Friday, March 13, marked the 72nd day of Zohran Mamdani’s term as mayor. amNewYork is following Mamdani around his first 100 days in office. We are closely tracking his progress on fulfilling campaign promises, appointing key leaders to government posts, and managing the city’s finances. Here’s a summary of what the mayor did Friday.
Mayor Zohran Mamdani got a warm welcome on Friday from one of the city’s most influential labor leaders at a Manhattan luncheon hosted by the James Connolly Irish American Labor Coalition, where he was praised as a true union ally.
John Samuelsen, the international president of the Transport Workers Union and president of the James Connolly Coalition, introduced Mamdani as “a trade unionist at heart,” pointing to his support for nurses during their six-week labor fight earlier this year.
“He recognizes that the pathway to economic security for working people is through the trade union movement, it’s not through political parties,” Samuelsen said. “Zohran is a trade unionist; he’s with us.”
Mamdani, in turn, leaned into the room and its history. Quoting Irish labor leader James Connolly, he said, “The cause of labor is the cause of Ireland, and the cause of Ireland is the cause of labor.” He then tied that history directly to New York.
“When I think about Irish Americans and the history of this city, it is the realization that the two are one and the same,” Mamdani said. “You cannot tell the story of this city without the story of Irish Americans. You cannot tell the story of trade unionism in this city without the story of Irish Americans.”
The transit union’s founder, Michael Quill, was an Irish-born labor firebrand whose legacy still looms large in New York politics. Quill became a folk hero to many union members during the 1966 transit strike, when he led a 12-day shutdown that paralyzed the city and helped win a 15% wage increase for more than 30,000 workers.
Mayor Zohran Mamdani speaking in Brooklyn on March 13, 2026, in announcing Taylor Brown as the first director of the Mayor’s Office of LGBTQIA+ Affairs.Photo by Lloyd Mitchell
Speaking to amNewYork at the event, Samuelsen said he has been pleased with Mamdani’s first 72 days in office, calling the mayor “excellent” so far on affordability and other working-class concerns. But he said Mamdani’s political future — especially among blue-collar voters in parts of Brooklyn, Queens and the Bronx — will depend on whether he keeps that focus.
Samuelsen’s advice was blunt: stay out of the culture wars and keep the focus on what he called “bread and butter, kitchen table issues, economic security issues.”
“The more Zohran interacts with people, and the more he focuses on economic security, the more his strength is going to grow,” Samuelsen said.
Samuelsen also pointed to the horse-carriage fight as an example of what he sees as Mamdani’s practical approach so far. Asked about the issue, Samuelsen said Mamdani understands that roughly “180 jobs” are at stake — “good jobs, immigrant jobs,” as he put it. He also said Mamdani had committed not to enter office with a presupposition that the horses were being mistreated and, according to Samuelsen, has stuck to that approach so far.
“Zohran committed to me that he wouldn’t go into this mayoralty with a presupposition that the horses are mistreated, that he wouldn’t buy into that narrative,” Samuelsen said. “He’s honored that thus far.”
The issue became a major flashpoint near the end of the Adams administration, when former Mayor Eric Adams backed Ryder’s Law, a City Council bill to phase out horse-drawn cabs starting June 1, 2026, and signed Executive Order 56 directing agencies to prepare for the industry’s end and identify new employment options for affected workers. The move prompted an angry backlash from Samuelsen, who accused Adams of betraying carriage workers.
Rama drama: Mayor defends First Lady again
Mamdani, on Friday, was again forced to come to his wife, first lady Rama Duwaji’s, defense, following reports that she had illustrated an essay by a writer whose past social media posts have drawn accusations of antisemitism.
Speaking at an unrelated press conference in Brooklyn, Mamdani said the rhetoric described in the posts of Susan Abulhawa was “unacceptable” and “reprehensible,” but said Duwaji was commissioned as a freelance illustrator by a third party, had never engaged with or met Abulhawa, and had not seen the posts in question.
The New York Post reported that Abulhawa had described Jews in social media posts as “vampires,” “demons,” and “ghouls,” and had praised the Oct. 7, 2023, Hamas attack on Israel as “a spectacular moment in history.”
The comments came just days after Mamdani also defended Duwaji over criticism of her social media likes on posts tied to the aftermath of the Oct. 7, 2023, Hamas attack on Israel. In that earlier response, he said she was not part of his administration and was a private person.
‘Disheartening’ week of Islamophobic attacks
Mamdani also addressed the anti-Muslim rhetoric directed at him this week, which he said had been “disheartening” and reflected a broader climate of bigotry facing Muslim New Yorkers.
Mamdani said the rhetoric was bigger than a personal attack on him as the city’s first Muslim mayor and instead targeted the city’s more than 1 million Muslim residents. He said New York should be “a city that’s free of bigotry.”
“Yesterday, I had the privilege of breaking my fast with hundreds of city workers who share the same faith as I do … and then for them to turn to their phone and open it up and see an elected official in that same city calling for their expulsion — it is not what those workers deserve, and it is not the kind of city that we want to build,” he said.
Mamdani’s comments came after a week of anti-Muslim attacks from local and national figures, including Rep. Brandon Gill of Texas, who called a photo of the mayor at an iftar “stomach churning”; Sen. Tommy Tuberville of Alabama, who reposted an image comparing Mamdani’s Ramadan observance to the Sept. 11 attacks and wrote, “The enemy is inside the gates.”
Asked specifically about Queens Council Member Vickie Paladino, who this week filed a lawsuit to block the Council from disciplining her over social media posts that led to an ethics case against her, Mamdani said he was “heartened by the actions that the council has taken,” but said the City Council should decide what happens next.
Paladino has been accused of Islamophobia over social media posts that included a call for the “expulsion of Muslims from western nations” and a claim that a photo of Mamdani praying with Muslim sanitation workers was “part of Islamic conquest.”
Paladino is suing to block the Council from disciplining her over social media posts that led to an ethics case against her. The Ethics Committee charged her with disorderly behavior tied to posts on X, including one that said New York was “under foreign occupation” after Mamdani appointed Faiza N. Ali as chief immigration officer. Possible penalties could range from censure and fines to suspension or expulsion.