NEW YORK — In his first month as New York City mayor, Zohran Mamdani has begun to reveal a governing style that answers a central question of his campaign: How does a 34-year-old democratic socialist with no executive experience run the nation’s largest city?
Through interviews with nearly a dozen people who have insight into Mamdani’s schedule, a clearer picture is beginning to form: The young mayor puts in long hours. He approaches the city’s organizational chart with a Bloombergian deference to agency autonomy. And he takes a granular interest in public relations.
On more than one occasion, the mayor has walked into City Hall’s press shop, commandeered a keyboard and edited a statement himself, according to a senior administration official, who, like many of the people who spoke with POLITICO, was granted anonymity to provide a peek into the daily life of the world’s most watched mayor.
With just weeks at the helm of City Hall, Mamdani has notched several wins — or at least avoided some of the early stumbles that often define a new mayor.
He has formed a bromantic bond with President Donald Trump that, for now, has spared New York City from the full brunt of federal immigration enforcement. Alongside Gov. Kathy Hochul, he announced a major step toward universal child care, his signature campaign promise, while simultaneously needling her to tax the rich. And he effectively handled snow-clearing operations during a massive winter storm. Between those successes and the hiring of experienced government hands to top roles, even some of Mamdani’s biggest critics have dialed down their attacks during his honeymoon phase.
“There’s no question that they’re focused and the team is in place,” said Sid Rosenberg, a conservative talk show host who was among the most acerbic anti-Mamdani voices during the campaign.
Rosenberg supported Mamdani’s main rival, Andrew Cuomo, and now sees some of the former governor in Mamdani, specifically with respect to the mayor’s knack for public relations.
“I certainly saw a lot of that with Andrew Cuomo in the COVID era,” he said.
Arriving at a fully baked governing philosophy takes more than four weeks, though. As Mamdani gains more on-the-job know-how about the inner workings of the city government, he is bound to approach its machinery differently. When he has appointed more of his own commissioners, he will be more likely to interface with them directly. And more importantly, he has yet to preside over the type of internal municipal conflict that remains largely hidden from the public view — but can entail high drama and grind decision-making to a crawl.
Still, his earliest days provide a foundation upon which Mamdani will attempt to fulfill his lofty promises. And more often than not, as POLITICO has learned, those days start between 7 and 8 a.m.
The first person Mamdani has a scheduled call with each morning is his press secretary, Joe Calvello. On that call, according to two people with knowledge of the mayor’s schedule, Calvello gives Mamdani a rundown on any emergencies or other overnight happenings that may require his attention that day.
Mamdani also has at least one joint meeting scheduled per day with his two top deputies: First Deputy Mayor Dean Fuleihan, a de Blasio alum brought in from outside Mamdani’s political circles, and Chief of Staff Elle Bisgaard-Church, Mamdani’s most trusted aide and campaign architect. Three people close to Mamdani said he meets with Fuleihan and Bisgaard-Church even more frequently than scheduled, and has been huddling with Fuleihan in particular in his first 31 days, an indication of how the young mayor is leaning on the 75-year-old government veteran for advice as he gets his sea legs.
Mamdani also talks frequently with his chief counsel, Ramzi Kassem, and has a sitdown scheduled once a week with his schools chancellor, Kamar Samuels, and his police commissioner, Jessica Tisch — though the mayor has said publicly he is in constant contact with Tisch. The mayor also has a weekly standing meeting to assess progress on expanding child care options for New York parents.
Otherwise, most of Mamdani’s days are spent attending press conferences and other public-facing events, sitting down for various meetings and calls, and interacting with his deputy mayors before wrapping up around 9 p.m.
Once his scheduled day is done, Mamdani reads through briefings either in his car or at home. And then, often until about midnight, the mayor will have one-on-one calls to brainstorm and strategize with confidantes including Bisgaard-Church, Fuleihan and his closest political advisers, Morris Katz and Patrick Gaspard — key figures in Mamdani’s campaign who have not joined the administration.
Mamdani used social media to great effect during his run, creating a visual vernacular that candidates around the country have sought to imitate. Unsurprisingly, he has incorporated that mindset into city government.
