They’re power mad.
Mayor Mamdani and his comrades in the Democratic Socialists of America are pushing for collective control of NYC’s energy.
“A privatized energy company that’s sending our bills higher and higher every day,” slammed far-left Astoria Councilwoman Alexis Aviles in a new ad campaign that noted Bad Bunny’s dig at Puerto Rico’s unreliable energy grid in the Super Bowl halftime show. “That’s why NYC DSA is fighting to implement public power.”
“In 2017, Puerto Rico’s energy system was sold to a private company,” Avila said in the DSA’s Feb. 12 Instagram video.
“And you can guess what came next — union busting, sky high energy prices and rampant blackouts.
“It’s the same thing here in Nueva York,” Avila says in the clip, “…a privatized energy company that’s sending our bills higher and higher every day.”
Energy giant Con Edison has a monopoly on Gotham’s electricity, supplying near 100% of it.
“That’s why NYC DSA is fighting to implement public power. So, from New York City to P f–king R… Con Ed out, let’s take back our power.”
But comparing Puerto Rico’s energy system — where blackouts are so frequent Bad Bunny named one of his bangers, “El Apagón,” after it — to the Big Apple is loco, critics said.
“It almost demeans the crisis there,” former NYC Councilman Joe Borelli told The Post.
“Puerto Rico’s a genuine crisis. We have bad governance and policy that causes electric rates to be high.”
“Can anyone point to one thing New York City operates more efficiently than a private sector counterpart?” he added. “It’s probably better to let Bad Bunny run it than the city.”
Con Edison, a publicly traded company, serves electricity to 3.6 million customers in most of the five boroughs and Westchester.
Mamdani, who often blasted rising electric bills during his campaign, has long been a backer of DSA’s power grab.
When the group first floated the idea of a public energy when Mamdani was a young Queens Assemblymember in 2021, he was the face of the campaign’s first video.
“For profit monopolies continue to control our power. They charge us some of the highest rates in the country, which can triple at random. And they spend millions of dollars lobbying elected officials to maintain their stranglehold on our power system,” Mamdani, then 29, lambasted in the clip titled “Why New York Needs Public Power.”
“We need an energy system that treats electricity as it is — a public good. And prioritizes people and the planet over the profits of Wall Street investors.”
Con Edison rebuffed the DSA’s claims that it could do the job better and cheaper, saying nearly 30% of a customer’s electric bill comes from the Big Apple’s high property taxes, which it has to pay on its power infrastructure — a rate Mamdani himself proposed to hike this week.
“New York City and Westchester are served by one of the nation’s most reliable electric systems, and sustaining that requires steady, disciplined investment as demand grows,” a spokesperson told The Post.
The company also said it doesn’t produce its own electricity, rather purchasing it on the wholesale market, a factor that would be little changed if the government took over.
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