As mayoral front runner Zohran Mamdani heads toward a historic victory, one key question looms: Will he take his compelling values-driven campaign into City Hall?
There are multiple ways to govern. One radical approach, befitting a record-breaking candidacy, is to organize an administration around the principles that powered his campaign. His top initiatives are clear: freeze the rent, no cost childcare, fast free buses. Voters heard him talk consistently about affordability, making clear his first priority. Two other principles emerged in the campaign’s spirit – belonging and community. These promises are the ABCs of the Mamdani administration, the values we see reflected in his answers, his messaging and his record.
Traditionally, an administration identifies portfolios for deputy mayors, giving them oversight of key city agencies. A Mamdani administration could instead divide agencies based on the ABCs of his campaign agenda by creating Deputy Mayors for Affordability, Belonging and Community. Each of these positions would be charged with embedding these values across city agencies. This is a radical shift, away from portfolios and fiefdoms to principles-based governance.
Structure senior staff under broad umbrellas that focus on the New York he has envisioned and his supporters have voted for – an affordable city where we belong and feel a sense of community. Is this a tall order? Yes. But it’s absolutely possible.
Subjective terms like affordability, belonging and community can be challenging to implement. How can they be both aspirational and tangible? The new administration will need to navigate this tightrope. A Deputy Mayor for Belonging could ensure that services like translation and interpretation are accessible across all agencies and that town halls cultivate opportunities for citizen engagement, for example.
The city’s new leaders need an entirely different blueprint than previous administrations. Usually, the Police Chief reports directly to the Mayor, for example. Shifting this responsibility to a Deputy Mayor for Community sends an important signal: public safety is about people rather than enforcement. It also diffuses the power of the police chief in relation to other agency heads.
Placing agencies under the direction of these three deputy mayors is only one course of action to govern differently. Deputy Mayors could attend each other’s agency heads meetings, they could be agency heads for a day, shadowing commissioners to understand the daily challenges of running agencies as well as how the ABCs are being embedded in the work.
A Mamdani administration could also include special advisors for each value in all major city agencies. This new position would devise indexes and benchmarks for affordability, belonging and community, core principles for his administration. As Mamdani knows too well from his experience as a housing advocate, immigrant and legislator, each of these values cuts across city agencies.
Across agencies, the advisors would be responsible for exploring collaboration and cooperation regularly and effectively. Interagency task forces are not uncommon. Earlier this year, Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg and Mayor Eric Adams created one to address public safety around Washington Square Park. As Commissioner of Immigrant Affairs, I oversaw one with representatives from multiple city agencies, tasked to be accountable for their agencies’ outreach to and service of immigrant communities.
Creating a robust mechanism with a mayoral mandate on affordability, belonging and community gives substance and heft to a task force or special advisor role. New York City’s vast bureaucracy is resistant to change, but it is overdue for reimagining. Bringing in new people to run agencies or serve in City Hall will not be enough. The Mamdani administration needs to lean into its core values by reimagining how the city works for us all.
Sayu Bhojwani served as the city’s first Commissioner of Immigrant Affairs and has advised candidates and elected officials nationally on values-based campaigns and governance.
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Image credit: Wikimedia Commons / Bingjiefu He, Zohran Mamdani at the Resist Fascism Rally in Bryant Park on Oct 27th 2024, CC BY-SA 4.0
