I’ve always been fascinated by how and what city mayors eat. One of my early favorites was the now-deceased mayor of Hartford and retired firefighter, Mike Peters. As a man of considerable rotundity, he had elevated the usual hot-dog chomping American mayoral image to a more refined version of “hizzoner” holding court at the city’s best steakhouse. Knowing his gustatory habits, I would occasionally stop by in hopes of turning his love for food into a food policy moment. But mixing his pleasure with business required more delicacy than I had yet mustered at that early point in my career. While I can point to a minor success or two – an amuse-bouche, as it were – pairing the plight of Hartford’s hungry children with the mayor’s favorite cabernet was a poor choice.

Fast forward 30 years to November 4, 2025, and we can see that food and food policy are no longer political after thoughts. The recent election of Zohran Mamdani as mayor of New York City was preceded by a New York Times headline that read, “Mamdani built a campaign around food.” It included a quote from Grant Davis Reeher, a political science professor at Syracuse University, who noted that Mr. Mamdani had the exceptional ability to reference food at “the personal level and the policy level.” You can see how that fusion plays out when the mayor-to-be enjoys a chicken biryani with worshipful gusto at the open-all-night Kabab King, then makes a brilliant video to illustrate how the price of a chicken hallah dish can be reduced by modifying government’s regulatory burden on street vendors.

It made me wonder if Mayor Mamdani had read my new book The Road to a Hunger Free America** that includes an essay on Paterson, New Jersey and its mayor of Arab American heritage, Andres Sayegh. As mayor, Sayegh has been a tireless promoter of everything Paterson, including its outstanding Palestinian restaurants. His caloric energy was fuel for the city’s website that’s titled “Paterson: Great Falls, Great Food, Great Future,” one of the few city taglines I’ve seen that put food forward. This promotional flourish extends to several tangible city initiatives designed to solve Paterson’s numerous food access and affordability problems. In Mamdani’s case, it’s his campaign proposal to develop city-managed supermarkets in each of New York’s five boroughs that has grabbed public attention. Regardless of which side of the Hudson River you find yourself on, the message coming from elected officials is that we should joyfully celebrate the wonders of our respective urban cuisines. At the same time, city halls must deploy innovative policies to promote robust food economies and greater food security.

Colorado Goes Big on School Meals

With less national fanfare than the Big Apple, two Colorado ballot measures succeeded in putting more apples into the little hands of school children. By wide margins, the state’s voters approved Proposition LL which will allow school meal programs to keep $12 million of additional tax money to fund Healthy School Meals for All, a measure that Colorado voters passed in 2022. But even more significant was the passage of Proposition MM, especially if you’re interested in the commitment of taxpayers to childhood nutrition. MM (not M&Ms) will lower state tax deductions on income earners over $300,000 per year. This will add approximately $95 million per year to Colorado’s school food service budgets. In other words, nearly 60 percent of the state’s voters chose taxing the rich rather than eating the rich to continue Colorado’s reputation as the healthiest state in the country.

As one who admittedly finds pleasure in analyzing voting patterns at very local levels, I couldn’t help but notice that all of eastern Colorado voted overwhelmingly against both LL and MM. Yes, this is a traditionally conservative area made up of small towns, ranchers, and farmers. But they have children too, and by all accounts they want them to be as well-nourished as the kids in Denver and Boulder. Then it occurred to me that this same region constitutes much of Congressional District 4 which is represented by the notorious half-wit, Lauren Boebert. Among a long list of flaws, foibles, and failures, Boebert recently donned a racist Halloween costume that belittled and degraded Latinos. Now that Congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene seems to be having a Come-to-Jesus moment, Ms. Boebert has officially become the House of Representative’s Head Lunatic in Residence. It’s my considered opinion that with intelligent and responsible political leadership, the people of CO CD-4 will one day rekindle their innate compassion to support public efforts to bring the best food possible to all Colorado children.

SNAP

Of course, these local and statewide November 4th elections took place against the striking backdrop of a suspended SNAP program. To quote Federal District Court Judge John McConnell’s ruling that rebuked the Administration’s denial of emergency SNAP fund use, “This should never happen in America.” But it has and it did. Forty-two million Americans are now juggling their rent, food, and car money to see how to stretch their already slim budgets to accommodate the absence of SNAP benefits.

