After a decisive election win, Zohran Mamdani will develop into mayor of New York on Jan. 1, 2026. His spectacular grassroots marketing campaign made large guarantees centered at working-class New Yorkers: common kid care, hire freezes and quicker, unfastened buses.
However, questions stay about whether or not Mamdani’s insurance policies are economically and nearly possible.
Critics, from President Donald Trump to established order Democrats, condemned his platform as radical and unrealistic. And The New York Occasions warns that Mamdani dangers changing into the most recent “big-city civic leader promising bold, progressive change” to “mostly deliver disappointment.” Amongst previous offenders, it lists former New York Mayor Invoice de Blasio.
However the comparability to de Blasio finds a paradox.
As candidate for mayor in 2013, after the Occupy Wall Side road motion in opposition to financial inequality, de Blasio campaigned at the core modern guiding principle of tackling inequality via social welfare and the redistribution of wealth.
De Blasio’s guarantees – strikingly very similar to Mamdani’s – incorporated common pre-Ok, hire freezes and a US$15 minimal salary. De Blasio delivered on all 3.
So what was once the “disappointment” the Occasions so optimistically cites?
New Yorkers these days take into account de Blasio now not for his insurance policies however for his chronic unpopularity.
Over two phrases, de Blasio alienated many New Yorkers and was a pariah amongst Democratic politicians. A dedicated modern, he’s seemed to have misplaced contact with the actions and communities that he was hoping to steer.
Perhaps the query isn’t whether or not Mamdani’s insurance policies are lifelike, however what it in truth takes to win over voters with a modern imaginative and prescient. De Blasio himself cautions that it takes greater than coverage. He lately stated that he “often mistook good policy for good politics, a classic progressive error.”
As a pupil of public coverage, I feel that coverage achievements are neither self-evident nor self-sustaining. In my analysis on city governance, I’ve discovered that it takes steady political paintings to deal with native trust in city growth and its leaders.
In response to an research of de Blasio’s two phrases, I’ve known 3 key respects through which his politics fell brief.
Stay up the bottom sport
Many accounts of de Blasio’s unpopularity emphasize his non-public flaws. Open and funny in particular person, he was once described by way of critics – or even some supporters – as cussed, didactic and self-righteous. His designs on upper workplaces – first governor, then president – time and again backfired.
However for anyone elected with the improve of progressives, de Blasio’s larger downside was once dropping contact with native modern politics. He ignored the upward push of the anti-corporate left in Queens in 2018, led by way of Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez – such a lot in order that his staff miscalculated and agreed to position an Amazon headquarters close to her district.
And whilst de Blasio effectively ended his predecessor Mike Bloomberg’s racially discriminatory stop-and-frisk policing – feuding with the New York Police Division within the procedure – he later alienated progressives, together with his personal team of workers, along with his tepid reaction to the Black Lives Topic protests in 2020.
Many New Yorkers take into account former Mayor Invoice de Blasio for his unpopularity.
AP Photograph/Seth Wenig
The contours of modern politics can shift beneath one’s ft. However as a veteran of street-level politics, Mamdani has the abilities to answer, and stay shaping, town’s modern motion. A dynamic “ground game” – at the type of his stroll of the duration of Big apple – will most likely stay as necessary in governing because it was once in campaigning.
Give protection to native autonomy
In New York, hostility between town’s mayor and the governor is a time-honored custom. De Blasio and previous Gov. Andrew Cuomo famously took hostility to the intense.
Early in de Blasio’s first time period, whilst in search of state investment for common pre-Ok, de Blasio angered Cuomo by way of insisting on investment it via a tax at the town’s rich. Missing important state approval, de Blasio ultimately accredited a special state investment supply. Common pre-Ok was de Blasio’s cornerstone success, however the lasting feud with Cuomo remained an issue, even compromising town’s plans to deal with the COVID-19 pandemic.
Critics additionally concept de Blasio can have been harder on Giant Tech. Letting a Google-backed consortium run town’s unfastened Wi-Fi program with out significant oversight left town with a privateness scandal and critical monetary deficits.
In making an attempt to draw Amazon’s headquarters, de Blasio’s management angry New Yorkers’ sensibilities by way of permitting the corporate to avoid native construction evaluation processes. Despite the fact that famously byzantine, those processes have been created to make sure native regulate over construction selections. One may just now not merely bulldoze them apart.
In some other case, and to his credit score, de Blasio was once fast to peer the wish to keep an eye on Uber’s explosive enlargement, however it took years to triumph over the corporate’s competitive opposition marketing campaign.
Despite the fact that some progressives want mayors dominated the sector, U.S. towns have historically relied on states, the government and personal firms for capital and sources. As I and others have proven, and de Blasio’s studies attest, those out of doors avid gamers can undermine the modern preferrred of a town that seeks to redistribute financial get advantages.
Mayoral powers are restricted, however Mamdani can use his reputation to offer protection to New York Town’s capability for self-government from out of doors interference, whilst cooperating strategically with the state when important. Gov. Kathy Hochul’s endorsement of Mamdani, pushed by way of a shared passion in common kid care, was once a get started. United, they stand a greater probability of shielding native – town and state – autonomy in opposition to threats from President Donald Trump.
In the meantime, there may be little proof that it will pay for towns to court docket personal companies with dear incentives – a commonplace however contested town observe. As a substitute, following mayors in other places, Mamdani would possibly force tech firms to finish union-busting practices and thereby make certain native staff’ proper to prepare.
Supporters for Democratic mayoral candidate Zohran Mamdani watch returns right through election evening, Nov. 4, 2025, in New York.
AP Photograph/Yuki Iwamura
Lead with the social compact
Despite the fact that de Blasio delivered many modern insurance policies, he was once not able to stay alive his marketing campaign promise to finish New York’s “tale of two cities” – the stark divide between excessive wealth and poverty.
A significant, self-admitted failure was once on homelessness, particularly amongst unmarried adults. Homelessness amongst this workforce grew in spite of greater spending on homeless services and products, developing the impact that de Blasio was once insufficiently excited about the welfare of his town’s maximum beleaguered citizens.
Such inconsistencies loomed huge within the public dialogue. Through the years, de Blasio’s management may just now not persuade the general public that its energies have been being channeled towards a coherent imaginative and prescient of growth.
I consider that city governance is ready clarifying the rights and tasks that city citizens can be expecting to have, what I bring to mind because the social compact between town and its topics. De Blasio’s rising unpopularity weakened his talent to turn that his coverage achievements amounted to upholding a tacit modern promise to ensure fundamental financial rights for all.
Former New York Gov. Mario Cuomo, father of dropping mayoral candidate Andrew Cuomo, ceaselessly stated: “You campaign in poetry. You govern in prose.” Whilst campaigning, Mamdani introduced a poetic imaginative and prescient for a brand new social compact in New York.
“City government’s job,” he has stated, “is to make sure each New Yorker has a dignified life, not determine which New Yorkers are worthy of that dignity.”
Many commentators insist that Mamdani will have to now abandon poetry and ship the coverage. However this is best partially proper.
New Yorkers will disagree about the main points, however the election effects counsel that they need to consider within the promise of a dignified lifestyles for all. Mamdani’s talent to steer New York Town – and a much wider post-Trump modern motion – might be an issue of surroundings an instance in rearticulating and reaffirming what that promise way, to him and to his town.
