A top aide to Andrew Cuomo argues that New York City’s looming budget deficit may be the biggest obstacle to Zohran Mamdani’s affordability agenda.
I worked for Andrew Cuomo in New York State government for many years and was one of his principal policy advisors during his mayoral campaign. I thought Andrew Cuomo would be the better mayor, but I sincerely wish Zohran Mamdani well and hope he succeeds as mayor.
There is no doubt in my mind that Mamdani won both the primary and the general election far more than Cuomo lost those races. Mamdani was a brilliant campaigner. Even so, I don’t believe he would have come out of nowhere to win both the primary and the general election without his core agenda on affordability, which resonated so strongly with younger voters, in particular: Strikingly, according to exit polling by NBC News, Mamdani won 70% of the vote. Of New Yorkers age 18-44, while Cuomo won 50% of the vote among voters older than 45.
But will Mamdani succeed in realizing his agenda? In state and local government, tax revenue is destiny. Whether Mamdani succeeds as mayor depends in large part on the fiscal condition of the city government.
To understand this better, it helps to go back to 2013, when Bill de Blasio was first elected mayor. The consensus view among the establishment at that time was that his ambitious campaign policy agenda would be severely constrained by New York City’s fiscal straits.
For example, in a profile of Mayor Michael Bloomberg published in The New Yorker in August 2013, the three-time mayor argued that “[N]one of the Democratic candidates have addressed the one issue vital to the city’s future: the budget. Although the budget has been admirably balanced for the past decade, in the next few years New York may confront its most severe budget crisis since the nineteen-seventies.” The profile added that the Citizens Budget Commission “described the predicament the [next] mayor will confront as ‘the calm before the storm.’”
The reality proved different. New York City’s Independent Budget Office wrote in December 2013:
Through much of the summer and early fall, it was asserted with some frequency that New York’s next Mayor and City Council would inherit a substantial budget shortfall for the upcoming fiscal year along with other fiscal challenges. Then in November Mayor Bloomberg released his quarterly update to the city’s financial plan and a different story emerged: The Mayor projected a sizable surplus for the current year as well as a balanced budget for next year, fiscal year 2015.
Indeed, total revenues in the New York City budget in the fiscal year ending June 30, 2014, were $5.2 billion, or 7.5%, greater than had been forecast in the FY 14 Executive Budget introduced the year before. Shortly before leaving office, Bloomberg was able to announce, “For the first time in my memory, and perhaps for the first time in New York City’s history, the budget for an incoming fiscal year has been balanced for an incoming mayor.”
As was the case in 2013, none of the candidates in the 2025 mayoral primary or general election sought to make New York City’s current budget challenges a major issue. The press implicitly assumed that New York City would have a balanced budget and that Mamdani’s success implementing his ambitious agenda would depend simply on the level of new taxes approved by the state legislature and governor in Albany.
This willful ignorance of New York City’s financial situation was also maintained by New York City Comptroller Brad Lander, a primary opponent who became arguably Mamdani’s most important supporter. In mid-August, Comptroller Lander, commenting in his official capacity on the recently adopted New York City Executive Budget, warned that: “[T]he Office estimates the City will end FY 2026 with a gap of $4.2 billion (3.6% of total revenues), growing to $8.8 billion in FY 2027.” The Independent Budget Office, the Citizens Budget Commission, and Mayor Adams’ Office of Management and Budget issued earlier estimates that are somewhat lower but still significant.
If New York City is really facing a budget deficit of roughly $9 billion — before spending on any new programs — Mayor Mamdani’s ability to implement his affordability agenda will be severely constrained. He will face a set of problems he was never asked to confront in the campaign. Unlike recent fiscal crises, such as the Great Recession in 2008 and the Covid pandemic in 2020, the federal government will not bail out New York City and New York State’s ability to help will be limited (although Governor Kathy Hochul has signaled that she will support at least a phase-in of universal childcare — much as Governor Cuomo provided state funding for Universal Pre-K in lieu of allowing New York City to raise taxes to fund the program itself).
The starting point of the fiscal hole that Mamdani finds himself in will be even more important than the willingness of state government to increase taxes to benefit New York City. Notwithstanding Hochul’s stated opposition, I would not be surprised if the state ends up raising the corporate income tax along the lines proposed by Mamdani. But in contrast to Mamdani’s proposal that all such revenue should go to New York City to fund universal childcare, both the State and the City may need to use that increased revenue to fund current budget demands rather than new programs.
New York City’s Office of Management and Budget has been criticized for routinely sandbagging its tax revenue estimates. The New York State Division of the Budget raised its estimate of tax revenue in its Mid-Year Budget Update on November 2, 2025 by approximately $1.6 billion from its estimate in the June 30, 2025 Quarterly Budget Update. New York City’s tax revenues are affected by the same forces and can also be expected to be higher than the enacted budget forecasts.
It is unlikely that Eric Adams will be the second mayor in New York City history to hand off a balanced incoming-year budget to a new mayor. But if Mamdani shares the good fortune of de Blasio and the fiscal deficit is much less than current expectations, he should be able to get off to a good start as mayor. If the FY 27 budget deficit is manageable and New York City is granted some new revenue from Albany, Mamdani will be able to begin at least the phased implementation of a number of his principal campaign promises.
In this scenario, Mamdani’s early momentum will put air in the sails of progressives across the country, proving the skeptics wrong by demonstrating that far-reaching proposals can in fact be implemented.
On the other hand, if the forecasts from the city comptroller and other fiscal experts prove to be close to accurate, Mamdani will be hard-pressed to advance significant new initiatives. Mamdani has laid no track to prepare New Yorkers for challenging fiscal times. A program of fiscal austerity would only reinforce the narrative of traditional Democrats that the promises of Mamdani — and progressives more generally — sound good but are merely aspirational goals incapable of being implemented in difficult economic times.
This is an excerpt from a longer article called “The Mamdani Mayoralty” posted on the Step Two Policy Project Substack on November 10, 2025.