Mamdani’s New York
Writers reflect on Zohran Mamdani’s inauguration as the mayor of New York City.
From December 31, the eve of Zohran Mamdani’s inauguration, through yesterday, the end of his first week in office, the NYR Online has been publishing a symposium about New York’s new mayor, the coalition that brought him to Gracie Mansion, his prospects, the obstacles he might face, and the future of New York City. Below, we have collected the full symposium.
Deborah Eisenberg
The Radiance of Tentative Hope
Mamdani’s youth, the naturalness of his demeanor, and his unassuming charm give his highly improbable victory an uncanny sheen, as if, in answer to a call, he simply rose in embryonic form up from a great depth to arrive fully realized at the threshold of Gracie Mansion. And following the election, a pervasive sense of relief—even of release—has lifted, or at least suspended, an atmosphere of imminent doom over large sectors of the city, restoring some of its bounce. Not everyone is happy, obviously. No doubt there are lots of clutched pearls and white knuckles around, and it’s true that if he can effect even a proportion of his stated goals, the tenor of New York will be much affected. That’s the point.
Corey Robin
Democratic Excellence
Zohran Mamdani has introduced several changes to American politics—joining ideological maximalism to policy minimalism, crafting a winning political identity as a Muslim socialist, taking a stand on Palestine, listening to voters. One innovation has not received the attention it deserves: his pledge, on election night, to “leave mediocrity in our past” and make “excellence…the expectation across government.”
Willa Glickman
Until the Next Storm
Climate policy didn’t feature much in this mayoral election, possibly because much of the exciting legislation necessary to start moving New York toward a carbon-free future has already been passed. The Climate Leadership and Community Protection Act (CLCPA), signed in 2019, which commits the state to net zero emissions by 2050, is one of the country’s most aggressive climate laws. So is New York City’s Local Law 97, passed the same year, which sets increasingly strict emission limits over time for buildings—which account for over two thirds of local emissions—if they rise above a certain square footage. The All-Electric Buildings Act, a state law passed in 2023, requires most new buildings to use electric heating and appliances. The task that falls to the city and state’s current leaders is equally important but far less politically rewarding: implementing the regulations as they go into effect, even as developers and building owners start to dig in their heels.
Michael Greenberg
Wielding the Ice Pick
Mamdani had become that rare political figure, a conduit of people’s deep-seated wishes—a perilous status that is often a setup for disappointment. New Yorkers were finding him irresistible, but many worried that he would prove to be too naïve to outsmart the city’s most fiercely defended private interests. Now, on the eve of taking power, he has revealed himself to be a hard-nosed practitioner of realpolitik, especially within his own coalition. This bodes well for his chances in the ice-pick wars of New York politics.
Tanvi Misra
Sanctuary City
Come January, New York City will be led by an immigrant—and, in a series of firsts, by a Muslim Indian American from Uganda. This kind of representation is meaningful in and of itself for many New Yorkers who hail from elsewhere, “especially when immigrant communities are being grabbed off the streets,” as Ana María Archila of the Working Families Party told The New York Times. Muslims in the city watched with a particular “giddy optimism,” as Meher Ahmad summarized her own feelings in the Times, as well as a degree of apprehension about the backlash that might follow.
Brenda Wineapple
‘Imagination for the Other Fellow’
“To the victor belongs the responsibility of good government,” La Guardia liked to say. He meant it. So does Zohran Mamdani, whose campaign promises—from universal childcare to safer streets to accessible transit—all provide an optimism that shines through these darkening times. For like La Guardia—a tireless campaigner—Mamdani has been able to incarnate the wishes and dreams of the city’s polyglot citizenry and give voice to its desire for a livable place where all are welcome, respected, and where opportunity exists for each and all.
Max Rivlin-Nadler
A Council Divided
The council that Mamdani will inherit is a tricky one to navigate. It has an energetic left faction, made up of five prominent socialists and a coordinated progressive bloc, and over the past four years it bucked Adams repeatedly (led by its senior members, holdovers from the de Blasio era). Champing at the bit to assert its independence after years of Adams’s vetoes, this progressive flank will surely welcome the chance to work with a mayor less opposed to its priorities. But other councilmembers who entered office alongside Adams, having already served the first of their two terms, are already eyeing their exits (and whatever higher offices they aspire to). They may have less reason to work with Mamdani than with whoever could help them get where they want to go next—and having been elected during the primary Adams won, some of them skew more centrist.
Samuel Stein
Mamdanism Without Guarantees
In an age when all of planning discourse has been reduced to a choice between YIMBY (“yes in my backyard”) and NIMBY (“not in my backyard”), Zohran Mamdani dodged the binary and offered something different. In his affordable housing plan, he criticized the city’s dependence on neighborhood rezonings, which channel growth toward particular locations, while calling for more housing development across the board. “For decades,” his campaign wrote, “the City has relied almost entirely on changes to the zoning code to invite and shape private development, with results that can fall short of the promises.” And yet a top bullet point in his plan to address affordable housing production is “Increasing zoned capacity.”
One might reasonably ask: How can we increase zoned capacity without neighborhood rezonings? The campaign’s answer is “comprehensive planning,” an alluring and longstanding—if Rorschachian—goal in New York City politics.
Anne Enright
The Scrolling Eye
Mamdani’s light self-ironizing made him real. This was video as self-expression. The values were of the amateur content creator; negative campaigning, of which there was relatively little, pointed to the fact that his opponent, Andrew Cuomo, used ChatGPT to draft housing policy and deployed AI-generated backdrops as locations in his ads.
Nikil Saval
The Power of the Source
In victory, Mamdani shook to rubble a lugubrious, ugly rock pile of left-wing self-doubt, bringing a wide, bracing horizon of possibilities into view. His campaign had already swelled the ranks of the Democratic Socialists of America (DSA) chapter in Philadelphia, where I’m a state senator, and now his win supercharged the organization’s growth. The group—which was also reenergized by Trump’s election—has absorbed 786 new members since last January, an expansion of 76 percent. Compared to this crop of bright new dues-payers, I am a grizzled, geriatric millennial socialist, having joined DSA in 2014 before becoming one of three socialists in the state legislature in 2021. Attending organizing events and parties in recent months, I’ve been struck by all the new people gingerly but excitedly making their way toward a world of stronger tenants’ unions, militant worker organizing, and an end to the “Palestine exception” to free speech and assembly.
