Zohran Kwame Mamdani, 34, was elected to the New York State Assembly in 2021. While in office, he built his public brand around housing and affordability, including rent burdens and tenant protections. He would eventually frame his 2024 mayoral run around his cost-of-living policy. 

Mamdani is the son of acclaimed film director Mira Nair and anticolonial political scholar Dr. Mahmood Mamdani, who have both played some role in shaping his political philosophy and public messaging style. His political philosophy of being pro-working class, anti-colonial, and embracing his Muslim identity began well before he held office. When Mamdani was at Bowdoin College, he co-founded the school’s Students for Justice in Palestine chapter. And, before running for elected office, he worked as a foreclosure-prevention counselor, a job he has described as helping families avoid losing their homes. 

While representing the richly diverse Queens neighborhood of Astoria in the State Assembly in Albany, Mamdani joined the New York Taxi Workers Alliance hunger strike over medallion debt, and was arrested during a rally connected to the demonstrations. The episode became one of the most widely cited examples of him engaging directly in protest politics while holding office. 

Mamdani, one of the few Muslim elected officials in New York, has maintained a high-profile stance on Palestine, including supporting legislation aimed at stopping New York tax-exempt charitable funds from supporting Israeli settlements, called the “Not on Our Dime” proposal. He was also among the state lawmakers involved in a hunger strike in late 2023, calling for a permanent ceasefire, alongside former gubernatorial candidate and actress Cynthia Nixon. 

That commitment continued into his historic mayoral campaign, when he ran on a platform that prioritized sweeping measures to lower the cost of living for working-class New Yorkers, though some of his supporters have felt his recent actions have been a step back from prior positions. 

His was a ‘campaign of joy,’ according to many New Yorkers, who welcomed his campaign’s outlook in the face of the near-constant racial and Islamophobic attacks he faced from opponents in public comments, debates, and even mailers. It captured the hearts of millions of people around the world as he emphasized housing affordability, including rent freezes for rent-stabilized units, expanding affordable housing construction, free city bus service, universal childcare, and raising the minimum wage, in addition to Palestinian rights and climate change. 

More importantly, it appealed to his growing base of younger voters, working-class residents of the city, Palestine supporters, immigrant community activists, and the South Asian community in particular. His victory was due to powerful grassroots organizing and Get Out the Vote efforts across all corners of the city. 

One of his major platform issues was public safety. Mamdani was a vocal supporter of the movement to defund the police in 2023, but while his current position still involves proposed changes to the NYPD, some of his progressive base have felt his actions during the transition period have not matched his previous pitch on policing. For instance, retaining New York Police Department Commissioner Jessica Tisch. In 2020, he also publicly called to “#DefundTheNYPD” and described the NYPD as “racist, anti-queer & a major threat to public safety.” 

He also ran on prioritizing equity in mental health and social services access across neighborhoods disproportionately affected by inequality, including a proposal to send mental health and social workers to answer certain police calls. 

He has pledged to work towards putting an end to the federal Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agency’s raids to round up, detain, and deport undocumented immigrants around the city. These policy proposals drew national attention and framed his victory as a historic win for progressive politics in urban governance. However, whether he will maintain that line and momentum remains to be seen once Mamdani takes office, and the city’s internal politics play out.

After his election night speech, quoting former India’s first Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru, he began building what he called the “New Era for New York City,” structuring a transition to City Hall that aims to translate his campaign promises into actionable governance. This effort included appointing a broad network of voluntary advisory committees and a transition team featuring seasoned public servants, policy experts, and advocates such as former chair of the Federal Trade Commission Lina Khan and notable city officials who reflect the diversity of the city’s perspectives and priorities. 

While some of those choices have resonated and even pleasantly surprised his base, other appointments have had the opposite effect.

Dean Fuleihan was tapped by Mayor-Elect Mamdani as his First Deputy Mayor just days after the election. Fuleihan, 74, brings decades of management and fiscal experience to the incoming administration and has widely been seen as a counter to concerns about Mamdani’s relative youth and inexperience. 

A veteran of New York City government and hailing from a family of Lebanese immigrants, Fuleihan previously served as First Deputy Mayor under former Mayor Bill de Blasio and led the city’s Office of Management and Budget. He was crucial to the de Blasio administration’s funding of universal Pre-K, a program that provides free preschool for every four-year-old in the city.

His deep institutional knowledge of city finances and government operations positions him to be a key partner in executing Mamdani’s ambitious agenda, particularly those items addressing the affordability crisis, where budgeting and cross-agency coordination are critical. 

As first deputy, Fuleihan will play a central role in bridging the transition from campaign promises to governing reality, leveraging his experience managing multi-billion-dollar budgets and complex interagency negotiations.

