Mamdani At 100 Days: ‘we Don’t Have Enough Time To Complain’

NEW YORK — After 100 days in office, New York City mayors have historically taken a beat to reflect on how they’re handling the country’s second toughest job.

For Mayor Zohran Mamdani, Friday marked that milestone. It has been a rollercoaster ride already for the democratic socialist, with the city besieged by a multibillion-dollar budget deficit that’s cast doubt over large swaths of his expensive progressive agenda.

So how’s Mamdani doing?

POLITICO sat down with the new mayor at City Hall to press him on everything from policing and housing policies to his relationships with President Donald Trump (who he still considers a fascist) and Council Speaker Julie Menin (whose budget proposal he said he criticized with very good reason).

This interview has been edited for length and clarity. 

Aside from your policies, how would you summarize and how do you feel about your first 100 days? 

I think the first feeling is that of gratitude that I get to have 100 days as mayor. This is truly the dream of a lifetime, to have this position and to be trusted by New Yorkers to deliver on it. It has been a time where we have looked to show the city a glimpse into what these next four years will be like, one where we want to be ambitious, unapologetic, unrelenting, in not just our focus, but also in the speed of the work that we do. And we have a difficult task, which is to match the speed of the city and the people who live in it.

We've tried to show that in how we've worked and what we've worked on. And I'm proud of the things that we've achieved over that time period: The pathway to universal childcare, the 1,000 additional seats to 3K, it's also the kind of city work that is often overlooked, and yet it's the city work that makes such a difference in New Yorkers lives.

Potholes and stuff like that. 

Potholes, Williamsburg Bridge bump. I had a New Yorker the other day I was biking, and they yelled at me from a bike further behind that we had fixed two potholes that were personally important to her. I think about the ways in which these small acts take on such an outsized meaning for New Yorkers because they are held up as examples of why government cannot be believed in. How can you ask a New Yorker to believe in the promise of universal child care if they look out of their window every single day and see the same pothole not being addressed?

You had a lot of big plans on the campaign. You get into office, and they're like: By the way, there's absolutely no money to pay for anything. How did you have to alter your vision of what your administration could do?  

It is difficult, and yet we don't have enough time to complain about the hand that we were dealt. I think many of us assumed that we would face fiscal challenges. We did not assume we would face the greatest fiscal challenge since the Great Recession, and one that was created almost entirely by City Hall, as opposed to imposed upon outside of City Hall. And we need to show New Yorkers that we're able to not only address a generational fiscal crisis, but also able to advance a vision that makes it easier to live in the city, because, frankly, for a working class New Yorker, they measure their life not in the city's deficit, but in the cost that they have to pay, and it doesn't mean much to a tenant who's struggling to pay their rent if the city is facing a $5.4 billion deficit.

What means something is if you're willing to hold a bad landlord accountable, and we've held enough bad landlords accountable to win more than $30 million in settlements, have more than 6,000 apartments be repaired, host more than 1,000 New Yorkers at these rental rip-off hearings. And what we've found oftentimes is the conditions that people have had to live with have been a part of their life, not just for weeks or months, but for years, sometimes decades, and within that kind of relationship to such impunity, comes a diminished faith in government.

On the campaign, the promises were big. And you needed to address really big, systemic problems. At the same time, you've had to moderate yourself quite a bit since taking office. You’re no longer going to provide the funding for expanding CityFHEPS vouchers. Your Office of Community Safety is smaller than you promised during the campaign, even though you say it will grow. How do you explain this to your supporters who voted for you because of systemic change, not small incremental changes? 

I'd say a few things: The first is that, as a candidate for mayor, New Yorkers would repeat three things back to me, freezing the rent, making buses fast and free, delivering universal child care. We had six vacancies on the Rent Guidelines Board, we appointed members, it's an independent board. They'll make their determinations. It's part, however, of a larger view on housing of finally standing up for the very New Yorkers who are being overlooked.

I've spoken about settlements, the repairs. When it comes to making buses fast and free, we have already sped up the commutes for more than 100,000 bus riders in just the last three months, and we're encouraged by the conversations we're having at the state level to start to make buses free in tandem with that, and then when it comes to universal child care, securing more than a billion dollars from the governor, in partnership with her to deliver one of the largest expansions of a universal program in recent city History.

