Mayor Zohran Mamdani is off to a terrible start, and it\u2019s not just his friends and supporters who should be worried.<\/p>\n
Mamdani\u2019s core fans might not see it \u2014 but keeping his TikToks sharp won\u2019t help him with the vast majority of New Yorkers who expect to see their mayor making the city work, nor with the political pros looking for signs of plans to execute policy rather than an unending event-of-the-day PR strategy.<\/p>\n
Without question, he bungled his first crisis, Winter Storm Fern and her artic aftermath<\/a>.<\/p>\n It\u2019s not simply the 19 deaths in the bitter cold, the garbage that piled up in many neighborhoods or the troubles caused by huge, unmelting snowbanks: It\u2019s how he handled the serial crises \u2014 or, rather, didn\u2019t.<\/p>\n The city didn\u2019t need to see a cute video of him shoveling (badly) the first day; it wanted to see him visibly on top of how the workforce responded day-in and day-out.<\/p>\n Instead, he mostly stuck to his preplanned set of events designed to promote his agenda \u2014 promoting nonprofit allies, reaffirming \u201casylum seeker\u201d rights, opening rec centers and holding \u201crent ripoff\u201d hearings.<\/p>\n Yes, he adjusted a little \u2014 visiting a warming center, announcing expanded homeless outreach \u2014 but his hard refusal to bend on making people get in out of the cold was no good look.<\/p>\n And City Hall\u2019s evident resentment at facing questions got worse this week: \u201cPeople die in their homes all the time,\u201d Mamdani senior spokeswoman Dora Pekec intoned<\/a> as she fended off Post requests for info on the seven people who died of hypothermia while indoors.<\/p>\n That strikingly resembles how Gov. Andrew Cuomo waved off questions about nursing-home deaths during COVID \u2014 not at all where Team Mamdani wants to be.<\/p>\n \t\t\t\t\t\t\tGet opinions and commentary from our columnists\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/p>\n \n\t\t\t\t\t\t\tSubscribe to our daily Post Opinion newsletter!\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/p>\n \t\t\t\t\t\tThanks for signing up!\n\t\t\t\t<\/p>\n The mayor\u2019s supporters might complain that all this is theater, not substance \u2014 but good theater was a lot of why he won the job, and is vital to success going forward.<\/p>\n Nor is he doing great on the substance front: His trip up to Albany for tin-cup day fell pretty flat<\/a>, as Democrats from the rest of the state kept asking why the Legislature should send extra billions to the city when Buffalo, Syracuse, Rochester and so on are hurting far worse.<\/p>\n \u201cThere simply isn\u2019t enough money that we wish there could be,\u201d\u00a0he claimed<\/a> \u2014 as if every other local urban area isn\u2019t having to make do with a lot less.<\/p>\n Whining about the city not getting its \u201cfair share\u201d? Cue the world\u2019s smallest violin!<\/p>\n