Mayor-elect Zohran Mamdani of New York City will not take office until Jan. 1, but some of the daunting challenges awaiting him may demand more immediate attention.
Mr. Mamdani, 34, a state assemblyman and democratic socialist, will be instantly thrust into national debates about immigration, federal funding priorities and the future of the Democratic Party.
And if he wants to quickly deliver on his campaign pledges to make the city more affordable, he will need to keep building alliances to get his plans approved.
“The first day I spend at City Hall will be very much like the last day I spend at City Hall: It will be focused on the cost of living crisis,” Mr. Mamdani said outside City Hall on the day before the election.
Here are five priorities that Mr. Mamdani is expected to turn his attention to, even before he takes office:
Navigating President Trump’s attacks
The greatest challenge Mr. Mamdani may face is President Trump, who has made no secret of his disdain for him. The president has falsely called Mr. Mamdani a communist and has threatened to arrest him and to withdraw federal funding from the city.
On the night before the election, Mr. Trump warned that under Mr. Mamdani “this once great City has zero chance of success, or even survival!”
Mr. Mamdani has vowed to stand up to Mr. Trump when he takes aim at the city. But he also said he would be willing to meet with the president.
In an interview on Fox News’s “The Story With Martha MacCallum,” Mr. Mamdani stared directly into the camera to address the president and said he would be “ready to speak at any time to lower the cost of living.”
Some New Yorkers are worried that Mr. Trump could send the National Guard to the city or a surge of immigration authorities into neighborhoods, hoping for a confrontation with Mr. Mamdani.
Mr. Mamdani has said that he would work with Gov. Kathy Hochul and Letitia James, the state attorney general, to fight the Trump administration in court.
“What I would be doing is reminding New Yorkers of their rights, making it clear that this is not something that we stand for, being proud of our sanctuary city policies and utilizing the courts,” Mr. Mamdani said in a recent interview with NBC News.
Universal free child care
Mr. Mamdani has said that his top policy priority is implementing free universal child care. His ambitious plan would cover all children from 6 weeks to 5 years old and could cost $6 billion per year.
It could take a herculean effort to pull off and would require support from state lawmakers. But Mr. Mamdani has already seemed to win over the governor, a Democrat who is running for re-election next year.
“I’ve had conversations with Assemblymember Mamdani about how we can get to universal child care, and I believe we can,” Ms. Hochul said at an event with him in Queens last month.
Ms. Hochul plans to highlight universal child care during her State of the State address in January and to make it a priority during budget negotiations next year.
Mr. Mamdani has said that he wants to tax wealthy residents and corporations to pay for his policy ideas. But with the governor reluctant to raise taxes, he has said that he is open to other funding solutions.
A rent freeze
Mr. Mamdani pledged to freeze the rent on the city’s nearly one million rent stabilized apartments. He has argued that this is the most straightforward campaign promise he can deliver on quickly.
The nine-member Rent Guidelines Board votes every year on whether to raise rents for stabilized apartments and by how much. All the members are appointed by the mayor. Under former Mayor Bill de Blasio, the board froze rents three times.
Mr. Mamdani told the news outlet Hell Gate that he wanted to “actually utilize” power to make the rent freeze happen, raising the prospect of pressuring reluctant board members or removing them.
“You look at Republicans, they seem to have no limits in their imagination or how they want to use power,” Mr. Mamdani said. “And as Democrats, it’s like we’re constructing an ever-lowering ceiling.”
The more difficult goal could be another campaign pledge to build 200,000 affordable housing units over the next decade. That could help bring down rents for the millions of New Yorkers who do not live in a rent-stabilized unit.
Mending fences with his critics
Mr. Mamdani faced a deluge of attacks and negative advertisements during the campaign. He called for unity in his victory speech.
Some business leaders have been apoplectic over Mr. Mamdani’s rise and fear that he could undermine the nation’s financial capital. Others have moved to influence him.
Some Jewish New Yorkers have expressed concerns over his comments criticizing Israel, including Rabbi Angela Buchdahl, who leads one of the city’s largest Reform Jewish congregations and did not make an endorsement in the race.
“I fear living in a city, and a nation, where anti-Zionist rhetoric is normalized and contagious,” she said during services in the final days of the race. “Mayoral candidate Zohran Mamdani has contributed to a mainstreaming of some of the most abhorrent antisemitism.”
Mr. Mamdani sought to address those concerns in his victory speech, saying that he would “stand steadfast alongside Jewish New Yorkers” and would “not waver in the fight against the scourge of antisemitism.”
In Albany, Mr. Mamdani has some strong relationships. But he has fewer close ties to members of the New York City Council, who could be key to enacting his agenda.
Mr. Mamdani is expected to travel to San Juan, P.R., later this week, where he will mingle with Council members at beachfront parties as they move to choose a new Council speaker.
Set a vision for the Police Department
Mr. Mamdani once embraced the “defund the police” movement and will now oversee the Police Department and its more than 34,000 officers.
Police union leaders did not make an endorsement in the mayor’s race, but they have criticized Mr. Mamdani as “not pro-police.”
Mr. Mamdani seems eager to build bridges with officers and cognizant that the police became a major liability for Mr. de Blasio, whom officers memorably turned their backs on at a police funeral.
Mr. Mamdani has said that he wants to keep the current police commissioner, Jessica Tisch, and praised her efforts to improve public safety. He also apologized to officers over his remarks in 2020, when he called the police “racist, anti-queer & a major threat to public safety.”
“Beyond every headline and beyond every caricature, what I’ve found is a New Yorker simply trying to do the best that they can,” Mr. Mamdani told The New York Times. “I know that that is the case for N.Y.P.D. officers.”
Mr. Mamdani has also vowed to create a Department of Community Safety that would dispatch mental health workers, rather than the police, to respond to 911 calls from people in crisis.
Mr. Mamdani’s top adviser, Elle Bisgaard-Church, met with City Council members last month to discuss the new agency and to answer their questions.
Emma G. Fitzsimmons is the City Hall bureau chief for The Times, covering Mayor Eric Adams and his administration.
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