Ten Writers on the New Mayor's Prospects
| Today in The New York Review of Books: From December 31, the eve of Zohran Mamdani’s inauguration, through yesterday, the end of his first week in office, the NYR Online has been publishing a symposium about New York’s new mayor, the coalition that brought him to Gracie Mansion, his prospects, the obstacles he might face, and the future of New York City. Below, we have collected the full symposium: Nikil Saval on the potential of a reenergized left, Anne Enright on Mamdani’s playful digital campaign, Samuel Stein on “comprehensive planning” for city housing, Max Rivlin-Nadler on working with the City Council, Brenda Wineapple on Mamdani and Fiorello La Guardia, Tanvi Misra on the promise of a sanctuary city, Michael Greenberg on realpolitik for the left, Willa Glickman on the city’s green energy transition, Corey Robin on the return of competence, Deborah Eisenberg on fragile glimmers of hope, and, from the archives, Willa Glickman and Nawal Arjini on the scandal-clogged term of New York’s previous mayor. Zohran Mamdani’s extraordinary victory has reenergized leftists and spurred centrist Democrats to embrace the call for “affordability.” The values of Zohran Mamdani’s digital campaign were those of the amateur content creator: playful, self-deprecating, celebrating ordinary delights. What would Zohran Mamdani’s vision of “comprehensive planning” entail? The City Council that Zohran Mamdani will inherit is a tricky one to navigate. Fans and pundits have frequently wrapped Mamdani in Fiorello La Guardia’s mythic mantle—even when the comparison seems naïve or premature. The question is less what Zohran Mamdani symbolizes for New York’s immigrant communities than what benefits he might deliver for them. Zohran Mamdani has revealed himself to be a hard-nosed practitioner of realpolitik, especially within his own coalition. With the deadlines imposed by New York’s signature climate law looming, Zohran Mamdani will have to enforce the city’s green transition. Among Zohran Mamdani’s rhetorical innovations has been his declaration of war on mediocrity. Zohran Mamdani’s victory has restored some of the city’s bounce—for now. Free from the ArchivesIn April 2025 Willa Glickman and Nawal Arjini took stock of Eric Adams’s disintegrating mayoralty, from the “hyperlocal clubby dealings and international intrigue” that characterized his corrupt administration, to the deal he struck with the Trump Justice Department in order to escape prosecution, and finally to his legacy: “the NYPDification of everything: giving the police pay raises while imposing budget cuts elsewhere” as well as “botching the city’s response to migrant arrivals and stoking a climate of fear, alarmism, and resentment over immigration.” The saga of Eric Adams’s mayoralty has come to epitomize the spirit of Trump’s second term—from its ethos of aggrieved narcissism to its punitive approach toward the vulnerable. “Our favorite restaurants, hands-down, were the closet-sized Polish cafés.… The flagship of the fleet was once Christine’s at 13th and First. Its specialty was French toast made with challah: great puffy rafts of egg-dipped bread swimming in syrup and a mind-boggling quantity of melted butter. Whenever my friends and I found ourselves unemployed, we ate this meal around 11 AM in the morning. You’d always run into someone you knew doing the same. The French toast was around $5, with bacon, breakfast sausage, or kielbasa.” “Steely Dan’s music provoked undeniable pleasure, but its methods were synthetic and clinical, and their decision to name themselves after the high-tech dildo from William S. Burroughs’s 1959 novel Naked Lunch felt especially apt.” You are receiving this message because you signed up
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