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By Gary Tizler

In City of Ambition: FDR, LaGuardia, and the Making of Modern New York, Professor Mason Williams explores how the partnership between a New York City-friendly president and a pragmatic mayor, showing how their collaboration reshaped the city’s by building affordable housing, bridges, highways, tunnels, subways, airports, hospitals, parks, pools, libraries, and the nation’s first public housing projects, all funded by the federal government. Their transformative city-federal alliance turned New York City into the world’s leading global city.

Professor Williams highlights the unlikely yet highly effective collaboration between Franklin D. Roosevelt, a patrician Democrat, and Fiorello LaGuardia, a reform-minded Republican with immigrant roots, an odd couple. This dynamic partnership, forged during the Great Depression, yielded extraordinary results. By positioning New York City as the primary beneficiary of federal New Deal funds, they lifted the city from the economic despair of the Depression and laid the foundation for a robust infrastructure that generated millions of jobs. Their alliance fueled the city’s growth, and created economic opportunities that empowered the city’s working-class and immigrant communities to thrive, ultimately enabling many to ascend to the middle and upper classes.

A Partnership Between a Mayor and President Eighty Years Ago Made NYC Great, Using Federal Funds

By 1937, FDR’s Works Progress Administration (WPA) was responsible for approximately 31% of New York City’s budget, or 54% if excluding core city functions like education, police, sanitation, and corrections. This collaboration resulted in 1 in 11 New York City jobs being funded by the federal government. Today, federal funding accounts for $9.6 billion of NYC’s $115 billion budget, or 8%, during the Biden administration. However, if the city’s leaders continue to be hostile toward the current president, this vital federal support will surely diminish in the next four years, as the federal government cuts workers and programs.

New Yorker Donald Trump has already expressed his intention to inject federal funds into New York City’s struggling economy, aiming to restore the city to its former greatness—an opportunity for the city to revive much-needed federal support. This perspective is largely overlooked by today’s NYC mayoral candidates, who seem to forget or never knew that presidents have historically played a crucial role in making NYC into the world’s leading city.

In 1828, President Andrew Jackson vetoed a bill for the creation of the Philadelphia National Bank as a return favor for Tammany Hall’s support in securing New York’s electoral votes, which clinched his presidency. In the aftermath, Jackson funneled federal funds into New York State banks, a strategic move that laid the foundation for Wall Street, which for decades provided about 20% of New York City’s budget. However, as financial companies increasingly relocate to Texas and Florida, that contribution has dwindled to just 16%, creating significant fiscal challenges for the city.

Unfortunately, the dangers of wealth leaving the city are being ignored by the mayoral candidates, the socialist City Council, and the city’s newspapers, despite the crucial importance of this year’s mayoral campaign to the future of NYC. A recent poll revealed that 50% of New Yorkers are prepared to follow the over half a million residents who have already left the city, should NYC’s leaders fail to make meaningful improvements to the city. JPMorgan Chase has been expanding its operations in Texas, including moving executives and employees to Dallas, citing lower costs and a business-friendly environment.

Mayoral Candidates Who Oppose the President May Win Votes, Elections, But They Won’t Solve NYC’s Real Problems to Keep NYC Greatness

Not only are the mayoral candidates ignoring or are clueless about the importance of the critical city-federal alliance needed to halt the flight of wealth from the city, but the pervasive anti-Trump sentiment among NYC’s mayoral candidates, political leaders and voters is also preventing the kind of productive partnership that once propelled New York City to greatness, using federal funds. Without a renewed federal-city alliance, the city will lose hundreds-of-billions of dollars in construction and millions of jobs for its working-class and immigrant communities, as well as the chance to build more or rebuild the infrastructure and institutions that have historically made New York a global powerhouse. Without a federal partnership, NYC will not be able to reinvigorate its economy and remain a beacon of opportunity, ultimately failing to attract the best and brightest talent needed to maintain its status as the world’s leading city.

