{"id":191584,"date":"2026-04-10T00:46:12","date_gmt":"2026-04-10T00:46:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/191584\/"},"modified":"2026-04-10T00:46:12","modified_gmt":"2026-04-10T00:46:12","slug":"big-plans-relationship-building-and-incremental-action","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/191584\/","title":{"rendered":"Big plans, relationship building and incremental action"},"content":{"rendered":"

Mayor Mamdani came into office on New Year\u2019s Day<\/a> with big plans, lots of enthusiasm and the mammoth challenge of putting his lofty campaign promises into action.<\/p>\n

One hundred days later, the mayor has made headway on some of those campaign pledges, but he\u2019s backpedaled or moderated his stance on others.<\/p>\n

Mamdani has also spent much of his effort directing New Yorkers\u2019 attention to the nuts and bolts of city government, like filling potholes<\/a> and enforcing workplace regulations<\/a>, carting a jumbo calendar to his press conferences across the city to highlight his work in his first stretch of governance.<\/p>\n

\u201cToo often, we\u2019ve seen New Yorkers regard City Hall as something that is, at best, uninterested in the struggles of their life, and we have sought to show an administration that is ambitious, that is unapologetic and that is relentless,\u201d Mamdani said at a press conference on Thursday.<\/p>\n

The 34-year-old democratic socialist has set clear, lofty priorities and promised a \u201cnew era\u201d for the city \u2014 but those changes could be threatened by economic uncertainty, a fiscal crisis and the general grind of bureaucracy.<\/p>\n

Though he\u2019s still riding a wave of popularity, city dwellers can be fickle when it comes to mayors. Polls released this week found Mamdani\u2019s approval rating at 42%, per a poll from Emerson College<\/a> \u2014 lower than that of former mayors Eric Adams and Bill de Blasio at the same point in their tenures.<\/p>\n

Here\u2019s a look of some of the dynamics at play during Mamdani\u2019s first 100 days.<\/p>\n

Relationship with Trump
\n\"President<\/p>\n

AP Photo\/Evan Vucci<\/p>\n

President Donald Trump shakes hands with New York City Mayor-elect Zohran Mamdani in the Oval Office of the White House, Friday, Nov. 21, 2025, in Washington. (AP Photo\/Evan Vucci)<\/p>\n

What was anticipated to be perhaps one of the biggest challenges facing Mamdani after he was elected has, at least for now, been almost a nonfactor.<\/p>\n

The night before the general election, the president took to Truth Social to declare that, if Mamdani were to become mayor, \u201cthis once great City has ZERO chance of success, or even survival!\u201d<\/p>\n

But the president\u2019s threats dissipated after meeting the mayor at the White House in November<\/a>, and the mayor has seemingly managed to stay in the good graces of Trump, who earlier this year praised<\/a> Mamdani\u2019s \u201creally good personality\u201d and \u201ctremendous assets.\u201d At a second Oval Office meeting in February, Mamdani appealed to Trump\u2019s ego with a mock-up front page of the Daily News, as he pitched the president a plan to build a massive affordable housing project in Sunnyside, Queens.<\/a><\/p>\n

\u201cNo one expected it,\u201d Democratic strategist Trip Yang said. \u201cTrump during the general election campaign threatened federal funding to New York City, called Mamdani a communist. And they ended up being the best of buds.\u201d<\/p>\n

Budget wrangling in Albany and NYC
\n\"Gov.Gov. Kathy Hochul and Mayor Zohran Mamdani are pictured in New York City on Thursday, March 5, 2026. (Susan Watts \/ Office of Governor Kathy Hochul)<\/p>\n

Mamdani has been sounding the alarm about a fiscal crisis and a $5.4 billion budget gap the city is struggling to fill. The mayor\u2019s challenge lies both in getting the city back on a stable financial footing and in funding the expensive programs he\u2019s promised.<\/p>\n

Much of the mayor\u2019s ambitious agenda falls under the purview of the governor and state lawmakers, including his pledge for free buses and universal childcare. While lobbying Albany to send the city more cash in order to deliver on some of those priorities, Mamdani has maintained a friendly relationship<\/a> with Gov. Hochul and other state lawmakers.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe past several mayors have had a very contentious relationship with governors in the past and Albany, in general, and I think this mayor has been intelligent in cultivating a more positive one,\u201d State Senator Michael Gianaris told the Daily News, citing Mamdani\u2019s \u201ctactful lack of confrontation.\u201d<\/p>\n

Mamdani has stayed away from publicly bashing the governor, including by sitting out a recent \u201cTax the Rich\u201d rally in the Bronx<\/a> \u2014 although in February he floated the possibility of raising the city\u2019s property tax rate<\/a> if Hochul didn\u2019t send more money the city\u2019s way in order to fill the budget gap.<\/p>\n

