In just a few days, a Karl Marx-quoting communist who has struggled to disavow Hamas is likely to be elected the next mayor of the nation’s financial and cultural epicenter. Thirty-three-year-old New York state Assemblyman Zohran Mamdani has surged to the front of the race. He leads by double digits in virtually every public poll, he is an overwhelming favorite in the online betting markets.

Absent a miracle, in short, Mamdani is going to win and will be the next mayor of New York City. But one might be forgiven for believing in the possibility of miracles. Mamdani must, somehow, be rejected — and if he prevails, the grave consequences will extend far beyond the Big Apple.

First, consider Mandani’s platform. He proposes a rent freeze on all rent-stabilized apartments, the creation of hundreds of thousands of publicly owned housing units, “free” city-run grocery stores, universal child care from infancy to kindergarten, free bus service, and steep tax hikes — including a jump in the corporate tax from 7.25% to 11.5%, and a new 2% surcharge on incomes exceeding a million dollars a year. On public safety, he would divert funds away from the New York City Police Department to a new Department of Community Safety staffed by social workers and activists.

This is not reform. It is social transformation. And to understand what’s truly at stake for all of us non-New Yorkers, one must remember what New York City still represents.

For better or worse, New York remains the economic, cultural and innovative engine of the United States. It is the American epicenter of finance, media and the arts — where Wall Street meets Broadway, and venture capital meets high fashion. Its GDP rivals that of most nations. Its museums, universities and creative industries shape not just American identity but global trends.

When the nation’s largest and most important city thrives, the entire country feels the lift. And when New York falters, the ripple effects are often national. What happens in City Hall has the potential to reverberate from sea to shining sea.

Yet Mamdani proposes to turn Gotham into a laboratory for radical economic redistribution and left-wing social engineering. A hard-left mayor with ambitions to transform New York into a “people’s city” governed by public ownership and woke purity would send an unmistakable message: Prosperity is expendable, a traditional religious lifestyle is retrograde, and law enforcement is a relic of oppression.

It is true that much of Mamdani’s agenda would require legislation in Albany, but transformative leftist executives have a history of ignoring such procedural niceties — who, after all, can forget former President Barack Obama’s “pen and a phone”? And if Mamdani is successful, business flight, investor uncertainty and tax-base erosion would follow as surely as night follows day. Many remaining religious New Yorkers would follow as well.