Talk about out of the frying pan and into the fire. If you want to know what you get when you cross New York City Democrat Mayor Bill de Blasio with Bolshevik-like billionaire George Soros, meet former civil-rights lawyer Maya Wiley, a top Democratic candidate to run the Big Apple. You might not have heard of Wiley. But you may now hear much, as she has vaulted into second place in the city’s race to replace de Blasio, who, mercifully, is being term-limited out of office.
It’s not hard to understand Wiley’s appeal in this age of identity politics. Is she female? Check. Non-white? Check. In a biracial marriage, as is de Blasio? Check. Wiley is also, says commentator Thomas Lifson, another “progressive” who’s a “rich hypocrite.” So she’s collected many checks.
How far left is Wiley? Well, she has been endorsed by avowed socialist Sandy Cortez of posh Yorktown Heights. But this just reflects how progressive “groups are coalescing behind” her, writes the Wall Street Journal. They’re doing this, the paper then continues
in the final stretch before New York City’s mayoral primary, in an effort to block the moderate Democrat Eric Adams, Brooklyn’s borough president, who is leading in recent polls.
Ms. Wiley, a former civil-rights lawyer and an ex-top counsel for the term-limited Mayor Bill de Blasio, has picked up powerhouse endorsements from progressive leaders, including Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Sen. Elizabeth Warren. Our Revolution, the political action group that morphed out of Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders’s 2016 presidential campaign, also supports Ms. Wiley.
Meanwhile, the two other top progressive candidates in the Democratic primary — Comptroller Scott Stringer and Dianne Morales — were rocked by turmoil and lost key endorsements. The Working Families Party announced it bumped up Ms. Wiley to its top choice after pulling its support for the other two.
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Stringer and Morales have been rocked by a bit of scandal, which must be practically unprecedented for leftists (said the alternate universe). Yet “if hypocrisy were to determine who wins, it’d be Wiley in a landslide,” asserts Lifson. He then cites Daily Mail reportage to buttress his case:
- Mayoral wannabe Maya Wiley and her CEO investment fund husband Harlan Mandel live in a $2.75 million, 4,000 sq. ft. house in Brooklyn
- She wants to defund the police but she and her neighbors pay $550 a month for private security for their wealthy area
- Mother-of-two calls school programs for talented kids ‘racially discriminatory’
- But she sent one daughter, to an academy for the gifted, and the other to a $51,000-a-year private school
- The civil rights activist and lawyer has become the Left’s new poster child after being endorsed by Democratic firebrand Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez
- Critics however, believe she does not live by the standards she would force on the city’s residents [ya’ think?]
- The 57-year-old is the daughter of late activist and college professor George Wiley, founder of the National Welfare Rights Organization
- She received a private school education as a child and went on to attend two Ivy League universities
- ‘She talks the talk, but doesn’t walk the walk,’ one political observer told DailyMail.com
The New York Post provided further detail, writing that Wiley
lives with her husband, financier Harlan Mandel, 58, in a historic Prospect Park South estate valued at $2.7 million. The home, built in 1905 by architect John J. Petit, has come in for fawning praise by elite connoisseurs.
…The digs are fitting for Wiley, who has turned a life of activism into a lucrative career. In the two years she worked as counsel for Mayor de Blasio between 2014 and 2016, Wiley raked in more than $400,000 in compensation, city records show.
After leaving that job, Wiley headed to the New School, where she became a senior vice president for “social justice.” Tax records show a nearly $300,000 payday in 2018 and another $250,000 in 2019. A plum gig as an MSNBC legal analyst netted another $60-100K a year as well, according to her public disclosures.
My, who knew that being a social-justice warrior was so lucrative (except everyone who’s been paying attention)?
Lifson points out that Wiley’s husband is even richer than she is and is riding the Soros money train. The Post again:
Wiley’s beau, Mandel, does well for himself as CEO of the Media Development Investment Fund [MDIF], a self-described “not-for-profit investment fund.” Mandel earned more than $900,000 in compensation between 2017 and 2019, tax records show.
MDIF invests in the equity and debt of newsgathering organizations in countries including Poland, Brazil and South Africa. The organization received initial funding from George Soros and the billionaire’s Open Society Foundations continue to support it. The MDIF did not respond to The Post’s requests for its most recent IRS tax filing, which charities must disclose by law.
From 1996 to 1998, Mandel worked as deputy general counsel at the Open Society Foundations. Wiley also worked there in the late ’90s, according to her LinkedIn profile.
Later progressive organizations she was involved with — the Tides Foundation and the Center for Social Inclusion — were both bankrolled by Open Society grants, The Post has reported. As president of the Center for Social Inclusion, where she worked from 2002 to 2014, she was paid more than $180,000 in 2013, according to filings of that group.
Given Wiley’s history, it’s no surprise that, as mentioned earlier, she’s all-in on defunding law enforcement. Claiming the New York Police Department is beset with “bureaucratic waste,” writes MSN.com, “she has said she wants to move $1 billion from its budget to community resources.”
Translation: She’s looking for an excuse to use the money for left-wing social engineering.
Wiley “also plans to appoint a civilian as the NYPD commissioner and reduce the department’s 35,000 officers by roughly 2,500,” MSN continues. My, what could possibly go wrong? It’s not as if NYC has a crime wave or anything.
Oh, wait….
In fact, the city’s crime surge is hurting these left-wing police destroyers’ mayoral chances, reports Fox News.
As to this, frontrunner and ex-police captain Eric Adams — and Guardian Angels founder and talk show host Curtis Sliwa, who’s running as a Republican — should hit this issue hard. Polls have shown that approximately 80 percent of blacks want police presence maintained or increased, and other groups desire likewise. The “defund” movement is only popular with wealthy pseudo-elites, such as Wiley, who can afford to value signal while surrounded by private security.
For “it’s easy to be idealistic when you don’t have to live with your ideals.” Now, gents, there’s a campaign slogan.
