Black homeowners in Queens are fuming. Brooklyn 20-somethings are suddenly very invested in potholes. And one young Republican admitted that his fears New York would turn into “Gotham City” now feel overblown.
As Zohran Mamdani nears the 100th day of his history-making mayoral term, New Yorkers are still getting to know their 34-year-old democratic socialist mayor. They have early reviews anyway.
The New York Times recently visited four very different neighborhoods to capture a cross section: a gentrifying area where Mr. Mamdani dominated on Election Day, a beachfront enclave that soundly rejected him, and working-class immigrant districts in Queens and the Bronx often overlooked by City Hall.
Dozens of New Yorkers shared their views as they hustled to work, sunned in parks and did their evening shopping. Here are 13 of the most representative and the most novel.
Fordham Road, the Bronx
Running through the heart of the Bronx, Fordham Road is one of the city’s most crowded thoroughfares, a meeting point for Latino, Black and South Asian New Yorkers, including many undocumented immigrants. Mr. Mamdani made his first viral campaign video there, querying disaffected voters about their complaints, and later won the area by modest margins on Election Day.
‘Isn’t it time we have someone kind?’
Jim Coughlin, 61
Jim Coughlin, a Jesuit priest who teaches math at Fordham Preparatory School, said he had been pleased to see Mr. Mamdani trying to trim waste from city spending. But he singled out another memorable image from Mr. Mamdani’s first months in office: the mayor singing along with schoolchildren.
“He’s intelligent, he’s affable, and he comes across as kind,” Father Coughlin said. “And isn’t it time we have someone kind?”
‘There’s a difference between politics and activism. He’s growing into that.’
Emmanuel Oladejo, 26
Emmanuel Oladejo, an accountant and nursing student, did not vote last year, but he’s been pleasantly surprised by what he sees as Mr. Mamdani’s pragmatic turn.
Candidate Mamdani may have thrown flames at President Trump, Mr. Oladejo pointed out, but Mayor Mamdani appears to be charting a fruitful relationship for the city. He thought the city’s response to the second big snowstorm on Mr. Mamdani’s watch was better than the first.
“There’s a difference between politics and activism,” he said. “He’s growing into that.”
Mr. Oladejo, a Nigerian immigrant, said he was no great fan of socialism or Mr. Mamdani’s past support for defunding the police. But, he added, “I feel like he was the right choice for New York.”
‘I’m not into free.’
Jacqueline Smith, over 50
Jacqueline Smith, who would not give her exact age, said she was still hopeful about Mr. Mamdani’s mayoralty, but she’s seen enough of New York City’s deep-seated woes to be too optimistic.
Ms. Smith, who spent years in prison before becoming a city social worker, works on the front lines of drug abuse and gun violence in the Bronx.
She said she was worried that Mr. Mamdani and his “far left” aides were taking the wrong approach as they focus on expanding free government services. (The concern prompted her to vote for former Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo last year.)
“I’m not into free. It didn’t work very well for my people in the ’60s and ’70s. It takes away people’s ambition,” she said. “They want opportunities. They want jobs. And that’s much harder to do.”
Her clients, she said, “are not really thinking on the level of ‘Did he remove the snow?’ That’s just an easy thing,” she said. “The heavy thing is, why do these kids all have these guns?”
‘Everything else, I can give him time for.’
Barbara Dandridge, 62
Barbara Dandridge, who works in the health care industry, sees Mr. Mamdani as “a breath of fresh air.” With time, she said, she expects he will be able to enact much of his agenda, including a rent freeze she strongly supports.
But she was less understanding of the mayor’s early decision to direct city agencies to temporarily stop dismantling homeless encampments. (Mr. Mamdani has since revived the sweeps, but shifted leadership responsibility from the Police Department to the Department of Homeless Services.)
“Everything else, I can give him time for,” she said. “I can give him grace.”
Ms. Dandridge said she had watched for years as police officers did nothing about open drug use in an encampment across the street from her apartment.
“Please understand there is a difference between homeless people who are hanging around and have no place to go,” she said, and drug addicts “going crazy because they had a bad trip in the street.”
Bushwick, Brooklyn
No neighborhood voted for Mr. Mamdani more overwhelmingly than Bushwick, in the heart of the so-called Commie Corridor that made up much of his base. Historically home to a large, working-class Latino population, it has rapidly gentrified in recent years as young new college-educated residents have moved in.
