Welcome to the spin zone, New York: Courtesy of Mayor Zohran Mamdani’s mammoth communications team.
The Post reported Monday that Hizzoner’s press office is expected to be the largest in city history, packed with public-relations heavy-hitters boasting serious lefty bona fides.
Putting the “commie” in “communications,” ex-Bernie Sanders staffers Anna Bahr and Joe Calvello will serve as communications director and press secretary, respectively.
His current speechwriter, Julian Gerson, deputy communications director, Lekha Sunder, and campaign communications aide Dora Pekec will also staff the Department of Propaganda — er, Office of Communications.
In case that isn’t enough, he also created an “Office of Mass Engagement”and named Democratic Socialist comrade Tascha Van Auken to head it.
No matter what Mamdani does — even if he accomplishes nothing at all — his giant PR machine will be in overdrive selling hype, berating media types who don’t march to their tune and blasting buzz on social media.
Fattening up on comms more than any past mayor also show Mamdani’s true priorities: Where other City Hall offices are supposed to deliver results for the people of New York City, the communications team’s purpose is to deliver results for him.
No, it’s not inherently wrong to seek a well-stocked press office; a mayor can get more done if everybody loves him.
On the other hand, the press despised Rudy Giuliani — the mayor who turned the city around from alternating slow and rapid decline to an unprecedented urban renaissance.
Plus: Mamdani won City Hall thanks to new-media mastery, a stunning combo of algorithm-savvy viral videos, endlessly post-able slogans and made-for-Instagram branding that in just half a year brought him from 1% in the polls to a smashing victory in the Democratic primary.
He’s got zero experience in actually governing, or in running anything beyond a small office; is he really resolved to rise to his new responsibilities?
It’s not a good sign that, winking at the strategy that earned him so much online adulation, Mamdani’s first full mayoral press conference ever was a “new media” junket packed with influencers who lobbed softball questions.
This style-over-substance approach may serve the new mayor’s ego, but it won’t do much for the rest of the city.
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