One former city official's view of where he’s excelled and where he’s come up short
Elected officials — executives especially — are typically two things at once. They’re politicians who run for office, usually because they want attention and validation and power. And they’re leaders responsible for the actual functioning of whatever they run. It’s still early in Zohran Mamdani’s mayoralty, but now that we’re six months in, it’s worth taking a measure of his performance on both fronts.
Mamdani as politician
Politically, Zohran Mamdani is a generational talent. His charisma is off the charts. His instincts are usually impeccable (setting aside his failed threat to raise property taxes if he didn’t get his way on taxing the wealthy). There aren’t enough superlatives to describe it. But there are tangible metrics to help measure an elected official’s political performance.
Polling is obviously the one metric relied on traditionally to see how much a politician is liked. The most recent poll from Siena in June had him at 58% approval, 26% disapproval among city voters. In a world where everyone is miserable about everything, those are very good numbers (by comparison, de Blasio was at 50% approval in an August 2014 Quinnipiac poll and Adams was at 43% approval in a May 2022 Quinnipiac poll).
Social media is where Mamdani really shines. Shortly after he was elected in November, he had around 7.5 million followers on Instagram. Today, it’s well over 11 million. That’s beyond incredible and, for a politician, his following on platforms like Tik Tok and X are also astronomical. Most of his followers are likely not in New York, which means that we could see a world where he remains a strong national endorser and fundraiser for far-left candidates for years to come even if his approval ratings locally fall (and they almost certainly will, because gravity almost always sets in for any mayor).
Mamdani actively endorsed multiple candidates in last week’s congressional primaries so the performance of his preferred candidates is another good way to assess his political acumen and skill. Here too he gets a 10/10. He supported Brad Lander, Claire Valdez and Darializa Avila Chevalier and they all won. He is a major leader in the Democratic Party nationally, full stop.
Another way to judge Mamdani’s political performance is how his agenda fared in Albany. Overall, I think he did okay. His biggest priority — an income tax increase on the richest New Yorkers — did not come to pass. Nor did a corporate tax increase. He didn’t get free buses or funding for universal child care.
But he didn’t come up empty-handed. Gov. Kathy Hochul, who was already a strong proponent of subsidizing child care, announced a roughly $1.2 billion expansion of City-funded child care soon after Mamdani took office. While she probably would have done it no matter who became mayor, his strong support certainly didn’t hurt. Mamdani also helped the City net roughly $8 billion in additional state assistance over two fiscal years in new funding for Albany to help balance the budget, which is significant.
The pied-a-terre tax that Mamdani and Hochul agreed to is not a massive revenue generator (the Comptroller estimates realistically $340 million to $380 million) but by picking a fight with hedge fund manager Ken Griffin, Mamdani was able to turn a meager win into something that excited his base (even if it winds up costing New York City 15,000 new jobs in a time of already sluggish job growth because Griffin has rightfully threatened to move the project to Miami). And while there’s far less substantive engagement between a city and the federal government, Mamdani has charmed Trump and arguably, that has prevented Trump from doing bad things to New York City. That said, Trump’s very complicated relationship and history with our city mean Mamdani is just one contributing factor at most — and Trump is so mercurial, we never really know where he stands.
The final way to assess Mamdani’s political performance is his ability to deliver on his campaign promises. The challenge here is that Mamdani’s narrative was pretty deceptive from day one. Many of the things he promised the mayor doesn’t have the power to deliver and because most people don’t know the breakdown of jurisdiction over each issue between the City and the State, they assumed he could actually do the things he promised to do.
But obviously, we don’t have free buses. There is no income tax increase. There are two City-owned grocery stores underway, with a ludicrous request of $70 million to construct them, even though one won’t be ready till 2029. And the rent freeze will happen, but de Blasio did it three times in his eight-year tenure and no one thinks housing is any more affordable than it used to be (and many voters didn’t and still don’t realize it only applies to a subset of apartments that aren’t theirs).
On Israel, Mamdani used the issue — which is a litmus test for many younger voters on the left with strong views about the war in Gaza — as a tool to get elected and he continues to drive the fervor. It clearly resonates with his base, locally and nationally. His obsession with and constant excoriation of Israel could become too big of a distraction that takes away from his actual job — but we’re not there yet.
