There was Zohran Mamdani — same suit, same beard, same Instagram handle — once again peering into the camera to talk to his 11 million followers, as he had in countless campaign videos.
But now, Mr. Mamdani — Mayor Mamdani — was speaking from his new office at City Hall, sitting behind the freshly polished desk once used by Mayor Fiorello H. La Guardia, flanked by an American flag and striped drapes trimmed in gold tassels.
As Mr. Mamdani spoke about his plan to convene “rental rip-off” hearings to hold landlords to account, the pseudo-informercial’s treacly elevator music and fake television static blurring the screen kicked in.
Mr. Mamdani, in his first full week as mayor, seemed eager to bring the spark that had made his local campaign a global phenomenon into a considerably less freewheeling new gig. But bridging the high-energy political theater of his election with the much harder work of governing is a precarious balancing act that has foiled many of his predecessors.
Amid some early headwinds, Mr. Mamdani revived his campaign strategy of popping up all over the city, at all hours of the day. He was on the scene of a fire in the Bronx on Monday morning, and then one in Queens on Tuesday morning. He clutched an iced coffee during his commute to City Hall on the W train from Queens. And he waited in line at a food cart to pick up dinner after work, surrounded by his security detail and a crowd of fans.
The mayor hoisted a shovel at the foot of the Williamsburg Bridge before spreading asphalt over a “bump” at a bike lane entrance that had long bedeviled cyclists seeking a smooth ride. Within a few hours, the new square of pavement had been dubbed the “Zohramp” on Instagram.
But the oil paintings of former mayors that line the walls of City Hall offer a cautionary tale for Mr. Mamdani.
Many generations of mayors have struggled to maintain the poetry of their campaigns while governing mostly in prose, in the words of former Gov. Mario Cuomo.
“The risk for him is when you start to get into these intractable problems,” said Nicole Gelinas, a fellow at the Manhattan Institute, a conservative think tank. “How long can you put people off with this theater before they start to say, ‘Wait a minute, the groceries aren’t cheaper, my rent is not cheaper, how did my life really get better under this?’”
In the meantime, Mr. Mamdani’s team seemed eager to hold onto the very-online-ness of his campaign.
The team documented every announcement, meme and meal on social media: the chicken and spiced potatoes he ate for dinner at a Bangladeshi restaurant in Astoria, Queens; his ride on the Q70 bus on the day transit fares increased to $3 a ride; his first night working late from his new office, illuminated by a semicircle of desk lamps.
His early wins were instant social media fodder, too.
He stood beside Gov. Kathy Hochul to announce a plan to make New York the first city in the United States to offer free universal child care, an event that was quickly turned into a video. And he held a news conference to announce a commission to tackle junk fees and created a new agency, the Office of Mass Engagement, to bring New Yorkers closer to their city government.
Mr. Mamdani also had his share of early stumbles, which he mostly kept offline.
His administration’s vetting procedures were called into question for a second time in a matter of a few weeks over old social media posts from Cea Weaver, the newly appointed director of the Mayor’s Office to Protect Tenants, who had described homeownership as a “weapon of white supremacy.”
Mr. Mamdani faced criticism, even from allies, over his delayed response to a protest held outside a Queens synagogue, during which some protesters chanted “Say it loud, say it clear, we support Hamas here.”
And the mayor’s promise to help thousands of tenants in mostly rent-stabilized apartments owned by a bankrupt landlord faced a major setback in court.
All the while, he sought to broadcast that he was still a man of the people.
“Mayor Mamdani was elected on a campaign that loved this city, embraced this city and strived in every moment to be among the people in this city,” said Dora Pekec, a spokeswoman for Mr. Mamdani. “That was not a commitment that evaporated in November — it remains a purpose that will define how the mayor delivers on behalf of New Yorkers.”
Ms. Gelinas, who has been critical of elements of Mr. Mamdani’s agenda, said she was encouraged by some of his early moves.
“He’s spent a lot of time on just showing that he’s not going to let the ideology entirely control his mayoralty,” Ms. Gelinas said.
She pointed to the mayor’s promise to complete a safety-focused redesign of McGuinness Boulevard in Brooklyn, which over the last few years had become an unexpected backdrop to the corruption scandals of his predecessor, Eric Adams.
Mr. Mamdani appears to be testing his own brand of political pragmatism.
He has said he was inspired by the 20th-century tradition of “sewer socialism,” in which a series of socialist mayors across the country focused on bread-and-butter issues like building sewers and cleaning the streets. On Saturday, Mr. Mamdani announced a plan to expand public restroom access across the city.
Mr. Mamdani’s political mentor, Senator Bernie Sanders of Vermont, has told him that a key to his own success as mayor of Burlington, Vt., in the 1980s was making sure snow was removed briskly in low-income neighborhoods.
But if sewer socialism peaked in the last century, Mr. Mamdani’s version is decidedly contemporary.
Seven days into his term, he strode into the stately Blue Room at City Hall — a space typically reserved for the most formal announcements and events.
Mr. Mamdani took his place at a lectern emblazoned with the city’s official seal, under a portrait of Alexander Hamilton framed in filigreed gold. He looked up to find a sea of iPhone cameras staring back at him; the attendees were not mainstream media journalists but rather a group of content creators who had become a crucial part of Mr. Mamdani’s public relations strategy during his campaign.
“It is a privilege to be gathered here today in a building that belongs to the people of New York but has been too long withheld from the people of New York,” he said.
At the end of the news conference, Mr. Mamdani turned around, held his phone above the podium and smiled for a selfie with the group.
Eliza Shapiro reports on New York City for The Times.
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