Mayoral Candidates in the Words of Jimmy Breslin: “Can’t Anyone Play this Game”

Instead of learning from the historical lesson of how a strong mayor-president partnership can elevate both the city and its culture, today’s mayoral candidates are jeopardizing New York’s future by prioritizing political opposition to Trump, all while claiming to protect New Yorkers from him. In reality, they are protecting nothing. The president still holds the power to influence the city deeply—whether by deporting antisemitic student protesters, ending congestion pricing, ending funding for bike lanes, political nonprofits and cutting federal funding the city is expecting to balance its budget. Mayoral candidates blocking a new federal partnership are not safeguarding New Yorkers from a president—they are harming the public and destroying a great city.

In their shortsighted efforts to win in New York’s liberal, one-party low voting elections, these mayoral candidates—even those who have not directly attacked Trump—fail to recognize the pivotal role that the collaboration between FDR and LaGuardia played in driving prosperity for the city’s working-class and immigrant communities. The media has a critical responsibility to inform New Yorkers that if this year’s City Hall victors dismiss a potential federal partnership solely due to their opposition to the president, they will be sabotaging the city’s long-term prosperity and hurting the future well-being of its residents.

Council Speaker Adrienne Adams is running for mayor attacking President Trump in every speech she gives, saying he was a tyrant who is “corrupting our city’s independence. It’s time to stand up to him.” Speaker Adams runs a woke council that ignores crime, empty storefront, office building, the mentally ill pushing people in front of subway trains and enjoys defunding and weakening the police. Comptroller Brad Lander said he is running for mayor to “protect New Yorkers” from Trump and the threats to housing affordability, clueless about the hundreds-of-thousands of affordable housings that the partnership of LaGuardia and FDR built in NYC. Mayoral candidate Zellner Myrie stated “I’m not confident as a New Yorker that Mayor Adams is going to stand up to the president.” Former Obama aide Michael Blake, rip Adams over Trump ties. Mayoral candidate Zohran Mamdani said, “I think there are absolutely horrific and heinous things about Donald Trump and tried to attack “border czar” Tom Homan when he spoke in Albany.” Another mayoral candidate Jessica Ramos has criticized Mayor Eric Adams for meeting with Trump.

It is evident that the mayoral candidates and the media covering them are completely oblivious to the transformative initiatives, job creation, and economic growth that the collaboration between FDR and LaGuardia brought to New York City. Their ignorance, fueled by misguided hatred and a clear lack of preparation for the mayoral job, has not only hindered the city’s potential but also effectively blocked millions of jobs for city residents. This shortsightedness has stifled opportunities for working-class small business owners to ascend to the middle and even wealthy classes, ultimately denying the city’s residents the chance to improve their lives and achieve a better future, like past generations of New Yorkers had the opportunity to do.

2025 Mayoral Campaign: What Economy, Fund My Nonprofits

Most of this year’s mayoral candidates are not concerned with the city’s economy, they are focusing on funding political nonprofits, which have effectively become the new political clubs in NYC. These nonprofits provide candidates with volunteers and the overpaid directors offer campaign contributions in exchange for public funds. Ms. Adams and other candidates have proposed initiatives like accelerating government payments to these organizations. A glaring example of how the city’s nonprofits became political tools was exposed in a 1993 New York Times investigation, which revealed how Brooklyn political boss Vito Lopez took control of a nonprofit and transformed it into his personal, government-funded political machine. Shockingly, the Times never followed up on their explosive “Boss Lopez: Growth of a New Age Political Machine” article, written over 30 years ago.

The NY Times Fails to Recognize the Crucial Role a City-Federal Partnership Played in Shaping New York’s Success

It’s not just the mayoral candidates; the city’s newspapers, even the NY Times have ignored or forgotten the crucial lesson of the FDR-LaGuardia partnership, which demonstrated that NYC’s success depends on strong collaborations between local leaders and a supportive president. It’s clear from coverage in the mayoral campaign that the city’s newspapers and political reporters have failed to study the historical significance of the FDR-LaGuardia partnership in making NYC great, wealthy, and creating a social framework that allowed millions of hard-working immigrant New Yorkers to rise into the middle class. Instead of explaining the cost to the city’s working-class and immigrant communities if local leaders fail to work with a friendly president, the media has joined the mayoral candidates in attacking Trump. The New York Times even pressured Cuomo to prove how he would stand up to Trump, asking, “If Cuomo Became Mayor, Would He Really Stand Up to Trump? ” The Times also claimed that Trump’s return to the White House could jeopardize the city’s recovery from the pandemic, Trump’s return to the White House could upend the city’s recovery from the pandemic. While the Times writes about the unaffordability of NYC, it neglects to connect the progressive policies—such as blocking Amazon’s proposed headquarters, which would have brought 150,000 high-paying jobs to Queens—with the city’s financial struggles.

