NEW YORK — New York City Mayor-elect Zohran Mamdani marked the morning after his historic victory by introducing a slate of transition advisers with deep ties to city government — a team meant to bolster the young, inexperienced democratic socialist as he prepares to take the helm of the country’s largest city.
Mamdani’s transition will be led by women leaders who’ve worked in the administrations of Bill de Blasio, Eric Adams and Michael Bloomberg.
Former first deputy mayor Maria Torres-Springer, former Federal Trade Commission Chair Lina Khan, nonprofit president Grace Bonilla and city budget expert Melanie Hartzog will be his transition co-chairs. Progressive political strategist Elana Leopold, a de Blasio alum and senior Mamdani campaign adviser, will serve as the transition’s executive director.
Together, they have backgrounds in social services, finance, city budgeting and housing development. Their roles on the transition team — meant to smooth the mayor-elect’s path from election in early November to inauguration in January — often serve as a de facto audition for appointments to City Hall.
With eyes on him nationally as he readies for a massive job and even more intense scrutiny, Mamdani is set to herald the start of a new era as he introduces his transition team Wednesday at the Unisphere in Queens.
On Tuesday, Mamdani vanquished rival and former Gov. Andrew Cuomo in a fraught, expensive general election with record voter turnout to be the city’s first Muslim mayor, one of the country’s few democratic socialist elected executives and one of the youngest mayors in the city’s history.
To be mayor of New York City is an immense calling. Mamdani will also serve as a boss to about 300,000 city employees and guardian of a budget of upwards of $100 billion.
“I don’t begrudge New Yorkers who were skeptical, and I don’t begrudge them because they were subjected to around $40 million in attack ads,” the mayor-elect, an outgoing Queens state assemblymember, told NY1 on Wednesday morning. “So, for many New Yorkers, when they open their mailbox, turn on their TV, or put on their radio, they would hear something or the other about why they should fear me. My job now is to lead the entirety of the city, and I’m looking forward to it.”
Mamdani said he would stay focused on the cost of living, including rent, groceries and childcare.
In a statement about his transition, he vowed his City Hall “will show the nation how government can deliver when we put the people, not billionaires, first.”
The first wave of transition team members Mamdani announced lacked advisers with deep experience in education and public safety — two closely watched areas of policy for incoming administrations. The NYPD commissioner and schools chancellors have historically been a mayor-elect’s first appointments.
Mamdani is under the microscope now as a 34-year-old political novice who soared to victory on a campaign centered on a promise of affordability in one of the country’s wealthiest and most expensive cities. He’s regarded as a rising Democratic star but also a potential liability for a big-tent party that includes political moderates grappling with how to win reelection in House battlegrounds with a hard-left leader as part of their party.
The mayor-elect will enter City Hall on Jan. 1 to lead a city splintered after a fractious election and worried about President Donald Trump’s next moves, including his threat to federalize the National Guard and deploy them to a blue metropolis he says is beset by crime.
