Today is Election Day. At the federal level, all seats in the House of Representatives and one third of the Senate are up for election. Also up for election here in New York, as in most of the states, are all state-wide elective offices, as well as all seats in both houses of the State Legislature. Currently the Democrats hold all of the state-wide elective offices (Governor/Lieutenant Governor, Attorney General, and Comptroller), as well as super-majorities in both houses of the Legislature (106 of 150 seats in the Assembly and 43 of 63 seats in the State Senate).

Of the New York races, the only one that has been subject to extensive public polling is the race for Governor. Republican Lee Zeldin has been running an energetic campaign against incumbent Governor-by-accident Kathy Hochul. (Hochul was Andrew Cuomo’s Lieutenant Governor, and took over for him when he resigned in August 2021.). Early polls back in the summer had Zeldin behind by as much as 24 points, but more recent polls have the gap in single digits, and one late-October poll (from Republican-leaning Trafalgar) had the race tied. Still, Zeldin’s odds are likely less than 50/50. In the other races, there have been a few polls in the AG contest, none very recent. A Siena College poll in August had incumbent Letitia James leading Republican challenger Michael Henry by 14 points. In the Legislature, the Republicans may pick up a number of seats, and may get rid of the veto-proof majorities in one or both houses, but an actual Republican majority in either house would require a miracle.

Well, New Yorkers, if you vote for these people, what you get is on you.

Zeldin has far and away made his big issue of crime. It’s an important issue, and I don’t mean to minimize it, but for me it is far from the most important issue. Crime has in fact surged in New York under Democratic leadership and policies. However, it is still relatively low. And relative to other comparable cities, it is very low. From the early 90s to mid-2010s, we had Republican mayors in New York City, and the Republicans held a blocking position, if not actual majorities at all times, in the State Senate. During that time, the murder rate in New York City fell from about 28 per 100,000 (2,245 murders in 1992) all the way to below 4/100K (289 murders in 2018). In 2014 we got a left-wing Democratic mayor. In 2019 the Democrats took full control of the State Legislature, and promptly passed criminal justice “reforms” that included making it almost impossible to hold arrested people for bail. In January 2021 we got one of those “progressive” prosecutors here in Manhattan. Put these factors together, and by the end of 2021 we were back to 485 murders for the full year in New York City, a big increase from just a few years ago. But still, at around 6/100K, we are a far, far safer city than essentially all of our big Democrat-run counterparts. Places like Chicago, Philadelphia, and Washington have murder rates in the range of 25-30/100K — four to five times our rate — and the really dangerous places like Baltimore, Detroit, Cleveland, New Orleans and St. Louis have rates ranging from 30 to 50 and even higher.

So crime is an important issue, and given the destructive policies that the Democrats have adopted, the recent surge in crime could be only the beginning of a negative trend that could go on for years or decades. But still, here are several issues that I consider even more important:

• Comparison with Florida. Of all the states, Florida is the one most comparable to New York in population and demographics. Florida has about 22 million people; New York has about 20 million. Florida’s population is about 17.0% black and 26.8% Latina; New York’s population is about 17.6% black and 19.5% Latino. Florida’s annual state budget is about $105 billion; New York’s annual state budget is about $220 billion, for 10% fewer people. What does New York get for all that extra spending? The Census reports Florida’s poverty rate as 13.1%, New York’s poverty rate as 13.9% (2021 figures). New York spends more than double per student what Florida spends on K-12 education, and its students get somewhat lower scores on the NAEP tests. Florida re-opened from Covid about a year earlier than New York, and had in-person instruction for millions of students for a year when New York did not, and still has about exactly the same death rate per million as New York.

• Energy policy. New York’s energy policy is completely insane. Perhaps Zeldin has not made much of this on the campaign trail because the negative effects of New York’s policies have not yet been harshly felt by the people. But these effects are about to hit us like a sledgehammer. In 2019, the newly Democrat-controlled State Legislature passed a law called the Climate Leadership and Community Protection Act, which I summarized in this post from December 2021 titled “Finally, New York Tells The World How To Achieve Net Zero Carbon Emissions.” The Climate Act sets highly ambitious and completely unachievable goals for reducing carbon emissions over the next three decades. Various commissions and panels have been designated to set forth the Scoping Plan for how to get there. These people have no idea what they are doing. The occasion of my December 2021 post was the issuance of the first version of this Scoping Plan. Excerpt from my post:

  If you think that a document with this kind of build-up and heft would contain at least a little serious effort to grapple with the major engineering problems of decarbonizing everything from the electrical grid to home heating to private autos to aviation to ocean shipping, all at the same time, think again. The words “incompetent” and “amateurish” come to mind, but don’t really even begin to describe how bad this work product is. The 330 page length, filled with padding, fluff, and repetition, is mainly to assure that nobody whose time is valuable will ever be able to read it. The authors are like a parody version of King Canute, who actually believe that when they order the tide to stop rising, it will obey.

  If Hochul and the State Legislature come back without much change, they will continue down this path until finally stopped by blackouts or some other comparable calamity.

• The public employee unions run the place. Put the teachers union in charge of education, and you get endless unnecessary school closures, mask mandates for 5 year olds, Critical Race Theory, accusations of systemic racism and white supremacy against elementary school kids, “gender affirming care” for early teenagers, and so forth.

New Yorkers, if you have voted for Hochul, this is what you have voted for. Nobody can say you weren’t warned.