“Socialists Spend a Lot of Money Until the Money Runs Out” Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher

The socialist progressives who run the city, are leading the anti-Trump movement and controlling New York City’s government today are exploiting the city’s economic engine built by prior generations of NY’s leaders to fund ideological ineffective programs aimed at securing votes. A prime example of this is the failure of Mayor de Blasio’s wife’s ThriveNYC initiative, a $1.5 billion project intended to address mental health issues, which ultimately did little more than line the pockets of politically connected nonprofit directors. Unlike FDR and LaGuardia, who focused on building a prosperous city that empowered working-class and immigrant communities.

Today’s socialist, have undermined affordable housing with gentrification, forcing many residents to flee or become homeless, while falsely claiming to champion the working-class immigrants and minorities who are facing higher rents in changing neighborhoods. “Socialist tax the rich” agenda to fund their ideological programs pushing the wealthy out of the city without realizing that the great institutions of New York—like the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the American Museum of Natural History, and the New York Public Library at 42nd Street—were built by wealthy New Yorkers, including philanthropists like John D. Rockefeller and J.P. Morgan.

Socialists are indifferent to sustaining the city’s economic engine, choosing to ignore the pressing issue of wealth loss, as 500,000 New Yorkers and trillions in Wall Street business have already fled the city. Shockingly, the media is complicit in enabling this socialist control by failing to question mayoral candidates about why the city’s wealthiest residents and businesses are leaving. This dangerous silence from both politicians and the media only accelerates the city’s decline.

NY Post Columnist Goodwin Undiscovered and Uncovered NYC

In his New York Post columns, Michael Goodwin misses the crucial lesson from the FDR-LaGuardia era about how New York City became great by focusing too much on today’s politicians’ sensational comments or self-serving actions. Goodwin fails to understand that a city-federal partnership is more important to NYC’s future than who is elected mayor.

Goodwin needs to shift his analysis of the irrationality of today’s city leaders to point out how today’s NYC politicians fail to understand the economic engine that once drove the city to prosperity, was created or how to maintain it. His columns should cut through the campaign spin and consultant-crafted talking points, using the example of the FDR-LaGuardia partnership to challenge mayoral candidates on how they plan to secure more federal funds for the working, middle, and immigrant classes—just as FDR and LaGuardia did.

In a recent column, Goodwin argues that Governor Hochul and Attorney General James—frustrated by their thwarted ambitions following the presidential election results—are positioning themselves as protectors of the city from Trump. By fixating on their personal political agendas, Goodwin overlooks the crucial historical lesson of how NYC became great through collaboration between city and federal leaders. The recent NY Post article, “NY Gov. Hochul abruptly shifts stance as she claims to lead the anti-Trump ‘resistance’: ‘We’re coming back hard,’” fails to address the cost of her resistance to the city and its working-class and immigrant communities. Rather than fostering a federal partnership that could reinvigorate a struggling city, today’s political coverage has spun an alternative reality—a fantasy about how NYC can regain its former greatness, just by electing a better mayor. What made LaGuardia the greatest mayor NYC ever had was the support and funding he received from FDR.

The Accomplishments of the FDR, LaGuardia Partnership That Turned Around NYC and Created the Greatest City in the World

Under Roosevelt’s New Deal, the Works Progress Administration (WPA) funded transformative infrastructure projects that reshaped New York City. These included the construction of the Triborough Bridge, the Lincoln and Queens-Midtown Tunnels, and LaGuardia Airport, the city’s first commercial airport. The WPA also played a pivotal role in expanding the subway system to the outer boroughs and completing the Eighth Avenue Independent Subway Line. FDR and LaGuardia’s partnership was instrumental in launching public housing, with the creation of the city’s first housing projects, such as the East Village’s First Houses, Harlem River Houses, and Red Hook Houses. These groundbreaking initiatives, along with the development of schools, libraries, and public buildings, laid the foundation for New York City’s future growth and prosperity, improving the quality of life of all the city’s residents—rich or poor.

