Mamdani vows big changes as New York’s new mayor

What happened

Zohran Mamdani was sworn in as mayor of New York City early yesterday during a private ceremony in a disused subway station under City Hall, then publicly inaugurated hours later before thousands of people who braved freezing temperatures to witness the historic moment. The 34-year-old democratic socialist is the first Muslim to lead the city and its “youngest mayor in a century,” The New York Times said. He is also New York’s “first millennial mayor, its first South Asian mayor and its first mayoral soccer fanatic.”

Who said what

“I have been told that this is the occasion to reset expectations,” but the “only expectation I seek to reset is that of small expectations,” Mamdani said after being ceremonially sworn in by Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.). “Beginning today, we will govern expansively and audaciously. We may not always succeed, but never will we be accused of lacking the courage to try.” He vowed to “govern as a democratic socialist,” but said he would be a mayor for all New Yorkers, “regardless of whether we agree.” 

Mamdani “largely stuck to repeating the campaign pledges of universal child care, free city buses and freezing the rent for rent-stabilized tenants” that set his “longshot campaign alight and rocketed him to international fame,” Politico said. “Notably absent” from his speech were “any direct shots aimed at President Donald Trump.” 

Trump, like other Republican politicians, has “sought to paint Mamdani as a radical communist and the face of a Democratic Party out of touch with mainstream voters,” The Washington Post said. But the new mayor’s “friendly visit to the Oval Office after being elected last year undercut some of those attacks and displayed the political skills that have propelled him to prominence.”

What next?

Mamdani is “arguably the most charismatic New York City mayor of the 21st century,” with his “personal magnetism, warm, engaging smile” and “unusual ability to communicate his ideas to the masses in plain English (and Urdu and Bengali and Spanish) on social media,” the Times said. But he is “also one of the least proven city managers in New York’s history,” and he now has to oversee 300,000 workers in the nation’s largest city while “managing deep cuts to federal funding, an erratic and often vengeful president and a more moderate governor facing her own re-election this year.”