These Are Obstacles to Zohran Mamdani's Plans for New York City

Yahoo

2 days ago

Last month, The New York Times editorial board urged Democratic voters in New York City against supporting mayoral candidate Zohran Mamdani. With only five years under his belt as a state assemblyman, the board wrote, the 33-year-old would 'bring less relevant experience than perhaps any mayor in New York history.' Then the anti-endorsement took aim at his policy positions, such as rent freezes and city-owned grocery stores. Mamdani, a member of the Democratic Socialists of America, was 'running on an agenda uniquely unsuited to the city's challenges' and 'too often ignores the unavoidable trade-offs of governance.'
Voters didn't appear to agree. Mamdani handily won the Democratic nomination for mayor, as the official tabulation of ranked-choice votes confirmed on Tuesday. Now, the question is whether Mamdani can actually implement his campaign promises.
In a speech on election night, Mamdani cited the very agenda that the Times editorial board decried as the reason for his success. 'If this campaign has demonstrated anything to the world, it is that our dreams can become reality,' he said. But winning the nomination, while a significant victory, is only the first step in the process of dreams becoming reality. First, Mamdani must win a crowded general election, in which candidates will include current Mayor Eric Adams—who is running as an independent—and potentially former Governor Andrew Cuomo, who came second in the Democratic primary and will remain on the November ballot. Mamdani is still facing skepticism from the state's leading Democratic officials, including Governor Kathy Hochul, and has yet to earn the explicit support of the business community, which largely preferred Cuomo.
Mamdani's success is a testament to the coalition he was able to build in his campaign, said Christina Greer, an associate professor of political science at Fordham University, but she added that he 'hasn't been tested as of yet, beyond—I would argue—ten-minute sound bites.'
'We've seen remarkable campaigning, which I think for many people is a signal to the organization and discipline that we could see in governance,' continued Greer. 'But we know that the campaign phase is not the governance space.'
Mamdani's policy agenda is largely focused on affordability. He has proposed creating a city-owned grocery store in each borough; making city buses free; instituting free childcare for children between six months and five years old; and freezing rents for New Yorkers living in rent-stabilized apartments. He has also proposed raising the corporate tax rate and taxing the wealthiest 1 percent of New Yorkers an additional 2 percent.
While his proposal on freezing rents could be accomplished on a city level by making appointments to the Rent Guidelines Board, other proposals would require approval from the state legislature and governor in Albany. The Rent Guidelines Board, whose current members were appointed by Adams, on Monday approved a hike on rent-stabilized apartments of at least 3 percent, a move Mamdani condemned.
Another one of Mamdani's housing-related priorities—building 200,000 units of affordable housing—would mean the city must borrow $70 billion, exceeding its debt limit and requiring a vote from the state legislature.
The legislature would also need to pass a measure to raise taxes on corporations and the wealthy, which Hochul would need to sign—and Hochul has expressed disinterest in the plan. 'I'm focused on affordability, and raising taxes on anyone does not accomplish that,' she said in a news conference last week.
State legislators would need to approve Mamdani's plan to implement free buses, as the Metropolitan Transportation Authority is a state-run agency. One of Mamdani's signature achievements in the Assembly was a 2023 pilot program that made five bus lines free for one year; however, the legislature did not extend the program. Mamdani has estimated that making all of New York City's bus lines free would cost around $700 million, but his government and Albany would need to negotiate on whether that cost fell on the city or on the MTA. Janno Lieber, the chair of the MTA, had been critical of the pilot program, saying it sent the 'wrong message' when the city was trying to focus on fare evasion.
Nonetheless, in an interview with NPR on Monday, Mamdani said that 'the reason that I put forward this agenda is not only because it's urgent, but because it's feasible,' citing the lapsed pilot program.
'It wasn't simply about economic relief. It's also about public safety, the fact that assaults on bus drivers went down by 38.9 percent through this pilot, the fact that we actually saw an increase in riders who had previously been driving a car or taking a taxi, reducing congestion around those same routes,' Mamdani argued.
Susan Kang, an associate professor of political science at John Jay College of Criminal Justice and a Mamdani supporter, contended that the nominee's experience as an activist would allow him to mobilize his supporters if he is elected mayor, and they in turn would put pressure on state legislators to approve his priorities.