That proposal, in turn, set off a fight with City Council Speaker Julie Menin, who\u2019s positioned herself as a moderate Democratic foil to the mayor. Menin called the property tax hike proposal \u201cunacceptable\u201d on Wednesday, a week after her team released a budget response detailing alternative paths to plugging the budget hole<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Managing lefty priorities and moderating his stances<\/p>\n

Mamdani, taking with him a slew of advocates-turned-government officials, has had the challenge of running a massive bureaucracy with a leftist mindset. In the process, he\u2019s moderated some of his hard-left stances.<\/p>\n

He\u2019s wavered on his pledge to disband the NYPD\u2019s Strategic Response Unit<\/a> \u2014 though on Thursday, Mamdani said he\u2019s \u201cdeeply committed\u201d to taking the unit off protest responses \u2014 and stepped back from his promise to totally eliminate the gang database kept by the Police Department. Those positions put him at odds with his police commissioner, Jessica Tisch.<\/p>\n

Mamdani\u2019s also done an about-face on the city\u2019s rental assistance program, CityFHEPs<\/a>, angering progressive allies.<\/p>\n

Gustavo Gordillo, co-chairperson of NYC-DSA, the local chapter of Democratic Socialists of America, applauded Mamdani for making a \u201clot of progress\u201d on key campaign pledges, like universal childcare, and he noted the mayor also installed an Office of Community Safety<\/a>, a step toward his promise of a city agency that would handle mental health emergency responses, as well as a slew of prevention programming.<\/p>\n

\u201cOverall, I feel good about his commitment to the movement,\u201d Gordillo said in an interview. \u201cI think that he knows that, in order to pass his agenda, he needs to build an agitational outside force or at least allow other people to do it or encourage it. He knows that he can\u2019t win the affordability agenda by himself. \u2026 We\u2019ve had challenges, but I wouldn\u2019t say there are really major disappointments at this point.\u201d<\/p>\n

Bill Bratton, who served as NYPD commissioner under ex-Mayor de Blasio, said that if Mamdani indeed does move to \u201ctotally disband\u201d the SRG or nix the gang database, \u201cthat would be a phenomenal stressor\u201d to his relationship with the Police Department.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s too soon to really make any judgment on him in the sense of public safety,\u201d Bratton added. \u201cGood news is he appointed Jessie [Tisch]. Good news is they appear to be getting along fairly well. There\u2019s been no public controversies.\u201d<\/p>\n

Incremental progress on campaign promises<\/p>\n

Mamdani\u2019s other cornerstone pledges are still up in the air: Whether a rent freeze is enacted<\/a> for rent-regulated tenants is in the hands of the city\u2019s Rent Guidelines Board, of which Mamdani has appointed a majority.<\/p>\n

And the mayor told Politico this week that he is \u201cabsolutely committed to making buses fast and free\u201d but acknowledged it wouldn\u2019t happen this year.<\/p>\n

Arguably, Mamdani\u2019s most significant policy win in his first 100 days as mayor was a\u00a0deal with Gov. Hochul to embark on a dramatic expansion of free child care<\/a>, as he promised New York families on the campaign trail.<\/p>\n

Just over a week into his administration, Hochul gave Mamdani $73 million in state funding to launch this fall\u00a0the first 2,000 seats<\/a> in child care for 2-year-olds, known as \u201c2-K.\u201d That investment was set to grow in the program\u2019s second year to include some 12,000 2-year-olds.<\/p>\n

Despite that early victory, Mamdani still has a long way to go to realize the lofty goals for youngsters that drove parents to the polls last November: He\u2019s yet to secure funds beyond the 2027-28 school year, despite his pledge to fully roll out the program by the end of his first term.<\/p>\n

So far, Hochul, who is up for reelection this fall, has declined to raise taxes on the wealthy<\/a>, to set up the type of revenue raiser that could be needed, if not to keep the program going, then to expand it to infants as young as six weeks old, as Mamdani promised as a candidate.<\/p>\n

With Cayla Bamberger<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Mayor Mamdani came into office on New Year\u2019s Day with big plans, lots of enthusiasm and the mammoth…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":116043,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[267,9,24,55,54,264,10,692,12,56,87],"class_list":{"0":"post-191584","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-new-york-city","8":"tag-local-news","9":"tag-new-york","10":"tag-new-york-city","11":"tag-new-york-city-headlines","12":"tag-new-york-city-news","13":"tag-new-york-county","14":"tag-new-york-news","15":"tag-new-york-politics","16":"tag-news","17":"tag-ny","18":"tag-politics"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/191584","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=191584"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/191584\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/116043"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=191584"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=191584"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=191584"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}