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A House Republican who’s had experience with his own family grocery store chain is criticizing New York City mayoral candidate Zohran Mamdani’s call for government-owned markets.
“This will be a bullet into the heart of the U.S. grocery industry, if this caught on,” Rep. Michael Rulli, R-Ohio, told Fox News Digital in an interview.
Mamdani, a self-declared democratic socialist, has proposed a pilot program of five government-owned grocery stores – one in each New York City borough – in a bid to reduce food insecurity in underserved areas and bring down grocery costs.
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Zohran Mamdani, New York City mayoral candidate, is proposing a pilot program of city-run grocery stores. (Christian Monterrosa/Bloomberg via Getty Images)
But skeptics like Rulli note that grocery stores already operate on razor-thin profit margins, generally between 1% and 3%.
His family owns and operates Rulli Brothers, a small chain of two grocery stores in the Youngstown, Ohio, area.
“My brothers run that store, our family store…they have gone between [1.25%] and 1.7 net in the last five to six years,” Rulli said.
And while the pilot program only calls for five stores now, the Ohio Republican argued the idea could affect businesses both large and small if widened.
“Say you’re going to Cleveland, Ohio. And the mayor opens up ten government-run stores, half the cost of all the other different stores,” Rulli posed.
“Whether it’s a mom-and-pop or…a Kroger, or you can have a Harris Teeter, all these different players – all of them would go out of business, and you’d only have the government-run business. So once you have only government-run business, there’s no incentive for there to be creativity, competition, variety.”
Rep. Michael Rulli’s family owns two grocery stores in Ohio. (Getty Images)
He said costs could eventually go up as well if competition was muted. And Rulli argued that would affect working-class Americans the most with a loss of affordable variety, as well as the small corner stores in New York City colloquially known as “bodegas.”
Rulli referenced a famous photo of former Russian leader Boris Yeltsin making an unscheduled stop at a Texas grocery store while in the U.S. and marveling at the selection of products.
“You have the options on different size, amounts…There’s so many different things. And you’re going to have 15 or 20 kinds of varieties. That makes for a good quality of life,” Rulli said.Â
Then, directed at Mamdani, he said, “You want to limit the amount of things that they could buy at the grocery store? One of the few things that the blue-collar American, the populist American, can actually take comfort in is the variety of [items] at the grocery store.”
Mamdani is a 33-year-old member of the New York State Assembly whose success in the New York City Democratic primary stunned politicos who expected at least an initially strong showing by former Democrat Gov. Andrew Cuomo.
His far-left ideas and support from national-level Democrat firebrands like Reps. Rashida Tlaib, D-Mich., and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, D-N.Y., have made Mamdani an effective boogeyman for Republicans.
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Rulli said the plan could harm working-class Americans’ ability to have options at the grocery store. (iStock)
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Several Republicans from the Empire State told Fox News Digital last month that Mamdani winning the race in November could be politically beneficial for the GOP, though they also maintained that they would work against that outcome.
Mamdani is running against Republican Curtis Sliwa and current Mayor Eric Adams, a Democrat who is running as an independent candidate in the race.
Cuomo is rumored to be eyeing his own bid as an independent as well.
Fox News Digital reached out to Mamdani’s campaign for a response to Rulli.