So that’s my assessment of Mamdani the politician. What about Mamdani the leader?
Mamdani as mayor
Being a mayor is unique. Unlike a legislator at any level, you actually run things. Unlike a governor, much of your work is tangible and felt by your constituents — how safe are the streets, how effective are the schools, how clean are the parks. And the paradox for Mamdani is that being a great politician and being a great leader often conflict. Making your base happy keeps you strong politically, but that sometimes comes at the expense of the people you’re supposed to represent.
Mamdani’s biggest success by far is policing. By choosing not to fire Jessica Tisch as commissioner, Mamdani ensured that NYPD would have a highly effective leader who is mainly immune from politics. The police force itself is depleted; Tisch needs a lot more resources and more cops, and that’s hard to do both during a budget crisis and when many in Mamdani’s base want to abolish policing altogether. But so far, her performance has been excellent, with overall major crime down 5.3% and murders down 28%.
The budget, on the other hand — probably the single biggest test of a mayor’s management chops — is a mess. Mamdani’s declaration of success may have played well on social media, but the reality is very, very different. Facing a roughly $6 billion deficit, Mamdani is solving the problem through a series of gimmicks and bailouts — most of which won’t be available next year to close an even bigger gap. Yes, he appointed savings officers at the agencies — but that will take time and only matters if they’re both empowered to suggest politically unpopular budget cuts and those suggestions are then actually implemented.
While, to his credit, he did present a reasonably honest accounting of costs, this was not a budget that did much heavy lifting, took on many serious issues, effected much actual change, or created much political risk. There is ample room for savings in the existing budget. There’s no way that a struggling school system that fails hundreds of thousands of kids cannot find real savings in a current $43 billion budget. More money clearly is not the answer and funding schools with declining enrollment as if they had more kids than they actually do is Soviet-style logic. A mayor truly intent on finding more efficiency in government could push to use AI to replace tens of thousands of city workers who perform functions like procurement, licensing, permitting, compliance, facilities management and data management. That could save several billion dollars a year.
These types of ideas are politically difficult. They violate the orthodoxy of the far left that spending is equivalent to results. They lead to the removal of thousands of patronage hires, many from the de Blasio era. Mamdani seems to prefer to keep his coalition happy rather than making tough choices.
Economic development is somehow even worse. When the deputy mayor for economic justice testified before the City Council about the administration’s progress on job creation to date, all she could point to was a plan to build a City-owned grocery store and modular public bathrooms.
No matter how much you want to demonize capitalism and turn toward socialism, New York City is the business capital of the world and all of Mamdani’s spending and programs rely on collecting more taxes, not less. That means having businesses stay here, pay people more and hire more people. The mayor truly does not seem to understand that — or if he does, he doesn’t seem to want the public to understand that he understands.
Apart from a few perfunctory meetings with some CEOs, there’s no serious relationship building with the business community. There’s no serious attempt to do anything to help businesses create new jobs. They can’t even find someone to run the Economic Development Corporation. Amid poor job growth and a relatively high local unemployment rate, treating economic development like an afterthought or treating businesses as inherently evil is not a good way to create jobs people need or to make New York City more affordable.
Mamdani won on a message of affordability. So far, we haven’t seen much of it. His ideas — free buses, child care, rent — may be good public policy in some cases, but they’re not actually making anything more affordable yet.
Take the City-run grocery stores, which have gotten a good deal of Mamdani’s attention thus far for reasons that are difficult to comprehend. He can use taxpayer money to make food cheaper but only by taking it away from something else. He has no control over commodity prices or tariffs or the supply chain or harvests or inflation. And that’s to say nothing about the fact that five stores will reach few people — but will create tough, arguably unfair competition with local businesses struggling to stay afloat.
Or take free buses. Making them free doesn’t actually make them free. The state still has to spend the same money to operate them. It’s just a funding transfer. Left pocket/right pocket math might improve fairness if you consider meeting the demands of his base as justice, but it has nothing to do with actually reducing prices. And if the goal is true justice and redistribution of wealth, the majority of Mamdani’s core base are well above the 50th percentile of wealth and should be paying higher taxes and getting fewer government subsidies. They’re not the victims of capitalism, they’re the beneficiaries.
