A blunt look at what DSA-backed and Democratic policy has done to New Rochelle, Westchester County and New York State. Where we state a fact, we cite a source. Everything else is our opinion — clearly labeled as such.
These are positions the Democratic Socialists of America and the Democratic majority in Albany actually advocate — not caricatures.
The DSA's national platform calls for defunding the police and cutting police budgets. New York City cut its police budget by roughly $1 billion in 2020 — and violent crime rose in the years that followed. In our view, families in New Rochelle want more officers on Main Street, not fewer.
In its 2025–2026 national platform, "Workers Deserve More," the DSA calls for a new constitution and a "democratic socialist republic" — getting rid of the Electoral College and the U.S. Senate, rebuilding Congress into a single proportionally elected chamber, and replacing the President and the Supreme Court with an executive and judiciary "chosen by and subordinate to Congress." DSA co-chair Ashik Siddique has publicly defended the Senate plank, calling the chamber "a very undemocratic institution." In our view, this is not reform — it is dismantling the separation of powers that has protected Americans for 250 years, and it is now the platform of a movement that runs its candidates on the Democratic line.
The DSA platform calls for an "immediate end to all deportations," free migration between countries without restrictive immigration controls, abolishing ICE and Customs and Border Protection, decriminalizing border crossing, and amnesty for all immigrants. It also calls for "extending full voting rights to people with criminal convictions and noncitizens." We support legal, lawful immigration — but erasing the line between lawful entry and unlawful entry, and handing the ballot to people who are not citizens, is something New Rochelle families never voted for.
DSA candidates do not run on their own ballot line here — they run as Democrats, and they win Democratic primaries in New York City, Albany and across the state. Yet as the DSA platform moved to scrapping the Constitution, the Senate, the presidency and the Supreme Court, mainstream Democratic officials in New York have largely stayed silent, declined to condemn it, or campaigned alongside the candidates carrying it. Silence is a choice. In our opinion, voters deserve to hear every Democrat on the ballot in Westchester say plainly whether they support abolishing the Senate, the presidency and the Supreme Court — or not.
New York's sanctuary policies limit cooperation with federal immigration enforcement, and New York City has spent billions housing and servicing migrants while longtime residents wait on housing lists and watch services strained. We believe government should put its own taxpayers first.
New York consistently ranks at or near the top of state and local tax burden rankings — and near the top of outbound migration. People are voting with their feet, and the majority conference in Albany keeps spending.
New York's 2019 bail law eliminated cash bail for most misdemeanors and non-violent felonies. It has been revised repeatedly since, after police departments, prosecutors and mayors — including Democrats — warned it was releasing repeat offenders back onto the street.
New Rochelle has been under one-party control for most of the last two decades. The results are documented on this site: a housing authority designated troubled by HUD, a school district that cut 193 positions against a budget gap, and downtown development propped up by tax abatements residents are still paying for.
Rather than repeat it here, read the sourced record:
Westchester County residents pay some of the highest property taxes in the United States. County government has been in Democratic hands for years, and in our view the tax burden on homeowners keeps climbing while core services stagnate.
OpinionAlbany runs on one-party rule: the Governor's office and both houses of the legislature. New York's budget has grown to over $250 billion — while Florida, a state with millions more residents, spends less than half of that — and New York continues to lead the nation in outbound migration.
Our opinion: when one party holds every lever, no one is ever held responsible. The taxes go up, the people leave, and Albany blames Washington.
OpinionThe federal government has increasingly used funding as leverage over states it says are mismanaging programs or defying federal law — from threats to withhold transportation and education funding to fraud investigations into state-administered programs.
Our opinion: New York's political class spent years treating federal money as an entitlement while fraud and waste piled up. If Washington demands proof the money is spent lawfully — and holds funds until Albany and City Hall fix the corruption — taxpayers should welcome it. Clean up the books, or lose the money.
OpinionPlenty of lifelong Democrats in New Rochelle didn't leave their party — their party left them. You don't have to belong to any party to demand safe streets, honest budgets and a government that answers to taxpayers. You just have to show up.
OpinionDisagree with something on this page? Every factual claim has a source — check them.
Read the sourced City Assessment
