The doubts about New York City Mayor-Elect Zohran Mamdani are already creeping in at the Intelligencer section of New York magazine. In fact those nagging doubts about Mamdani are more than just creeping. As the realization sets in that their hero Mamdani actually has little to no administrative experience, very noticeable flop sweat began streaming in the form of this story on Monday by David Freedlander, "The Making of Mayor Mamdani."
Before you even read the body of the article you can detect the first drippings of the flop sweat in the subtitle: "He is a brilliant political talent with dizzying ambitions to change the city. Is he ready for the actual job, though?"
The story itself is quite lengthy as a result of Freedlander seemingly reassuring both himself and the New York readers that Mamdani will be able to govern as mayor despite the many gnawing doubts presented. The first such example came during Mamdani's trip to Puerto Rico with much of the city's political class:
As much as the political class swarmed Mamdani for photos when he was around, the politicians there (each of whom was singularly convinced that it was rightfully them who should have been mayor — or at least the shining star of the party) were less fawning in his absence: His early transition team was filled with too many retreads from the Bill de Blasio administration. His anti-Israel stance would mean that a large swath of the Democratic Party would never accede to his rise. He was hewing too close to the line of the Democratic Socialists of America, the left-wing group that played a leading role in getting him elected. He was getting high on his own supply, not listening to advice. He was woefully unprepared for what was coming his way.
The sniping certainly contained an element of envy, but it also reflected a deep uncertainty in New York’s governing class about what kind of city we were going to get under the new mayor. Would he surprise everyone, as he had when he was a candidate? Or was this the beginning of a disaster?
"Beginning of a disaster?" Flop sweat much?
I asked him and some of his advisers if there were cities that had pulled this off that New York could emulate, places that had managed to meaningfully lower the cost of living. None sprang to mind. Talk to policy experts, and they find the prospect laughable; the only cities where this has happened are ones where the quality of life dropped so dramatically that no one wanted to live there anymore.
Ooops! It is no longer a campaign where words can come easily. Now those who supported Mamdani expect results from the one who seems hardly ready to deliver on the easy words. Unfortunately Mamdani did not exactly allay poor Freedlander's flop fears:
In our interviews, the mayor-elect conspicuously avoided acknowledging the kinds of basic trade-offs that are the DNA of the office he is about to assume. Does Mamdani want more affordable housing, or does he want affordable housing that is more expensive to build because it’s built with union labor? Does he want free infant–to–5-year-old child care, or does he want those child-care workers to be paid the $30 living wage he has proposed for the city? The answer is he wants both, he wants everything, he wants it all at once.
Those tiny beads of flop sweat on David Freedlander probably formed into much larger droplets following that Mamdani response.
The rest of Freedlander's overlong article continues to follow this basic pattern; strong doubts about Mamdani's ability to achieve his leftist goals followed by Freedlander trying to convince himself and the readers that Mamdani will somehow, despite his administrative flaws, be successful as mayor. Here are but a few more such examples:
The positive outcome would look like cost-of-living initiatives that work and start to draw imitation around the country. It would look like stable or improving quality-of-life and crime metrics. It would look like a major victory for the left in its factional war with the center-left, meaning that the national Democratic Party might tilt more progressive as candidates and elected politicians borrow from Mamdani’s playbook. Success for Mamdani would be a big deal nationally, not just locally.
And the negative outcome? It’s all the worst fears of the anti-Mamdani coalition: an uptick in crime and quality-of-life offenses as disgruntled police walk off the job, all of which convince the business community that investments in New York are too uncertain. Turnstile jumpers given free rein and buses that become roaming homeless shelters. Left-wing activists, figuring they have an ally in City Hall, clogging up intersections with protests. It’s schools regressing as Mamdani ends mayoral control of the educational system and cuts Gifted and Talented programs in the name of equity, causing families to flee to the suburbs. And while studies show higher taxes don’t lead to an exodus of the wealthy, New York has become so reliant on upper-income earners to fund its robust government programs — and is going to be more so if Mamdani gets his way — that it would take only a relatively small number of very rich people and companies moving to Miami or Austin to start to create problems in the city’s budget. As in the positive scenario, second-order effects would follow.
...By mid-December, the city’s insider political class was starting to chatter about precisely why there seemed to be so little activity coming from the Mamdani transition. With only about two weeks to go before the inauguration, Mamdani had named only his chief of staff, his police commissioner (he angered his left flank and reassured those skeptical of him when he tapped Jessica Tisch to continue in the role), and his first deputy mayor. One of those was his closest aide, another was a holdover from the previous administration, and the third was a holdover from the administration before that.
Freedlander finally concludes his story with yet another doubt/reassurance observation:
...The permanent campaign is now focused on the big-three agenda items, but the plan isn’t to win those and plant a flag in them. It’s a more encompassing program, a continual mobilization by local government to take on more burdens and costs of everyday life: a very different kind of politics. It’s free buses today, but why not free subways tomorrow? A four-year rent freeze for now, but only for now. It’s a vision of a city that is more and more handling the costs of living for its residents.
Will living in New York City actually be cheaper, though?
“That’s my mission,” Mamdani said.
Yes, very reassuring for Mr. Freedlander. Yet why does he still seem drenched in flop sweat on behalf of Mamdani?
