STATE OF MAYOR-ELECT MAMDANI IN 60 SECONDS
The morning after he won more votes than any other mayoral candidate since 1965, Zohran Mamdani stood in front of the unisphere in Queens to announce the leaders of his transition team. All of them are women, and all of them are alumni from the Mike Bloomberg, Bill de Blasio, and yes, Eric Adams administrations (that would be Maria Torres-Springer), plus Lina Khan, the former head of the Federal Trade Commission under President Joe Biden. The next day, Mamdani jetted off to Puerto Rico for the annual Somos conference, where his message of fighting for working class New Yorkers (amidst what is traditionally an orgy of lobbying and poolside politicking) received a rapturous response. Back in the city on Monday, Mamdani made the first two official appointments of his incoming mayoral administration: Dean Fuleihan, 74, as first deputy mayor, and Elle Bisgaard-Church, 34, as chief of staff. Fuleihan, whose grandparents immigrated from Lebanon, has nearly five decades of experience in public service, including more than 30 years as the chief fiscal and policy advisor to the New York State Assembly, and more recently, Mayor de Blasio's budget director and first deputy mayor ("A great choice and a win for New Yorkers," is how Governor Kathy Hochul put it.) Bisgaard-Church, a NYC-DSA member, was the architect of Mamdani's mayoral campaign, as well as his chief of staff in the New York State Assembly.
Mamdani appears eager to dive into the work of governing. Does he care about Mayor Adams traveling to Israel for five days next week on the taxpayers' dime? Nope. Does he have an opinion he'd like to share about the reporting that suggests his ally and campaign surrogate Chi Ossé is going to challenge Hakeem Jeffries in the June Democratic Primary? Not really. Did Governor Hochul ask him to pick Fuleihan, like she reportedly urged him to retain NYPD Commissioner Jessica Tisch?
"I make my own decisions," Mamdani said in response to that last question, posed earlier today. "But I'm excited to be in partnership with the governor."
There are 51 days until Inauguration Day.