What kind of cojones does it take for Trump to resist a direct order from the American judiciary to feed the country’s most vulnerable people with emergency funds ($5 to $6 billion) that have been appropriated by Congress as well as other available funds within Section 32 (many billions of dollars). And the next headline of note, juxtaposed with the dire SNAP news, was the announcement that Elon Musk will receive a payment of one trillion dollars for God knows what. This is an amount that is capable of funding the entire food stamp program for the next ten years! In deference to my late mother who has scolded me for using the “f” word when expressing my disgust with such yawning injustices as this one, allow me to say that this is totally copulated up!

A Thousand Points of Light Across the Nation; One Burned Out Bulb in Washington

Fortunately for those who are victims of Trumpism, American community morality belies the saying that “Leaders are only as good as the people who follow them.” The people across America are far better; they are rising to the occasion by taking care of their own, while the President gags on his own venom and lavishes attention on himself. Supermarket customers are adding $5 to their tab at the check-out counter for the local food bank, food and cash donations are flowing into food pantries, pop-up food sites are showing up in bookstores, and late-night TV celebrities are setting up food donation and giveaway stations in their studio’s parking lots.

With less fanfare, food policy councils, United Ways, and other community-based service institutions are coordinating and supporting the work of numerous emergency food sites. They are also using data and their collective knowledge of the community to spotlight groups of greatest need. For instance, I’ve followed the work of the Knoxville (Tenn.) Food Policy Council over the last several months. Not only are their members gathering information about the region’s food needs and disseminating lists of resources to the wider community, but the council has also identified unique pockets of community hardship. These are about 250 people “including refugees, parolees, and asylees [who] will no longer have access to these [SNAP] benefits when the government re-opens, and SNAP is re-established.” In an additional turn of the screw, Trump’s Neanderthals have excluded categories of people, typically the most vulnerable, from receiving food assistance.

As big-hearted and motivated by an enormous charitable impulse as these private local endeavors are, remember that public food assistance out spends its private sector brethren by a ratio of 9 to 1. Food banks, etc. can never rebuild the dam, they can only plug the leaks. Most of them know that, but with enormous courage they have not retreated from shoring up the dam that threatens to burst and drown them.

What, if any, morality guides the leadership of this nation? A snake pit of unprecedented greed and servile self-interest writhes down White House corridors tarnished by the dirt of its own occupants. It will take several terms of new and decent administrations to purge “the people’s house” of the stink and filth now permeating its hallowed halls. But as a practical and political matter, we can build food policy platforms – both locally and nationally – based on access to healthy and affordable food. Trump says grocery prices are “way down.” He lies. CNN says grocery prices were up 2.7 percent in September. An NBC poll found that only 30 percent of voters believe Trump has lived up to their expectations that he would reduce inflation.

Policy actions like those proposed by Mamdani in New York City, expanding school nutrition initiatives like those underway in Colorado, and hyper-vigilance like you find in the caring community of Knoxville are the tickets we need to ride the train to food security. But we must also invite all to ascend a higher moral ground and take back a federal government quickly eroding under Republican control. As New York’s Mayor-elect said in his victory speech: “Fingers bruised from lifting boxes on the warehouse floor, palms calloused from delivery bike handlebars, knuckles scarred with kitchen burns: These are not hands that have been allowed to hold power.” And how often have we ignored the world’s greatest invitation to safety and freedom that New Jersey’s Governor-elect, Mikie Sherrill’s victory speech echoed from the Statue of Liberty located only a few miles away: “Give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to breathe free.” Food security, dietary health, and food as an economic engine are not only important messages, they have also become the medium as well. Whether you’re discussing the price of eggs, the regulation of food trucks, immigrants working in restaurant kitchens, termination of the food stamp program, school meals, or retail food stores, food issues are not only a poignant reminder of America’s social and economic injustices; they are now vehicles for illustrating larger problems and the opportunities for a better American life.

** My new book “The Road to a Hunger-Free America — Selected Writings of Mark Winne” is available at a 20% discount if you buy it online directly from the publisher at bloomsbury.com/9798765132340. Use discount code GLRBD8.