New York City mayoral candidate Zohran Mamdani is campaigning on an ambitious progressive agenda—including city-run grocery stores and free public buses—but one Republican lawmaker says the plan has already proven disastrous elsewhere.
Rep. Mark Alford, a Republican from Missouri whose district includes Kansas City, cautioned that similar initiatives have failed in his city, leaving taxpayers on the hook and neighborhoods worse off. Alford covered the opening of Kansas City’s government-backed KC Sun Fresh grocery store as a local news anchor in 2018. Today, that store is struggling to survive.
“This was in a food desert, in the urban core,” Alford said Thursday on Fox & Friends. “The city stepped in with millions in subsidies because no grocery chain wanted to operate there—mainly due to rampant crime. In the end, the store lost $15 million in taxpayer money, crime in the area escalated, and the project failed.”
City-Run Transit Also Floundered, Alford Says
Alford drew further comparisons between Mamdani’s proposals and Kansas City’s experiment with zero-fare public transit, which was launched in 2019. While initially praised, the fare-free program led to an estimated $8–10 million in lost revenue in 2020 alone, according to data from the Mid-America Regional Council (MARC). Though the CARES Act temporarily covered the deficit, the city council voted earlier this year to reinstate $2 fares, citing unsustainable costs and increased service demands.
“Some savings came from eliminating fare collection, but it wasn’t enough,” MARC reported. “Without new revenue sources or cost savings, the program couldn’t last.”
“They’re back to $2 rides,” Alford said. “That’s the reality of how these programs collapse under their own weight.”
Mamdani’s Agenda Sparks National Debate
Zohran Mamdani, a self-identified Democratic socialist and current Democratic nominee for New York City mayor, has sparked debate over whether his ambitious platform is financially and logistically feasible in a city as large and complex as New York.
“Socialism doesn’t work in America. Communism doesn’t work in America,” Alford said. “The Democrats have lacked a clear leader or message. Now they’ve found one in Zohran Mamdani—and it’s a failure in the making. What didn’t work in Kansas City won’t work in New York.”
Business leaders and city officials in New York have echoed similar concerns, warning that Mamdani’s proposals could drive businesses out of the city “in droves” and strain an already overburdened municipal budget.
Mamdani Defends Proposals as Testable
Mamdani, for his part, has defended his agenda. He told The New York Post that a city-owned grocery store in St. Paul, Kansas—purchased by the city in 2013—remains operational, proving that such models can work in underserved communities.
He also said on the Plain English podcast with Derek Thompson that his proposals would be rolled out on a pilot basis. “If the idea isn’t successful at the pilot level,” Mamdani said, “then it doesn’t deserve to be scaled up.”