And so these are all indications of the central policies of the campaign, and they're also indicators of a larger vision. And so with the Office of Community Safety, we have established a first-of-its-kind office with a first-of-its-kind deputy mayor position that will expand and is one that we decided to create on this timeline, because, frankly, the portfolio that it oversees is one of immense consequence for New Yorkers. We're talking about the mental health crisis, we're talking about gun violence, we're talking about responding to so many of the crises for which we are only able to ask police to respond to, which is a job they were never supposed to bear.

During the campaign, this was not explained, though, right? So what do you say to those supporters who are looking at your administration and seeing promises not being made good on?

As a candidate for mayor, I always made clear that we would accomplish our vision by the end of the time that I was mayor, and when it comes to the central pieces of our vision, we are very much on that timeline. And even when it comes to CityFHEPS, I continue to be a believer in the importance of the program. When I came into office, inheriting a $12 billion fiscal deficit, it came with a requirement that the city make decisions such that that program could sustain because what we've seen instead is a program which grew from less than $30 million in cost in 2019 to close to $2 billion in cost by last year [and] was one that was increasing at 4 to 5 percent per month.

In facing a fiscal crisis of that scale, it requires us to put it on the kind of firm financial footing to ensure that New Yorkers have the confidence that we will steward this. And when it comes to the expansion of the program, we continue to believe in the importance of good faith negotiations, because we are sincerely committed to accomplishing the very spirit of that legislation, we just want to do so in a way where we know that the city can actually afford to pay for it, as opposed to put it out, and then have to take it back from New Yorkers.

What has been the weirdest part of the job so far?  

The weirdest part of the job [long pause] … There was a moment where I got out of the train in Midtown and it was incredibly cold. This was during the extended period of freezing weather that we had here, some of the coldest weather we ever had in New York City history, and the wind was lashing my face, and so I was crying from that. My job, though, means that someone can always take a photo of me, and so I was furiously trying to wipe away my tears to ensure that no one would think I was in a moment of despair. Thankfully no one got a photo of that.

A readymade meme right there. 

It did look like I was having a really tough day.

So it's a privacy thing?

It's just that everything is something. And if you have to explain it, it means that it’s already left your control. I was having that burrito for iftar…

I want to ask you about policing. To your supporters, I think it has been the most surprising thing about your time in office. There’s been a softening to your commitment on the Strategic Response Group, to the Civilian Complaint Review Board’s role in discipline, and the Snowball-Gate stuff. I think it demonstrated just how much control your police commissioner has in making decisions that are against what you want. Can you explain why you give so much deference to her when it so clearly seems to go against your political ideology? 

I think first to say that I'm just as committed as I was during the campaign on disbanding the SRG and ensuring that we decouple the police response to protests from the police response to counterterrorism, and that's the subject of an active conversation in ensuring that we deliver that in a way that not only ensures we're delivering the protections of the First Amendment, but also keeping New Yorkers safe.

And the other is that when I made the decision during the campaign, when I said publicly that I would retain the commissioner as our police commissioner. I did so, not in spite of what she was doing, but because of what she was doing. And I spoke about that I would be committed to keeping New Yorkers safe. And what we've seen in these first three months has been record low crime numbers, a decline in major crimes, a drop to the lowest number of murders in recorded history, a joint lowest number of shootings in recorded history. Staten Island has gone more than 180 days without a murder. And this is all a reflection of a lot of the work that so many men and women in the NYPD have been doing.

And at the end of the day, I'm the mayor, I make the final decision. I also make the decision to appoint and retain members of my administration because of the work that they do, because of the results that they deliver. And I long said that the most important thing to me are outcomes, and these outcomes are critical ones in assuring New Yorkers that this is a safe place to call their home, and we can do so while also decriminalizing cycling in New York City, while also codifying the fact that the NYPD will now release body camera footage within 30 days and continuing to do the work of also taking a fuller and more expansive view to the question of safety, through the establishing of the Office of Community Safety, whose work is only going to grow, not in terms of its effect, but also in its personnel and its funding.

