Zohran Mamdani, the front-runner to be the next mayor of New York, and Jessica Tisch, the city’s police commissioner, might not seem like natural allies.
He is a democratic socialist who has questioned whether billionaires should exist. She is a billionaire heiress who has called for stricter criminal justice laws.
But if Mr. Mamdani wins November’s general election, both appear open to working together — a potential partnership being pushed by influential business leaders and some of Mr. Mamdani’s more powerful Democratic allies.
Mr. Mamdani, a state assemblyman who decisively won the Democratic primary last month, has said he would consider keeping Commissioner Tisch, and has praised her on the campaign trail and in private for improving public safety and running the Police Department more responsibly after the tumult of Mayor Eric Adams’s first term.
Ms. Tisch, in turn, believes that she has made progress in making the city safer since taking command of the department seven months ago, and would want to stay in the job regardless of the outcome of the November election, according to two people familiar with her thinking.
The leaders who have encouraged Mr. Mamdani to keep the commissioner include Letitia James, the state attorney general, according to a person familiar with the matter. Ms. James has enthusiastically endorsed Mr. Mamdani.
Kathryn Wylde, the leader of the Partnership for New York City, a major business group, said she had given Mr. Mamdani the same advice and that he seemed open to it. “I think he’s listening,” she said.
Their entreaties reflect a sense that the alliance could be mutually beneficial. Committing to keeping Ms. Tisch could signal that Mr. Mamdani is a consensus builder who will hire experienced leaders and could assuage concerns among New Yorkers who fear that his policies could worsen public safety. For Ms. Tisch, it would allow her more time to shape a department and a city she loves.
But keeping the commissioner could anger Mr. Mamdani’s core supporters on the left, including the Democratic Socialists of America, who could take issue with her criticism of bail reform efforts and her push to create quality-of-life teams to pursue low-level crimes.
Raymond W. Kelly, a former police commissioner who has known Ms. Tisch since 2008 when he hired her as an intelligence analyst, said he would advise her to remain in the job.
“I would tell her to stay on if at all possible,” he said. “She’s a very skillful manager and she’s got this great track record every place she’s gone. For the good of the city, we really need that to continue.”
The idea of Ms. Tisch working for a progressive was first floated by Brad Lander, the city comptroller who made a crucial cross-endorsement deal with Mr. Mamdani during the primary and said he would keep her.
If Mr. Mamdani retained Ms. Tisch, it would echo a move made by Bill de Blasio, when he named William J. Bratton as his police commissioner before he became mayor in 2014. It was viewed as the single most important appointment by Mr. de Blasio, a progressive Democrat who had criticized the department over a rise in stop-and-frisk policing.
“They would be like the ‘Odd Couple,’” said Mr. Bratton, who was Ms. Tisch’s boss in 2014 and promoted her to deputy commissioner of information and technology. Mr. Adams later appointed her to lead the city’s sanitation commission.
Mr. Bratton said that Mr. Mamdani “should be so lucky for her to stay.”
“The advantages she would have is she knows the department, the city knows her and there is confidence in her,” Mr. Bratton said. “It would have to come down to would she believe she can work with this guy. That’s the unknown.”
A complicating factor is her loyalty to Mr. Adams, who is running as an independent in the general election and trailing Mr. Mamdani in the polls. She has been a steadfast champion of Mr. Adams, even after he was indicted on federal corruption charges that were later dismissed by the Trump administration.
“As a career public servant, my focus is on public safety,” Ms. Tisch said in a statement on Wednesday. “I work for Mayor Eric Adams and I am proud of the success we have had driving down crime (and putting trash in containers!) on his watch.”
And at a recent news conference to celebrate a record low number of shooting victims in the first half of the year, Ms. Tisch thanked the mayor and criticized leaders like Mr. Mamdani who called for reducing the police budget, though she did not mention Mr. Mamdani by name.
Mr. Mamdani embraced calls to defund the police in 2020, but no longer supports doing so. He received criticism during the primary over his past remarks, including calling the department “wicked and corrupt.”
It is not clear how Mr. Mamdani’s public safety plan would mesh with Ms. Tisch’s policies. He has said that he would keep the police head count at its current level, and called for eliminating the Police Department’s huge overtime budget and a unit known as the Strategic Response Group that handles protests. His 17-page plan called for creating a new agency, the Department of Community Safety, to focus on mental health issues. He wants to raise taxes on the wealthy to help pay for his plans — an idea that Gov. Kathy Hochul has rejected.
The Police Department is facing a staffing crisis. It has about 33,580 officers, down from a peak of 40,000 in 2000, according to department figures and the city’s Independent Budget Office. Other mayoral candidates have called for hiring thousands more officers.
Mr. Kelly, the former commissioner, said he hoped Ms. Tisch would advise a Mayor Mamdani to hire more officers. Mr. Kelly said he was worried that the new safety agency, which Mr. Mamdani said would have a $1 billion budget, would divert resources from the police.
“It clearly will take resources from the P.D. and there is only so much to go around,” Mr. Kelly said.
Still, Mr. Mamdani has spoken positively about Ms. Tisch for months. He said in an interview in March that he was encouraged by her “swift and decisive action to address corruption in the highest echelons of the N.Y.P.D.”
His campaign manager, Elle Bisgaard-Church, said in a statement on Wednesday that it was too soon to make any hiring decisions but reiterated his appreciation for her.
“Jessica Tisch has been a welcome change to department leadership, rooting out corruption and reducing crime, but any and all commitments on administration positions are premature,” she said. “Zohran is focused on continuing to earn the trust of New Yorkers ahead of the November election and beyond.”
In the weeks since the primary, Mr. Mamdani has been working to consolidate support among key groups. He held a rally on Wednesday with the United Federation of Teachers to celebrate his latest major union endorsement.
At the same time, Mr. Adams and the other candidates who are on the November ballot have been warring over who has the best chance of beating Mr. Mamdani. That group includes Curtis Sliwa, the Republican candidate; former Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo, who finished a distant second to Mr. Mamdani in the crowded primary; and Jim Walden, a lawyer.
Tom Allon, a newspaper publisher and former mayoral candidate who helped oversee “mayor classes” for Mr. Adams before he took office in 2022, encouraged Ms. Tisch to run for mayor in January. He said it would be a smart political strategy for Mr. Mamdani to retain her.
“If Zohran indicates that he would keep Tisch, that would almost be checkmate in this race,” he said.
Mr. Bratton agreed that it would be wise, but he said that he could not imagine Ms. Tisch would commit to working for Mr. Mamdani and needlessly anger Mayor Adams.
“She will avoid that question like the plague and she should,” he said.
Emma G. Fitzsimmons is the City Hall bureau chief for The Times, covering Mayor Eric Adams and his administration.
Maria Cramer is a Times reporter covering the New York Police Department and crime in the city and surrounding areas.
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