1. United States
2. N.Y.
3. Letter

I am a lifelong Democrat. I was born in this city, raised in this city, and I have voted Democrat in every election for over forty years. I say that so you understand exactly who is writing this letter not a Republican, not a MAGA voter, not someone who wants government to disappear. Someone who actually believes in what this party is supposed to stand for. And right now, I am shocked. I am disgusted. And I am genuinely horrified. Governor Hochul, you bent the knee to Zohran Mamdani and signed off on a tax increase that will hurt working New Yorkers and drive more people and businesses out of this state. I have watched this state bleed taxpayers for years, and the answer from Albany is always the same: raise taxes. Tax the “rich.” Tax businesses. Tax your way to solvency. Here is what nobody in that building seems to have the guts to say: the problem is not revenue. The problem is spending. We spend money on things we have absolutely no business spending money on. We opened government-run grocery stores at three times the cost of what a private operator would charge. We covered childcare for city workers at double the market rate. These are not investments they are embarrassments. They are what happens when nobody in government is accountable to a bottom line, and nobody has the political spine to say “no.” Every dollar wasted on these boondoggles is a dollar taken from a working family in Queens, in the Bronx, in Buffalo. And now, instead of fixing the spending problem, you’re going back to that same family and asking them to pay more. I am not willing to stay quiet about this. I expect better from representatives who claim to serve working people. Get the spending under control. Do the hard work. That is the job.