‘He’s going to do great things for the people without a lot of resources.’
Alejandro Lopez, 50
Alejandro Lopez, a carpenter, said Mr. Mamdani won his vote as soon as he heard his plan to freeze rents for rent-stabilized apartments like his.
Mr. Lopez and his wife, Simona Ruiz, have lived in Bushwick for 26 years as the neighborhood has changed. He said he is fortunate to have steady work, but the construction industry can be unpredictable.
“It would help me so much if the rent didn’t increase while he’s running the city,” he said. “I have hope that he can do it.”
Mr. Lopez was also attracted to Mr. Mamdani’s proposal to make bus fares free, but doubts it will come to fruition. Still, after the opening stretch of the mayor’s term, he said he was overwhelmingly optimistic.
“He’s going to do great things for the people without a lot of resources,” he said.
‘He’s shown a lot of composure and professionalism.’
Justin Olsen, 26
Justin Olsen, a public relations specialist who moved to the city two years ago, said his generation “has a big problem with, like, deifying politicians.”
But he had not yet been able to find fault with Mr. Mamdani, who he said “shown a lot of composure and professionalism.”
Mr. Olsen, who was recently priced out of Astoria, Queens, said he appreciated Mr. Mamdani’s attempts to lower costs and the abilities as a “Trump whisperer” he showed when he visited the Oval Office. Yet like other young progressives in the area, he responded with similar enthusiasm about the mayor’s attempts to spotlight more workaday business, like snow removal and pothole repairs, through clever social media content.
“Collectivizing the city to come together and getting a lot of people involved,” Mr. Olsen said. “I thought that was pretty sick.”
‘What came out about his wife recently really jolted me.’
Deborah Weissner, 38
Deborah Weissner, a pricing strategist for a consulting firm, believes the concentration of wealth is a major problem in New York City, and voted for Mr. Mamdani in part because of his focus on taxing the rich to expand the social safety net.
Ms. Weissner, who is Israeli-American and Jewish, said she had also admired his willingness to sharply criticize Israel and discounted charges that he was antisemitic as “noise.”
“I’m someone who’s very pro-Palestine,” she said.
Yet since Mr. Mamdani took office, Ms. Weissner said she has found herself deeply troubled by news reports that Rama Duwaji, Mr. Mamdani’s wife, had liked posts appearing to celebrate Hamas’s deadly attack on Israel, right after Oct. 7, 2023. She said she was also troubled that Ms. Duwaji provided illustrations for an essay in a collection compiled by an editor who elsewhere has used terms like “cockroach,” “ghoul” and “vampires” to describe Jews.
Mr. Mamdani called the statements “abhorrent” and said Ms. Duwaji had been unaware of them when she agreed to illustrate the essay.
Ms. Weissner, though, took note that the first lady has not commented publicly on positions that “seem to veer toward anti-Jewishness.”
“It wasn’t that she did it,” she said. “It was that she never came out at any point and clarified it.”
Laurelton, Queens
At New York’s suburban edge, near John F. Kennedy Airport, Laurelton is a middle-class haven with among the highest rates of Black homeownership. The neighborhood initially voted for Mr. Cuomo in last year’s Democratic primary but flipped to Mr. Mamdani in November.
‘The little person is always asked to suffer.’
L. Van Duyne, 56
L. Van Duyne is not ready to say his vote for Mr. Mamdani was a mistake, but the mayor’s proposal for a nearly 10 percent property tax hike has him thinking about it.
Mr. Mamdani has appeared to back away from the proposal, framing it as a painful last resort, meant to raise pressure on Albany to raise income taxes on the rich. But the threat landed like a gut punch to Mr. Van Duyne and some of his neighbors in southeast Queens.
“Whoever gets elected always talks about they’re going to tax the rich, and it never happens,” Mr. Van Duyne said. Instead, he added, “the little person is always asked to suffer.”
A public-school teacher who owns his home, Mr. Van Duyne said he could scarcely afford the kind of increase Mr. Mamdani is talking about. But for now, he is willing to wait and see.
“It’s 100 days,” he said. “That’s nothing.”
‘What he’s doing is wrong.’
Denise Rowe, 60
Denise Rowe, a Jamaican immigrant, has listened carefully as Mr. Mamdani centers City Hall’s attention on the plight of renters. She wonders where she fits into his vision.
