The Many Contradictions of Mark Levine

The controversial New York city councilman has changed positions on the coronavirus pandemic three times in the past four months.

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Mark Levine, the 51-year-old New York City councilman who represents the 7th District in northern Manhattan, has gone to great lengths to counter Donald Trump’s erratic messaging on the coronavirus pandemic: “New York is not going to be distracted by the daily circus in the White House,” he tweeted in April. “We will reopen based on the science, based on public health data.”

As a result, Levine—who chairs the New York City Council’s Committee on Health—has become something of a folk hero for progressive activists and sympathetic media, even being proclaimed “the Anthony Fauci of the New York City Council” by a glowing profile in the Washington Post. Despite having a background in education but no medical experience to think of, his conspicuous public profile as a no-nonsense data wonk with a penchant for rebuking the Trump administration has made him a rising star, and he has made appearances on a variety of national television networks. 

The problem is, in speaking out against Trump at every turn, Levine has displayed a significant amount of hypocrisy himself. His messaging on the coronavirus pandemic has been inconsistent—and sometimes demonstrably wrong—as a result. As late as mid-February, he scoffed at concerns over the impending coronavirus pandemic as “fear-mongering,” deriding the Trump administration’s decision to restrict immigration from China and even going so far as to post pictures of himself at packed Lunar New Year celebrations in Chinatown with captions celebrating the crowd’s “powerful show of defiance” to the “coronavirus scare.” And when he later reneged on his initial skepticism, the councilman deflected criticism by pointing to the president: “Trump was calling it a hoax and downplaying it then and long after,” he shot back at a detractor in April. “Have you denounced him?”

As the severity and contagion of the virus became more apparent, he quickly switched courses, pushing for a “more aggressive” shelter-in-place order, publicly worrying about anti-lockdown protesters and warning against the imprudence of “loosening up” before “the health data says so.” But this, too, disintegrated in the face of political opportunity. In recent weeks, Levine has been embroiled in controversy once again for his enthusiastic support of New York’s anti-racism protests, forgoing his months-long support of citywide shelter-in-place orders to actively march with protesters in his district.

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  1. Avatar photo
    Bill

    "... Although it’s probably too early to determine any correlation between the past week’s protests and infection spikes throughout the country... "
    And therein lies an incontrovertible fact that is not subject to human feelings. This is a classic control systems problem with a large lag in the feedback loop. All engineering students learn that feedback lag in such systems can cause uncontrolled oscillating output behavior. Until those controlling the system (politicians think they do) learn a little about it, don't be surprised if we see several repeating cycles of shut down, open up, oops shut down again, ok open up again, oops shut down again, ..... for a very long time.

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    John Schoch

    Excellent article. One of the many reasons I am Dispatch member. Keep up the good work!

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  3. James D

    I've followed Levine on Twitter throughout a good deal of this crisis, and I must say his hysterics during the peak of the crisis were absolutely remarkable. In all contravention of WHO, Chinese, and Italian experience that testing was the key to defusing a local epidemic, he was constantly blasting out on Twitter for people essentially to avoid the hospital unless they were at death's door. From what we now know of the virus, namely that people who felt like they had only a moderate cold could actually be severely oxygen-deprived to the point of imminent death, as well as the degree of at-home spread through families, this may well have killed people.

    I'm not one for personal attacks, but Mr. Levine objectively failed to rise to the occasion, and certainly should not be in any public health role based off of his conduct in the past few months.

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  4. Token Liberal

    Hmm. A loud mouthed New Yorker who says whatever is convenient in the moment? Who ever heard of such a thing? 😀

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  5. John M

    Oddly, this article is hope-inspiring, in that it shows that this moral-blank-check lunacy may be self-correcting. Politicians gonna politician... never really looked at that as a good thing before.

    It's time to unplug. I cannot see the forest anymore.

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  6. Avatar photo
    Aylene Wright

    This is a pretty good first effort at a full length article and I enjoyed reading it. Levine is certainly an interesting character, and your profile reminds me of the informative profiles of politicians (mostly on the Right, but some on the Left) that I used to read in the Weekly Standard. I especially value knowing that there still are such thing as moderate and even conservative Democrats, even in NYC, and that there still is room for dissent and diversity of views on this subject (and I assume others).

