It’s no secret that New York City’s municipal workers dislike being told what to do when it comes to their private lives and personal decisions.
Many of these employees are already deeply irritated by progressive policies that favor chaos over law and order, anti-police approaches, and obnoxious “diversity” requirements. Now, in his Solomon-like wisdom, Mayor Bill de Blasio has begun to enforce his deeply unpopular vaccine mandate by heartlessly putting thousands of city workers out of a job.
Nor was it dehumanizing enough to mandate that municipal employees become guinea pigs for the most-politicized injection ever developed or be cut loose; the requirement is structured in such a way that dirty, recalcitrant unvax aren’t even eligible for the Biden-era’s renowned unemployment largesse. You can bet that didn’t sit well with the newly impoverished erstwhile heroes.
I bet these folks would just love a meaningful way to express their anger. Whatever is a former worker with lots of time on his or her hands to do?
Luckily, there’s an election tomorrow. New York City is choosing between two disparate mayoral candidates, one who loves vaccine mandates—for workers as well as anyone who sets foot within city limits and wants to eat, shop, or otherwise put money into the local economy—and one who has promised to lift the mandates on his first day in office.
Related: FDNY Shutters 26 Firehouses Over Vaccine Mandate
So, how many votes are we talking about?
As of the Friday vaccine deadline, a sizable chunk of NYC workers still hadn’t blinked: 28% of Firefighters, 24% of Department of Sanitation workers, 16% of Law Enforcement Officers, and 16% of the Emergency Medical Service remained unvaccinated. In all, we’re talking 14% of municipal employees—nearly 53,000 people. 53,000 people who are likely to be highly motivated anti-mandate voters.
And just because a city worker has gotten the jab, that doesn’t mean he or she supports the mandate. Prior to the deadline, the number of unvaccinated workers had been significantly higher.
While there don’t seem to be any polls specifically of cops, firefighters, EMS, or sanitation workers that measure the popularity of vaccine mandates, various other polls fail to demonstrate overwhelming support for such a policy. For the sake of argument, then, we can conservatively estimate that 25% of NYC workers—94,500 people—oppose mandates strongly enough to vote against them.
But not all municipal employees reside within city limits. Not surprisingly, many prefer the space and relative sanity of the surrounding suburbs to the restrictive social environment of progressive Gotham. For example, as of 2020, roughly half of NYPD employees lived outside NYC. So let’s figure that only half of our anti-mandate voters live within the city and are eligible to vote in the election: that’s 47,250 votes for the anti-mandate candidate, Curtis Sliwa.
Note that I haven’t even touched upon the thousands of spouses, partners, parents, children, and other friends and family members who are financially impacted and really steamed.
And thanks to de Blasio’s totalitarian health policies, quite a few of these people will have time on their hands tomorrow.
Happy voting, NYC!