Ms. Rowe owns a modest home in Queens and was already struggling to pay her mortgage and mounting bills on a salary from the State Department of Education and sporadic income from renting out a couple rooms.
“I go to the food pantry,” she said and noted that one tenant left without paying $33,000 in rent arrears. “So it’s hard. Then he comes talking about paying more taxes. I’m paying $8,000 and change. What more do you want me to pay?”
A proud Democrat, Ms. Rowe sat out November’s election because she was unhappy with her options. She said she has found little to like about the mayoralty so far, and was especially alarmed by Mr. Mamdani’s promises of a rent freeze — however well intentioned.
“When tenants hear that, they don’t want to pay you no rent,” she said.
‘You have to give him a chance to work into it.’
Novlette Gayle, 63
Novlette Gayle, a medical counselor who owns a home just outside Laurelton, was more sanguine when it came to Mr. Mamdani’s property tax threat — especially when measured against the good things she believes he is doing.
“You have to understand, no matter what it is, we’re going to have an increase anyway,” she said.
Ms. Gayle has been particularly happy about the agreement Mr. Mamdani reached with Gov. Kathy Hochul to fund an expansion of free child care, his most significant policy win to date. And Ms. Gayle said that, despite his youth and inexperience before taking high office, Mr. Mamdani had quickly shown he was up to the job.
“You have to give him a chance to work into it,” she said.
Manhattan Beach, Brooklyn
An exclusive enclave at one end of Coney Island, Manhattan Beach is home to a large population of immigrants from the former Soviet Union, many of them Jewish. It is affluent and culturally far from the borough with which it shares a name: No other neighborhood was more hostile to Mr. Mamdani, giving him just 6 percent of the vote.
‘Shortly speaking, disgusting.’
Gus Karpinski, 77
Like many neighbors, Gus Karpinski fled the Soviet Union as a young man for a better life in New York. Mr. Mamdani, he believes, is now spoiling it.
What is bothering him? “Taxes. Order in the city. Suppress of police. Everything,” said Mr. Karpinski, a Republican who voted for Mr. Cuomo. “I try to find anything positive. No. Nothing. Zero. Zilch.”
Mr. Karpinski said he believed Mr. Mamdani “hates the city.” He took particular offense at the media accounts of Ms. Duwaji’s social media activity around Oct. 7.
“She is the first lady in this city,” he said, “and she’s happy at the slaughter.”
‘He’s been more of a social justice mayor than a mayor-mayor.’
Michael Taylor, 19
Michael Taylor’s politics defy easy categorization. He considers himself a law-and-order Republican and is studying criminal justice at Kingsborough Community College, but he also supports raising taxes on the rich and making buses free.
His views on Mr. Mamdani so far are similarly complicated (part of the reason he sat out the election).
“He’s been more of a social justice mayor than a mayor-mayor,” he said. “You can tell by his mannerisms and the way he approaches the media after anything police-involved that he doesn’t really back his own.”
Yet Mr. Taylor conceded that fears about public safety under Mr. Mamdani had been overblown. “You had some people say that the city would turn into Gotham City,” he said. “But for now, it seems we’re holding things together, and that’s something I’ll give him credit for.”
‘He’s trying.’
Alex Dubinsky, 58
Alex Dubinsky knows he is an outlier. A Ukranian-born Jewish immigrant who owns his own home, he was one of the few Manhattan Beach residents to vote for Mr. Mamdani.
He said that he would give the mayor a middling grade after 100 days but that Mr. Mamdani deserved more time.
“He tried to do something for middle-income people, he’s trying,” he said, adding that Mr. Mamdani would need extra fortitude to go up against the political forces trying to halt his plans.
Mr. Dubinsky, who works in the restaurant business, was not happy with Mr. Mamdani’s proposal to raise property taxes, which he thinks would hurt some of the very people the mayor vowed to help. He also said Mr. Mamdani could “be more aggressive” in his speeches denouncing antisemitism but disagreed with those who have argued the mayor has put Jewish New Yorkers’ safety at greater risk.
He asked rhetorically if the city was now “more hostile,” before answering himself. “I don’t think so.”
Miles G. Cohen contributed reporting
Nicholas Fandos is a Times reporter covering New York politics and government.
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