    Many on the right assume that ALL Democrats have a progressive socialist utopia as their ultimate political goal, and the only point of difference is whether the strategy they pursue towards that goal is incremental or revolutionary. That narrative fuels many political attack ads by Republicans, of course. But I really don't think that's the case.

    I do however quibble with your contention that "Prominent public health experts" have "now taken en masse to supporting the protests.". What exactly do you mean by this? Do you think that 99% of public health experts actively support the protests? Or just that a majority (say, 60%) does? Citing one POLITICO article (I have read it, and it cites a grand total of FOUR actual "experts" with credentials, most are active on Twitter that skews very left, and also cites Dr. Flier, "the former dean of Harvard Medical School", pushing back against the idea. Hardly a large sampling. I also recall Mr. Diamond, the author of that article, later tweeting that he'd gotten feedback from other public health and medical professionals who disagreed with this supposed expert consensus. AFAIK neither Dr. Birx or Dr. Fauci have expressed unqualified support for the protests.

    As for that "open letter", there's a lot of information out there that only about 10% of the signatures are from actual public health officials who gave their credentials to prove they actually have expert knowledge. I admit I haven't read through the 1200+ names myself, but I certainly wouldn't take the content of that letter as representing all the experts.

    There's also a big difference between how the public perceives public health experts, and the flip-flopping politicians who claim to base their stances on objective public health data, but as it is obvious about Mr. Levine, don't actually do so.

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    1. John M

      I agree. I think The Dispatch has taken the bait on that one a bit too much. We have to be able to discern people of influence from people trying to cheaply make a name for themselves. On the flipside, the moral failure of the party that claims to support them is that they're downplaying it or avoiding talking about it. We all know why. They're afraid of the woke mobs, or want to continue to profit off of them. I shudder to think of the third option, which is that they're neither cynical nor afraid.

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        Aylene Wright

        I think much of the RW anger here is NOT that SOME public health officials and politicians are supporting the anti-racism protesters, but that they are the beneficiaries of a special pleading, while non-protesters still are subjected to extensive lockdown rules. Or that many of the exact same people who are cheering on the protesters, are mocking the idea that Trump will start holding mass rallies again and predicting the MAGA ranks will quickly be decimated by the virus. It's total cognitive dissonance and a sign that tribalism has truly made people insane!

        One widely circulated infographic of a policy allows for a maximum of 12 people to gather for private events, but a max of 100 people for protests. At least that doesn't engage in viewpoint discrimination. But the virus doesn't care WHY a group of people are gathering. It would make some actual scientific sense to have looser rules for an outside gathering than an inside gathering, though. But the public health people aren't directly making those rules, so I still think that when we assign responsibility, we need o separate the public health experts and the politicians.

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        1. John M

          This guy is right-leaning and had a good take on this to turn down the temperature and try to help serious public health experts claw back credibility.

          https://polimath.substack.com/p/only-the-best-experts

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            Aylene Wright

            Thanks for the link. He makes great points that the public health experts in the news these days for supporting the protests, were NOT the ones making the news earlier. Though to be fair, many were on Twitter, they weren't getting near as much attention for their earlier pro-lockdown takes.

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  7. Avatar photo
    Kevin Johnson

    Nate, Great stuff. Sorry your time as a Fellow is so boring, with little of interest going on. For sure things will pick up once we are over this dry spell. Seriously, for a moment, I really enjoyed this. Many of our current problems, described by Dispatch founders and guests, (and now you) seem to me to come down to tribal divisions and the shrinking (or silencing?) of a rational center. Mr. Levine is, inter Alia, carried away with a “nothing else matters but getting Trump” mindset. Jonah repeatedly and hysterically notes the incredible dexterity and shamelessness of Trump supporters’ determination to support anything uttered by the “Dear Leader.” Here, you do a great service by not only showing a gross example, but ALSO identifying a real democrat on the Council who has had enough of it. You, through him, show that some are willing to call out those pushing garbage both because it is wrong and, crucially, that such behavior (they argue and we hope) will ultimately discredit and hurt the progressive cause. Showing big themes through concrete examples and analysis is kinda what great journalism can be. A damn good start, I’d say. Thanks much!

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    1. Nate Hochman

      Thanks Kevin!

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