With Judge Dale Ho’s decision Friday further extending the uncertainty over whether Mayor Eric Adams has a practical hope of running for re-election, the forces of sanity in city government may have no standard-bearer at all in the June 24 Democratic primary.
This is where Jessica Tisch could offer hope.
A pragmatic, effective veteran of city government with unquestioned integrity, now-Police Commissioner Tisch has the stature and the grit to put New York City solidly back on the path to stability and growing prosperity.
The other options are beyond bleak: a cadre of far-leftists hell-bent on making the city’s problems worse, led by city Comptroller Brad Lander, an avowed socialist who’s fudging his long-held radical beliefs to maybe win over the centrist Democrats who’ll prove decisive in the primary.
Plus the guy polls put as the current favorite (though he’s not officially even in the race yet): ex-Gov. Andrew Cuomo — who has some claim to being a moderate but in his final years as governor let the left wreak havoc.
It’s not just that he signed off on the no-bail law and other “criminal justice reforms” that soon saw crime soaring: He also packed the Parole Board with let-’em-loose bleeding hearts who’ve since freed one cop-killer after another and severely restricted law-enforcement cooperation with ICE — all to boost his progressive cred as he eyed a future presidential run.
His other grim gifts to New York from those years including ramming through the congestion-pricing scheme and imposing the insane “climate agenda” that’s now begun to send electric and gas bills soaring.
And so far he has shown no evidence of being able to exhibit remorse for these mistakes, not to mention the heartbreaking claims he sent thousands of elderly people to their deaths during COVID.
The Republican candidate in the fall, meanwhile, looks to be Curtis Sliwa . . . again.
Long-suffering New Yorkers deserve better.
Many New Yorkers only learned her name when took over the Police Department last November, but Tisch has more than two decades of experience in public service, starting in the NYPD’s counterterrorism bureau in 2008.
She served as the city’s tech czar under Mayor Bill de Blasio before Adams tapped her to head the Department of Sanitation, where she made vast strides in actually winning the mayor’s War on Rats.
Well-acquainted with the granular details of making city government work, she’s anything but a “go along to get ahead” careerist: On taking over the NYPD, Tisch quickly zeroed in on recidivism as the main driver of the city’s crime pain, an obvious truth that most New York Democratic leaders prefer to flat-out ignore.
At her State of the NYPD address, she told a crowd that included Gov. Kathy Hochul and Mayor Adams that the “revolving door” system “that puts repeat offenders back on the streets again and again and again . . . is unsustainable. It defies common sense, and it is crying out for a course correction.”
Amen to that.
She also moved fast to clean house: A month into running the NYPD, she booted more than a dozen top cops — moving decisively after The Post revealed that Chief of Department Jeffrey Maddrey had allegedly traded sex for overtime pay.
She doesn’t tolerate a whiff of corruption or misconduct among her ranks, a vital trait for anyone taking over at City Hall.
Yes, Tisch is a technocrat — a competent, efficient one, unafraid to defy conventional thinking (from the left, right or center) or upend the status quo.
The Big Apple faces crises on multiple fronts: unsafe streets and subways, the still-iffy local economy, the consequences of the migrant influx and an ongoing exodus of those who’ve had enough.
To move ahead, the city needs a mayor who will speak truth to other powers, be realistic about every problem bedeviling Gotham and get the work done.
We know: Tisch has never sought elected office and shown no sign of running now; she’d need to build a campaign from scratch; she has low name recognition; her entry into the race would put every established city political player’s nose out of joint.
But allow us to dream.
The public is furious at the mess New York politics-as-usual has been producing, and the political regulars show no sign of even understanding that rage, let alone addressing the causes.
In times like these, New York City needs to find effective leadership in unexpected places.