Operationally, some of Mamdani’s appointments to run agencies like the Departments of Transportation, Sanitation and Buildings seem strong. The City says it has filled 100,000 potholes since Mamdani took office. That’s great. The creation of a dynamic Mayor’s Management Report is also a good idea. There are other good ideas around scaffolding, public lighting and curb management and they took an innovative approach to snow removal. And when the actual MMR comes out in September, we’ll have a better sense of how the operations team is doing, assuming they report the numbers honestly.
Anecdotally, everyone has their own opinion as to whether the city feels clean and well-run. To me, the city doesn’t feel particularly clean, and it doesn’t feel particularly dirty. Traffic feels the same as always. So we’ll see what the numbers say and if the ideas become reality and then tangibly improve things.
There are also some accomplishments that might not be all that notable but it feels only fair to mention them anyway. Consumer and tenant protection actions have yielded about $44 million in various restitutions. That’s an infinitesimal amount in a local economy with a gross city product of roughly $1.35 trillion (and the region’s is $2.6 trillion), but I guess it’s something. City Hall also formed some task forces. And his housing team has at least begun work on making it easier and cheaper to build affordable housing. Hopefully it continues, and hopefully Mamdani is willing to defy traditionally far-left priorities like extensive community review or only using union labor to make building affordable housing actually feasible.
There’s no evidence whatsoever that Mamdani even cares about schools, let alone that he’s done anything serious to make them better. The chancellor is under investigation for allegedly awarding sketchy contracts. But that’s a red herring. What matters is that a fifth of our kids don’t graduate. That only half who do are college ready. That the system has 127,000 fewer kids since COVID and yet has zero ability to use a smaller system to provide a better education or find savings. Mamdani’s budget for schools throws an additional $3 billion at the problem without any meaningful reforms under the same failed theory that more money is always the solution to everything. It isn’t in this case and if more of the same is the best he can do, the kids of this city are in trouble.
Mamdani’s choices as a leader are often troubling. When you refuse to break up homeless encampments based on ideology and 18 people die during a terrible cold spell, that’s really, really bad. When you stop Citi Bike from meaningful age verification because you think facial recognition is racist, you’re putting coffee-shop ideology ahead of the safety of actual kids. When you publicly humiliate Ken Griffin and risk 15,000 new jobs so that you can look better to your base, that’s bad. When you successfully take out members of the congressional delegation with seniority who can deliver more federal funding for your city, that’s both bad and stupid. Overall, it’s not clear he realizes that being a leader means doing things that are unpopular simply because they’re right.
And as far as his team goes, it seems mixed. He has some talented people in City Hall and some talented commissioners. And I don’t think it’s automatically bad to have lots of very young people or very hardcore ideologues around. But if they confuse actual governing with Instagram likes, that’s a serious misunderstanding of the job. It’s not clear to me that the team at City Hall can differentiate between the means and the ends. And if everyone is constantly engaged in groupthink and no one pushes the mayor outside his comfort zone, that’s a major issue. The lack of diversity among his core team is also a significant concern. For a movement that cares so much about justice and redistribution, to have so few African Americans and Latinos in power seems very problematic.
The upshot
Add it all up, and so far, Mamdani’s mostly an extreme version of what we see from a lot of elected officials: absolutely great on politics but generally lacking on both tangible accomplishments and on leadership that requires political sacrifice.
If his goal is to be a truly great mayor, it means ensuring Tisch has the support and resources she needs, regardless of what supporters who distrust or even revile the police may say. It means not making operational decisions based on politics and ideology. It means focusing on execution and results and not just more slogans and spending. It means being serious about the budget and making truly hard, often unpopular choices. It means taking jobs and the economy seriously. It means actually prioritizing the education of kids rather than just paying lip service and placating the adults in the system. It means seeing the job itself as more than movement building and Instagram-following.
Can he do all of this? I’m not sure he has it in him. But as someone who loves this city, I certainly hope he does.