In addition to editing official statements, Mamdani hosts a communications meeting in City Hall three times a week, usually in the evening, to hash out plans for how he can make good on his desire to have 100 announcements in the first 100 days of his administration.
The meetings, held in City Hall’s staid Committee of the Whole room, feature around 40 people, including all of Mamdani’s deputy mayors, according to two administration officials who attend the strategy sessions. While the conversations can sometimes stray to other topics, the stated purpose of the confab is to hash out and prepare press conference plans for the 100-day announcements.
Jon Paul Lupo, a longtime political consultant who served in top City Hall posts during former Mayor Bill de Blasio’s eight years in office, said he couldn't recall attending regular meetings of that scale focused on communications strategy — even during the early de Blasio days. But he noted that the new mayor is coming into office with high expectations to net some early wins.
“When you’re six months into the term, are the mayor and all the deputy mayors going to have to sit in meetings like that? Probably not. But I think it’s a good idea," he said. "It’s early in the administration, organizations tend to take on a personality and traits of their leader, and I think if the mayor himself and his senior leadership are in a room saying we have to have 100 things in a 100 days, that sets the tone.”
Mamdani had strong feelings about who his press secretary would be.
Calvello, an alum of Bernie Sanders’ 2020 presidential campaign who most recently worked for Chicago Mayor Brandon Johnson, was taking time to consider the job late last year, he told POLITICO.
Still undecided two nights before Mamdani’s inauguration, Calvello was coming out of a Phish concert at Madison Square Garden when Katz, the Mamdani adviser, asked him to stop by Goldie’s Bar in Brooklyn. Waiting for him outside the bar was Mamdani, who gave him the hard sell to close the deal. After that, Calvello said he was in, especially because Anna Bahr, a fellow Sanders campaign veteran, was coming on as City Hall’s communications director.
Mamdani’s hands-on approach with Calvello stands in contrast to his otherwise deferential management style — which is distinct from the two mayors who came before him.
De Blasio had a reputation as a micromanager. His successor, Eric Adams, governed atop a chaotic City Hall leadership structure with competing power centers before his inner circle was wiped out by corruption probes and resignations.
While Mamdani’s politics are far closer to de Blasio’s, in some ways his early management instincts resemble those of former Mayor Michael Bloomberg — a technocrat by turns Republican, Democrat and independent who spent nearly $10 million during the campaign trying to stop Mamdani.
City government contains a clear pecking order that, like the billionaire media mogul, Mamdani seems to be thus far embracing. He largely huddles with Fuleihan, Bisgaard-Church and the five deputy mayors — as well as his chief counsel and corporation counsel nominee, Steven Banks — to come up with big-picture goals or flag problems. Otherwise, he appears to give agency heads and their respective deputy mayors a wide berth. And unlike some of his predecessors, Mamdani has so far avoided inserting himself into agency affairs by, for instance, phoning up commissioners at various hours of the day and night. At least for now.
"Maybe that changes once his appointees are spread throughout the government," Lupo said.
But Mamdani has still suffered from leadership missteps.
His decision to summarily fire 179 people who worked in Adams’ City Hall left a nerve center of city government bereft of the people power necessary to run a functioning communications and intergovernmental affairs operation — an issue that lingers but is receding as the new administration staffs up.
“That made for a rough first couple of weeks,” one high-ranking city official said. “They didn’t think: well, those people were probably doing something, right?”
Two of Mamdani’s appointees — one who resigned after her offensive social media posts about Jewish people emerged — attracted damaging headlines and called into question his ability to vet candidates. And the mayor’s communication instincts have not always served him well.
When the NYPD shot and killed two people, his office took nearly 12 hours to release a statement. And Mamdani and his inner circle went through several cycles of hand wringing over how to respond to a protest where participants chanted in support of Hamas, according to a report in The New York Times.
The latter — along with other points of concern now memorialized in a Mamdani tracker — has kept Jewish groups like the Anti-Defamation League wary of Mamdani’s tenure.
“I would say the organization feels vindicated in this moment because over the past few months, he has continued to give the Jewish community cause for concern,” said Scott Richman, the ADL’s regional director for New York and New Jersey.
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