The best-case scenario for the Democratic nominee
As veterans of government, business and politics, we’re more optimistic about a potential Zohran Mamdani mayoralty than many of our peers. Mamdani won the primary because he’s skilled politically and understood that affordability is the top issue for voters. In that, he differs dramatically from Bill de Blasio, who thought he had a mandate to make New York a progressive utopia — with limited skills to then achieve that goal. Mamdani may actually have the chops to be a mayor for all New Yorkers without making his base feel betrayed.
First and foremost, Mayor Mamdani, who we’re likely to get next January, will be a progressive, and as such he’ll have a choice. Assuming he wins the general election — which both of us consider close to a sure thing at this point — he can either be like Brandon Johnson of Chicago, a fully owned subsidiary of the teachers union and an utter disaster or he can be like Michelle Wu of Boston, a smart and creative progressive. Here are some ideas we believe will tilt the field in his favor.
1. Dispense with the anti-semitism issue. This is the biggest obstacle to Mamdani coming in as a unifying force and starting his mayoralty with momentum. We are both Jewish, and like most New Yorkers, we are worried about increasingly overt anti-Semitism. We both realize that it’s possible to oppose Israel without being prejudiced against Jews. The truth is that what the New York City mayor thinks about the Middle East is mainly irrelevant. What matters is how the New York City mayor treats his Jewish constituents.
If Mamdani can actively protect Jews from hate crimes and violence and make clear that he vigorously opposes prejudice, if he spends time working with Jewish leaders (like he would any constituency), and if he focuses his energy on making New York City clean, safe, well run and more affordable and not on geopolitics, he can put this issue to bed. Otherwise, it will be a constant distraction that could end up becoming the defining issue of his mayoralty.
2. Be creative about how to deliver on core ideas. If Mamdani becomes mayor, it will have been because, alone among the candidates, his policy proposals broke through, and his relentless focus on affordability was organic and authentic. Mamdani’s proposals for free buses, a rent freeze, free child care and city-run grocery stores obviously resonated with voters. He absolutely should pursue this agenda. But he should do it in a way that acknowledges trade-offs and demonstrates a mastery of government. And he should know that, at times, he will have to stand up to his own supporters in order to get anything worthwhile done.
Free buses will be expensive, about $630 million per year. The Metropolitan Transportation Authority loses an estimated $300 million per year from subway fare evasion. If you updated the turnstiles to install true, nine-foot doors (like in Paris) that only open when you pay the fare (while also swiftly letting people out, including people with strollers or in wheelchairs), you could end most fare evasion. Then use those savings for free buses. The mayor doesn’t control the MTA, but he’s got a bully pulpit — and if this isn’t part of MTA chair-CEO Janno Lieber’s agenda, the mayor should try to jawbone it into existence.
Another signature Mamdani proposal is freezing the rent in rent-stabilized apartments, which in practice would mean instructing his appointees on the Rent Guidelines Board to reject annual increases for some 960,000 apartments. This is hardly new: de Blasio’s appointees did this three times.
If he wants to keep this promise, he should make it part of his broader housing plan. First, take seriously many landlords’ arguments that costs are so high that they can’t afford to maintain rent-stabilized buildings. Real estate is a knife’s edge business in New York City, and there are some responsible small and mid-size landlords who can’t keep up with costs. Mamdani should appoint a task force to dig into the economics of this regulated building stock and then recommend a solution. And make the Rent Guidelines Board process and calculations completely transparent in a way that New Yorkers can understand.
Finally, he should embrace the fact that the solution to the affordability crisis is building many more homes. His housing plan needs far more detail and some recognition of fiscal reality, but it has the benefit of emphasizing supply.
Once he’s underway, he can distinguish himself from past mayors by holding himself fully accountable. He should design a housing plan that starts from zero on the day he takes office so the public can see exactly what City Hall is accomplishing rather than giving the new mayor credit for work in progress that he inherited. One of us, Jamie, was the state housing commissioner and understands the pressure to include everything in the year end report on progress; Mamdani should set a higher bar. He should also make the speed it takes to build just as important a metric as “units built or preserved,” which has been politicians’ chosen measure of success for years. Mamdani may find that the pressure on the Rent Guidelines Board eases as people have more options.
Mamdani will know he has a good housing strategy when everyone is unhappy. Developers will make less money than they want. Environmentalists will see their concerns reflected far less in policy and zoning decisions. Community boards and council members will lose veto power over rezonings in their districts. Unions will not be able to insist that their members work every job (or that the jobs always pay prevailing wage). Right now, in order to make all of these special interests happy, regular New Yorkers lose. That has to change.