'Because they have this model—this insider-outsider, grassroots organizing model of politics like the DSA—that would be a continuation of how a future mayor Mamdani would govern. Not just like, 'I'm on high, I'm your decision maker, I'm the mayor,' but rather the whole model of a socialist, which is obviously to bring as many people as possible into the process,' Kang said.
This is not dissimilar to an argument Mamdani himself made in the interview with NPR. 'What we've seen is that these policies I'm speaking to you about, they are not just policies that people are voting for, incidentally, while they're voting for me. They're voting for this platform,' he said.
This principle would also apply to Mamdani's negotiations with the City Council on the budget, Kang said, adding that she believed Mamdani would not pursue a 'dictatorial' governance model, but instead attempt 'to build strong, majoritarian support among constituents and the residents of New York, so that way City Council will feel that this is the right thing to do.'
New York City Council member Justin Brannan argued that Mamdani's success had already helped pave the way for Eric Adams, the current mayor, to reach a deal with the Council on the budget for fiscal year 2026. He told Politico that 'things that the council had been fighting for many years suddenly became more important.' Last week, Adams and City Council Speaker Adrienne Adams (no relation) reached a deal on a $116 billion budget that would include a pilot program to provide free child care for low-income children under age two.
But beyond earning support from city and state legislators, perhaps the greatest threat to Mamdani's effectiveness as mayor would come from Washington. On Sunday, President Donald Trump warned that he could cut funding to the city if Mamdani 'doesn't behave himself' should be elected mayor.
'If he does get in, I'm going to be president, and he's going to have to do the right thing, or they're not getting any money. He's got to do the right thing, or they're not getting any money,' Trump said in an interview with Fox News host Maria Bartiromo.
The federal government provides more than $100 billion to the city through different institutions like the New York City Housing Authority and benefits like Medicaid, according to a December report by the city comptroller. Nearly 8 percent of the city's operating budget for fiscal year 2025—around $9.6 billion—came from federal funds. Only around 6 percent of Adams's budget proposal for fiscal year 2026 relied on federal spending, but the state comptroller warned in an April report that these funds could be subject to cuts by the Trump administration. On top of that, cuts to benefits like Medicaid, nutrition programs, and education programs like Head Start would devastate the city's low-income residents.
Even if Mamdani was able to convince Albany of the efficacy of his ideas, Washington is another matter, said Greer. 'While many of these ideas could possibly work under a Biden administration, we see how the federal government right now is slashing so many different programs to cities especially, [and] how will these really innovative ideas be paid for is the larger question I think a lot of people have,' she said.
Moreover, Mamdani may have a limited time to enact his agenda, given that the next statewide elections will occur in 2026, when Republicans could possibly gain either the governorship or one or both chambers of the legislature. GOP candidate Lee Zeldin came within throwing distance of unseating Hochul in the 2022 election, and New York swung towards Trump in the 2024 presidential election, raising the specter of a future state government even more hostile to Mamdani.
Mamdani's ambitious agenda bears similarities to that of former New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio, who worked with Albany to implement a universal prekindergarten program. But Greer noted that the state and federal political situation in 2014, when de Blasio entered office, and in subsequent years was not analogous to that of today.
'Even during the first Trump years, there was nothing like what we're experiencing now with the massive gutting of the federal government. So Mamdani is entering into a very different New York City, because he's entering into a very different relationship with the federal government,' said Greer.
However, de Blasio had a famously antagonistic relationship with Cuomo, who was governor at the time. But in a February interview with the New York Editorial Board—a group of New York journalists on Substack who interviewed each mayoral candidate—Mamdani noted that despite their mutual distaste, the two were nonetheless able to negotiate issues such as universal pre-K. Similarly, Mamdani said, he was 'not trying to win as one man crossing the finish line,' but instead as a candidate who would use his bully pulpit as mayor to 'every single day make the case as to why our agenda needs to be enacted in Albany.'
'I want people to know that when they vote for me, they're voting for these issues,' Mamdani said. 'So that when elected and I go to Albany, it's clear to everyone that I'm fighting for these things and that the votes that they see across New York City are not necessarily die-hard for Zohran specifically as an individual, but are die hard for freezing the rent, for making buses fast and free, and for bringing universal child care.'