New York City mayoral hopeful Zohran Mamdani is pitching city-run grocery stores and free buses, but a Missouri lawmaker warns these ideas are a recipe for fiscal disaster.
Mamdani’s platform mirrors failed experiments in Kansas City, where taxpayer-funded ventures like the KC Sun Fresh grocery store and a zero-fare bus system bled millions while delivering dismal results, as Fox News reports.
In 2018, Kansas City opened the KC Sun Fresh store in a food desert plagued by high crime, hoping to fill a gap that private grocers avoided. The city poured millions in subsidies into the store, only to see it teeter on the brink of closure. Crime, including shootings and robberies, surged around KC Sun Fresh, scaring off customers and deepening the project’s failure.
Missouri Rep. Mark Alford, a former news anchor who covered the store’s opening, called it a $15 million taxpayer-funded flop. “It’s an oasis of crime,” Alford said on Fox & Friends, pointing out that the urban core’s violence deterred private investment and sank the city’s gamble.
His critique stings because it’s grounded in hard numbers -- $15 million in losses prove socialism’s bitter aftertaste. In 2019, Kansas City tried another progressive experiment, approving zero-fare buses to boost access and equity.
The plan backfired, costing the region $8 to $10 million in fare revenue in 2020 alone, per the Mid-America Regional Council. While some fare-collection costs dropped, the savings couldn’t offset the revenue hemorrhage or the added strain of increased ridership.
“Now they’re back to $2 rides,” Alford noted, as Kansas City’s council voted to reinstate fares after the financial hit became unsustainable. A six-month stopgap measure, starting in October, restored standard $2 fares for most riders to plug the budget hole.
CARES Act funds temporarily masked the losses, but the Mid-America Regional Council warned that without new revenue or savings, zero-fare was doomed. “Additional revenues or new cost savings must be found,” the council’s findings stated, a blunt admission of the policy’s failure.
Mamdani, undeterred, cites a city-run grocery in St. Paul, Kansas, operational since 2013, as proof that his ideas can work. But St. Paul’s tiny scale -- hardly a bustling metropolis -- makes it a shaky blueprint for New York City’s complex urban challenges.
“If the idea isn’t successful at the pilot level, it doesn’t deserve to be scaled up,” Mamdani admitted on the Plain English podcast, a line that critics might hurl back at him. His logic suggests New York should tread carefully before betting taxpayer dollars on unproven schemes.
Alford didn’t mince words, declaring, “Socialism does not work in America,” and branding Mamdani’s vision a recycled failure destined to flop in the Big Apple. Fox News Digital sought comment from Mamdani’s campaign, but the silence speaks volumes -- perhaps even they can’t defend these costly missteps.
Kansas City’s cautionary tale exposes the risks of Mamdani’s agenda: noble intentions drowned in red ink and unintended consequences. Alford’s warning is clear -- New Yorkers should think twice before boarding Mamdani’s bus to nowhere.
City-run groceries and free buses sound appealing until the bill arrives, as Kansas City learned the hard way.
Mamdani’s plans, cloaked in progressive ideals, ignore the reality that government isn’t a magic wand for market failures.
If New York follows his lead, it risks repeating Kansas City’s mistakes -- wasting millions while crime and chaos flourish.