Mayor LaGuardia played a pivotal role in driving forward the development of affordable housing for working, and middle-class New Yorkers. His leadership resulted in the construction of large-scale housing developments with federal support, including Stuyvesant Town-Peter Cooper Village, Cooper Village, and the Smith Houses. LaGuardia also championed the creation of Flushing Meadows-Corona Park for the 1939 World’s Fair—an enduring landmark that remains central to the city’s immigrant cultural fabric.

Together, FDR and LaGuardia’s visionary policies produced lasting recreation facilities such as the Roosevelt Boardwalk, Orchard Beach, Carl Schurz Park, the Astoria Pool, and dozens of neighbor parks. These projects were part of a broader effort to provide recreational spaces to elevate the health of New Yorkers.

New Yorkers Remain Unaware of How Their City Became Great—A Lack of Understanding That Could Lead to NYC’s Continued Decline

Today, everyone recognizes the FDR Drive as a main route to LaGuardia Airport, but few know how and why both were built. After Trump expressed his willingness to help New York City, the media failed to inform residents about the results of the powerful collaboration between President Roosevelt and Mayor LaGuardia, which laid the foundation for the city’s prosperity and its status as a global economic and cultural leader. Today’s political and media leaders are unaware of the partnership blueprint that Roosevelt and LaGuardia left for future generations of New York’s leaders—a plan that could continue the city’s economic strength and improve the quality of life for all New Yorkers. Unfortunately, based on the rhetoric from the mayoral candidates and the media’s coverage, it seems a productive NYC partnership with Trump is unlikely to happen with Trump as president.

Protecting New Yorkers from Trump will come at a steep cost to the city’s future, particularly for the working-class and immigrant communities who desperately need higher paying jobs, affordable housing, and economic opportunities to rise into the middle and upper classes. Mayoral candidates who attack Trump in the name of “protecting” New Yorkers are actually undermining any chance of securing vital federal assistance to address the city’s affordable housing crisis, hitting the city’s working class, minorities and immigrants the hardest. Every mayoral candidate should be forced to read the following when the mayoral candidates visit the city’s newspaper editorial boards, “LaGuardia and FDR partnership-built hundreds of thousands of working and middle-class affordable housing building for New Yorkers, what are you going to do to solve the city’s affordable housing crisis.”

Almost half of New Yorkers say they will leave NYC if the city does not change directions, financial giant Goldman Sachs is moving executives to Texas, only federal help can reinvent and stop the flight from the city. Repairing or building new bridges, subways, schools, parks, libraries and the jobs to build these new federal projects would recreate Roosevelt’s New Deal’s vision of “the good life for all Americans,” and laid the foundation for New York’s to again rise as a global center of culture, commerce, and opportunity.

The media frequently portrays mayoral candidates as the saviors of New York City, but the city’s future hinges on recreating the conditions that fueled the successful collaboration between federal and municipal governments during the Great Depression. To address the devastation caused by the crime surge and the economic fallout from COVID-19, New York needs a revitalized city-federal partnership—one that can restore the city’s cultural vibrancy, economic prosperity, and global leadership. Relying on the untested promises of mayoral candidates who lack an understanding of how federal funding transformed NYC into the world’s leading metropolis is not the solution.

The NYC media has failed to inform New Yorkers about the pivotal role the city-federal partnership during the New Deal played in creating enduring assets, jobs, and opportunities that would never have materialized without federal support. Today, with another New York-friendly president in office, the city stands at a unique crossroads—the last chance to revitalize itself just as FDR and LaGuardia did during the Great Depression. The crucial question in the upcoming municipal and state elections is whether New York’s newly elected officials will embrace or obstruct a potential city-federal partnership capable of revitalizing the city and its cultural landscape. The stakes are high, and the outcome will determine whether New York can reclaim its former glory. Stay tuned.