help alleviate the affordability crisis facing New Yorkers, let alone help grow that “productive relationship” between the two leaders.
One possibility for Mamdani’s foray into global affairs is that he might share the same goals that his allies in the Democratic Socialists of America (DSA) do — particularly when it comes to returning Maduro to Venezuela and reigniting the so-called Bolivarian Revolution started by his predecessor, Hugo Chávez.
In a lengthy published note the DSA called the operation that captured Maduro “a nakedly imperialist war” that would install a puppet government in Caracas and funnel Venezuela’s oil wealth to U.S. corporations. What the group’s press release failed to note is how any of this would affect the day-to-day life of the average New York City resident.
What will affect New Yorkers — and what voters elected Mamdani to do — is to make daily life better for them. It’s getting the cost of living — rent, groceries, transportation — under control; it’s working to keep immigrant communities safe from ICE raids; it’s establishing no-cost child care and offering resources for parents of newborns.
Overall, it’s about thinking about what is best for New York City, not Venezuela.
Marte is the president of the Bodega and Small Business Group.