So would it be safe to say that your police commissioner, Jessica Tisch, you feel like she's a fit with your administration because the good work she's doing to drive down crime outweighs some of the policy disagreements that you have over something like the gang database?

I would say that she's a good fit for our administration because she's delivering on our administration's commitment to make this a safer city and that I do not need to agree with every one of my commissioners or city workers at large about every single issue within their purview. I do, however, need to agree with the decisions that they make and the outcomes that those decisions create.

There's been a lot of circumstances — and I think this happens to all mayors — that are unexpected. Once you get in, you think: That’s going to be more difficult than I thought. But aside from outside constraints, has your political philosophy changed at all? 

I would say it is very much the same in terms of being a democratic socialist and believing in government's ability to transform working people's lives. I did not think I would think this much about the weather and the relentless nature of it, but the job of a leader is to respond to the crisis, not to ask why the crisis picked them as the leader to respond to.

Another source of tension is the City Council. You put out the video where you called out Julie Menin by name. I know you've said that this was about raising factual objections, it wasn't about going personal against her. But it's been seen as a little bit more than that, given that a lot of your allies piled on and it became a newscycle. Why did you decide to go that hard against the speaker? And do you think it can almost be counterproductive to set off such an aggressive tone this early in the budget process? 

I think I have a responsibility to be honest with New Yorkers, and the speaker put forward a proposal that overstated revenues, that exaggerated savings from debt service, that doublecounted already allocated savings. And if it was a proposal that would be pursued, then it would be one, given that we do not see those savings in the way in which they were laid out, that would force the city to cut funding for services and then use that funding to backfill those alleged savings.

In the midst of a generational fiscal crisis, we will have to make many difficult decisions. What I took issue with was the veracity of that which was put forward, and the importance in a budget process such as ours to be honest with New Yorkers about the facts of what savings are possible and what are not ones that we should build a budget around.

There were even members of the Council Progressive Caucus who took issue with how aggressive you went. Do you regret it in any way? Or do you kind of think it's necessary to get that much into the mudslinging?All I said was a critique on the basis of the proposal itself. It was a proposal that the speaker put forward. I described it as such, and then went through where I thought that it was faulty in its logic. And I think that's important, because we are speaking about an issue that has immense consequence for New Yorkers, and we have to not just get to the end of this budget process and balance this budget, but also do so while having a shared set of facts and making decisions to ensure that we are delivering the best possible service for New Yorkers.

Two quick things: What is the biggest challenge for you going forward, and why do you get along so well with Donald Trump? 

The biggest challenge is the fiscal deficit that we face. It is — even after all of these last few months, the work that has been done, the commitments that have been made — still standing at $5.4 billion and will take an immense amount of work and negotiation and partnership to bring down to zero.

The president and I disagree on many things in public and in private. We do, however, agree on one thing, which is a love for New York City, and that love, it is one that allows for our relationship to be a productive one, and allows for the city to know that it will not simply be affected by threats, but rather one that, as the president said, the better this city does, the happier he is.

It’s productive, even though he's “a fascist?”

Yes.

Obviously, your victory night speech was very different. Whose idea was it to say: We're gonna charm Trump instead? Also, what did you make of the Marist poll, which had you at 48% job approval, but very high on other approvals. What’s the deal with that discrepancy in your eyes?

I leave it to New Yorkers to judge the work that we do. Our job is to ensure that we are working as hard as we can to deliver for as many people as possible. When it comes to the president, we prepare for every possible kind of meeting, and that first meeting, the second meeting were ones that we were honest about our disagreements and also clear about a shared love of the city and the very different ways in which the city needs the help of those who are elected at every single level.

And one of the things that I told the president in our first meeting was my admiration for Fiorello La Guardia and FDR, and how so much of what LaGuardia was able to accomplish was as a result of his relationship with the federal government, and how the city, in being able to match the scale of the crisis in front of it, would also be in partnership with the federal government.

I just want to clarify one thing that you said in the beginning, because you mentioned you will need as long as you’re mayor to make good on your three biggest promises. Is that two terms or one term? 

[Laughing]: Inshallah, it’s two terms.