Elle Bisgaard-Church was named Chief of Staff to Mayor-elect Mamdani, placing her in one of the most powerful internal roles in City Hall. Bisgaard-Church’s background is rooted in progressive electoral politics and organizing. She has worked on left-leaning campaigns and advocacy efforts, building a reputation as a strategist closely aligned with movement-driven candidates, but had never actually led a campaign before this one. 

Bisgaard-Church is relatively unknown to many in the New York political social scene—”under the radar” for many until now, but highly praised by Mamdani. That low profile also meant she was largely uninfluenced by others’ campaigns or priorities, which seemed to serve Mamdani well in setting his campaign apart from any that were run before in the city and state. 

She earned her stripes leading his office when he was an Assemblyman, having been put through interviews with the New York City chapter of the Democratic Socialists of America and the Muslim Democratic Club of New York to get the job. By all accounts, Bisgaard-Church is Mamdani’s closest and most trusted advisor. 

Key to her influence on Mamdani’s decision-making is her ties to the DSA. She was one of the architects of the document that advises the party organization on how to interact with elected officials, which gave her the credibility to convince the party to endorse Mamdani’s mayoral run. 

Bisgaard-Church was also instrumental in devising a central proposal of his campaign: the Department of Community Safety. The proposed agency would take a social services-first approach to public safety and provide a potential partner—or counterpoint—to the NYPD, should it be formed. The proposal also offered a"cover" for Mamdani with voters whose top concern was safety, but who felt progressive candidates lacked an understanding or solution to addressing it in the past.

Jessica Tisch has served as the commissioner of the New York City Police Department, the largest police force in the U.S., since her appointment by outgoing Mayor Eric Adams in November 2024. Tisch’s professional background is rooted in city government operations and management rather than traditional law enforcement leadership. She previously served in senior administrative roles, including as commissioner of the city’s Department of Information Technology and Telecommunications and other civic management posts. 

In November 2025, following Zohran Mamdani’s election as mayor, Tisch accepted Mamdani’s offer to remain as NYPD commissioner when he takes office on January 1, 2026.

His base of supporters viewed this move as antithetical to his campaign promises regarding policing reform. Tisch has publicly expressed support for Israel on multiple occasions—another point his base of supporters felt was backtracking on his previous rhetoric. 

The Commissioner is part of the prominent Tisch family, which controls one-third of the Loews Corporation, and is worth $10 billion. It’s unclear how Tisch’s personal background may have played a role in Mamdani’s early decision, and the Mayor-Elect’s team emphasized his commitment to serving all eight million New Yorkers in all five boroughs, even those who were opposed to him. 

Tisch told NYPD members that while she and Mamdani “do not agree on everything,” they share priorities around lowering crime and departmental support. The statements from both the Mayor-Elect and 1 Police Plaza did not address their specific differences regarding the department’s budget, or use of mental health and social workers in achieving their shared public safety mission.

Leila Bozorg was appointed Deputy Mayor for Housing and Planning, a portfolio directly tied to Mamdani’s central campaign issue of affordability. Bozorg previously served as the city’s executive director of housing under outgoing Mayor Adams, giving her deep experience within New York’s housing policy bureaucracy, but also the stain of voters who soured on Adams’ inaction amid astronomical post-pandemic rent increases and allegations of corruption throughout his cabinet. 

There is no denying Bozorg’s experience. However, her career has focused on housing policy, land use, and implementation rather than electoral politics. Her technical expertise and familiarity with city agencies responsible for development and tenant protections could prove to be an important asset as Mamdani translates his affordability-first agenda into concrete policy actions he can first unilaterally, without state approval, and further implement those policies with Albany’s green light.

Sherif Soliman’s appointment as New York City budget director signals how Mayor-elect Zohran Mamdani plans to pursue an affordability-first agenda, while perhaps also signalling to critics of the agenda how he would do so without losing control of the city’s finances. 

The announcement of his appointment was also symbolic of Mamdani’s agenda. Soliman is the son of Egyptian immigrants and lived in the Pomonok public housing development, where the announcement was made, until he was 11 years old.  

Soliman went on to become a veteran municipal official and is the current chief financial officer of the City University of New York, the country’s largest public university system with a budget exceeding $5 billion and 26 campuses.  Since joining CUNY in 2023, he imposed spending controls and hiring limits that helped reduce the number of campuses running deficits, a record that budget experts and city officials cited as evidence of his ability to manage politically sensitive trade-offs.

Soliman also brings deep experience navigating New York City’s fiscal and political machinery. He has served across three mayoral administrations, including as commissioner of the Department of Finance under Mayor Bill de Blasio and as chief policy officer under Mayor Eric Adams.