After his stunning primary upset in June, Zohran Mamdani set out to win over his skeptics. And in a series of meetings with business leaders, one question was raised repeatedly.
“The test case was Jessie Tisch. ‘Which way are you going?’” Kathryn Wylde said.
Wylde is executive director and CEO of the Partnership for New York City, a powerful business coalition. She said keeping Jessica Tisch as police commissioner was a top priority of business leaders looking for stability.
What You Need To Know
After his primary win, skeptical business leaders told Mayor-elect Zohran Mamdani that keeping Police Commissioner Jessica Tisch was a top priority
The Tisch decision earned praise from Republicans like Staten Island Rep. Nicole Malliotakis
Mamdani has apologized for his past provocative statements about the NYPD
“We made very clear that keeping her was a signal of his priority for maintaining public safety and continuing the successful effort that she’s led to fight crime,” Wylde said.
Mamdani had already distanced himself from his past provocative statements about police, including calls to defund and dismantle the NYPD. He’d even apologized to officers — both privately and publicly.
But his pick for police commissioner would go further in calming nerves, and show a willingness to make top hires based on experience, not necessarily on ideology.
The Tisch decision earned praise even from Republicans like Staten Island Rep. Nicole Malliotakis, who called the news a sigh of relief for those worried about Mamdani’s past rhetoric.
“I think it should ease some of the worries that many of the people had about some of the agenda that he had previously been speaking about, that would have driven cops out of the city and made us less safe,” Malliotakis said in a NY1 interview.
A similar dynamic played out in 2013, when then-Mayor-elect Bill de Blasio tapped Bill Bratton as police commissioner. Bratton told NY1 last week the key to success is letting the commissioner lead.
“Mayor de Blasio played no role in the selection of my command staff,” Bratton said. “He and I, in two and a half years, never had a major disagreement. Although I’m a centrist and he’s a pretty far-left progressive, we did pretty well in my two and a half years. Crime continued to go down.”
Last week, Mamdani’s appointment of longtime government official Dean Fuleihan as first deputy mayor helped address concerns about Mamdani’s inexperience.
Wylde said the Tisch appointment addresses both concerns about policing and about antisemitism, given the Tisch family’s prominent role in the Jewish community.
“On both counts, this appointment and, importantly, her willingness to stay — because she would not be staying if she didn’t think she could continue to do a great job. They really send the right signal in terms of his promise to have a merit-based system for his appointees,” Wylde said.