Mamdani’s promise to deliver universal child care can be a signature move and could make New York City far more liveable and affordable for a lot of people. The question is one of cost. Even at the estimated $5 billion annual price tag, universal child care can be paid for within the current City budget; but it may mean other priorities are less well funded. Making it happen would probably mean getting much tougher with municipal unions in contract negotiations. It might also require scaling back the plan, and it will certainly mean standing up to the left on some funding issues, but it’s worth pursuing.
Simultaneously, Mamdani should still try to avoid defaulting to the notion that you can endlessly tax the rich to fund new programs. The rich have more flexibility than anyone else. They see living in New York City as a value proposition. If the city is clean and safe, and taxes are not out of control, it’ll be worth it to them to continue living here. If it feels bad or becomes too expensive, they’ll go someplace else. And as the tax base dwindles, resources for all city and social services would fall with it. Driving the city’s largest taxpayers away ultimately punishes the people Mamdani cares about the most: the working poor.
Even if Mamdani doesn’t buy those arguments, politically, he can’t raise taxes on the rich without Albany. 2026 is an election year and Gov. Kathy Hochul already has a tough fight in store without pushing through a tax increase, particularly since the impacts of the federal budget will create statewide demand. Picking this fight and losing in his first year will empty his political equity store.Mamdani’s big ideas don’t require tax increases to happen. He shouldn’t put the ideological desire to raise taxes ahead of policies that can actually make the city more affordable.
3. Govern based on what really matters. That means the following to us:
First, hire the most talented people you can get, independent of their politics. Just like Mike Bloomberg would always say he would happily hire a member of the Communist Party if they were the best person for the job, the same (although on the other end of the spectrum) should be true here too. When Zohran was on Bradley’s podcast, he said he would not factor in the ideology or politics of any job candidate as long as it’s not related to the subject matter at hand. We believe him.
Mamdani has the ability to attract a lot of talent, but it has to be done with the belief that the vast majority of the job of mayor is to run the city well and not to impose an ideological agenda on every decision that comes across his desk. If Mamdani can bring in talented operators to run agencies like Transportation, Sanitation and Parks, he can allay many of the concerns expressed by center-left pundits. Not every appointment has to be a political statement. One example: keeping Jessica Tisch as police commissioner. At the same time, revitalize the Civilian Complaint Review Board.
Relatedly, he should realize that the best political path to run a city is to do so apolitically. Voters may choose someone to become mayor based on their politics, but once that person is in office, they mostly want the city to feel safe, clean, affordable and well run. In a weird way, because Mike Bloomberg was so not personally attuned to politics, by just doing the job based on what he thought was right — rather than what was popular — he ended up becoming very popular. There are a million different interest groups looking to pressure, bully, flatter, cajole, coerce or incentivize the mayor into doing what they want. The minute Mamdani starts trying to maneuver all the chess pieces is the minute he will start to fail. He will have to take meetings and pay lip service, but at the end of the day, the best political strategy is to ignore as much of the politics as possible.
Quality of life doesn’t have to be a left-right issue. Mamdani has a plan on how to deal with the mentally ill in our streets and subways. Let’s give it a chance and see if it works. Hopefully it will. There are a lot of other issues that impact New Yorkers meaningfully on a day-to-day basis like closing illegal weed shops, reducing the endless scaffolding, solving the e-bike chaos and reducing shoplifting that are not inherently ideological but can easily be portrayed otherwise. Just use common sense.
Mamdani should think of being mayor as a dead-end job; he shouldn’t worry about preparing to run for anything else. Virtually every single mayor thinks he should be president or hold some other office. They all lose. Mamdani is so young, maybe he can be the exception here, but the best way to do that is put it off for sometime far in the future. Zohran should just plan to do the job really well for eight years, proving to all New Yorkers that he delivered for them, and then think about another office if he wants. But mixing the two only results in disaster.
Use technology. There’s a premise that the far left has to hate new technology (most famously in AOC’s efforts to kill Amazon’s HQ2 from coming to Queens, costing the city 40,000 new, good paying jobs). To implement his agenda, Mamdani will have to utilize new technology intelligently. AI could make functions like licensing, permitting and procurement far more cost effective and efficient. Drones could get rid of the need for most scaffolding. Waymo wants to come to NYC. They’re adding real value for riders in cities like Los Angeles, San Francisco and Austin. Find a way to make it possible here too.
One final note. We just offered a plan for Mayor Mamdani. For the next month, all eyes will be on Candidate Mamdani as he navigates the demands of a frontrunner and standard bearer. Who he meets with and what he says will send a message to his critics and, if handled with the skill he’s shown so far, can send him flying through the general.
Will Mamdani be a good mayor? We don’t know. But none of these ideas conflict with his core beliefs, many of them directly benefit his core constituencies while also boosting the economy. If he does become mayor, all of us should stand ready to help him succeed.