It’s a team of revivals.
Mayor-elect Zohran Mamdani revealed his transition team Wednesday, just hours after his historic win – stacking it with alums from Bill de Blasio’s administration, along with a progressive darling.
Lina Khan, who drew lefty swoons as former President Biden’s FTC chair, will serve as one of the four co-chairs on Mamdani’s transition team, the incoming socialist mayor announced during an event in Flushing Meadows-Corona Park.
Mamdani said Khan and her counterparts – who boast deep experience in city government – will help round out his incoming administration’s roster of deputy mayors and commissioners in the coming days.
“Some of these people will have familiar names. Others will not,” Mamdani said. “What will unite them will be commitment to solving old problems with new solutions. We will cast a wide net.”
While a motley crew of youths led the Queens assemblyman’s insurgent mayoral campaign, his transition team is largely packed with City Hall veterans.
Elana Leopold, one of three alumni from de Blasio’s administration , will serve as the transition’s executive director after also working on Mamdani’s campaign.
The others – Grace Bonilla and Melanie Hartzog – will round out the transition team’s co-chairs.
The widely respected Maria Torres-Springer — a former top official in Mayor Eric Adams’ administration — will serve as housing and economic development leader during the transition period, Mamdani said.
Torres-Springer had served as first deputy mayor under Adams, until she and three of her fellow top officials resigned in protest this year after the soon-to-depart Hizzoner cozied up to the Trump administration as the feds moved to dismiss his criminal case.
Hartzog and Torres-Springer also previously worked in former Mayor Mike Bloomberg’s admin.
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Khan is perhaps the highest-profile member of the team, having gained national attention and progressive praise for her monopoly-busting tenure heading the FTC.
She said Mamdani’s election showed New Yorkers clearly rejected a politics where outsize corporate power holds sway and offered him a mandate for change.
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“I know that Zohran has the vision and courage to make sure that we can actually deliver,” she said.
Whether the 34-year-old Mamdani – who’ll be one of New York City’s youngest mayors – can pull off his ambitious socialist agenda has been a persistent question over the bitter mayoral campaign.
Mamdani often dodged specifics on the campaign trail how he’d deliver his lofty promises of universal childcare, free buses and a rent freeze.
Since his victory, he has evoked the famous words of former Gov. Mario Cuomo: “You campaign in poetry, you govern in prose.”
The prose, the nitty-gritty of actual governance, will largely be handled by the City Hall leaders Mamdani appoints.
The outgoing Adams said Wednesday that if Mamdani “is smart” he would retain some of his administration’s staff.
“If he’s smart, he will keep some of my team members, like the police commissioner, DOT commissioner, my other team members — they have the experience,” he said.
“He’s not going to be able to lead the city with a group of college kids that are idealistic and not realistic. This is not protesting. This is governing, and it’s an entirely different skillset.”
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