New York City needs to take back the ever-more powerful and deranged City Council

Democratic Socialist Zohran Mamdani, an assemblyman from Queens, has jumped into the New York City mayor’s race with the backing of the same group that engineered the election of Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez to Congress.“Now is the time for us to get to work to replace our corrupt, autocratic mayor with a proven socialist,” the Democratic Socialists of America declared.And Israel-hater, they forgot to mention.With Mayor Adams facing legal woes, Mamdani is the just the latest of several far-left candidates to declare plans to run for his job. But even if a moderate candidate defeats these leftists, putting a new leader in City Hall will not be enough to reverse the city’s rapid deterioration. Because the problem doesn’t lie in the mayor’s office alone, but down the hall in the City Council.Adams was handicapped from Day 1 — long before the corruption charges — by an ideologically extreme council that treats him like a piñata.And New Yorkers crying out for a city government with a common-sense agenda — safe subway rides, good schools, order instead of chaos on the streets — have themselves, in part, to blame.In last year’s local elections, when all 51 council seats were up for grabs, voter turnout was a dismal 7.2% for the primaries and 12.8% in the general election. The number of New Yorkers who went to the polls (578,877) barely exceeded the number who voted with their feet (546,146) and moved out of the city over the previous three years.And now we’re all paying the price.The City Council is willfully destroying public safety and quality of life, even affirming that sleeping on the street is a “right” — the impact on your neighborhood be damned.The council defeated Adams’ attempts to restrain spending and prioritize crime-fighting.Its budget agreement, finalized in June, spends 18.3% more than former Mayor Bill de Blasio’s final budget — and de Blasio was a reckless spendthrift — with none of the increased spending de...