Zohran Mamdani announces transition leaders, vows to deliver on promises
"I and my team will build a City Hall capable of delivering on the promises of this campaign," Mayor-elect Mamdani said
NEW YORK (WABC) -- Zohran Mamdani has announced a team including former city and federal officials - all women - to steer his transition to New York City Hall.
"I and my team will build a City Hall capable of delivering on the promises of this campaign," the mayor-elect said at a news conference, vowing that his administration would be both compassionate and capable.
The 34-year-old democratic socialist was propelled to victory amid a record turnout in New York City, defeating Republican Curtis Sliwa and Independent candidate Andrew Cuomo in Tuesday's election.
Mamdani named political strategist Elana Leopold, from the de Blasio administration, as executive director of the transition team.
She will work with United Way of New York City President Grace Bonilla; former Deputy Mayor Melanie Hartzog, who was also a city budget official; former Federal Trade Commission chair Lina Khan; and former First Deputy Mayor Maria Torres-Springer, who resigned after the federal case against Mayor Eric Adams went away.
Mamdani, who was criticized throughout the campaign for his thin resume, will now have to begin staffing his incoming administration.
Adams said on Wednesday that he believes "many people" from his administration will stay, but FDNY Commissioner Robert Tucker will not be one of them. He submitted his resignation, effective December 19.
The new mayor must also plan how to accomplish the ambitious but polarizing agenda that drove him to victory.
"I'm confident in delivering these same policies that we ran on for the last year," he said on Wednesday.
Among the campaign's promises are free child care, free city bus service, city-run grocery stores and a new Department of Community Safety that would send mental health care workers to handle certain emergency calls rather than police officers. It is unclear how Mamdani will pay for such initiatives, given Democratic Gov. Kathy Hochul's steadfast opposition to his calls to raise taxes on wealthy people.
On Wednesday, he touted his support from Hochul and other state leaders as "endorsements of an agenda of affordability."
His decisions around the leadership of the New York Police Department will also be closely watched. Mamdani was a fierce critic of the department in 2020, calling for "this rogue agency" to be defunded and slamming it as "racist, anti-queer & a major threat to public safety." He has since apologized for those comments and has said he will ask the current NYPD commissioner to stay on the job.
Mamdani told "Good Morning America" on Wednesday that he would not be "intimidated" by potential threats from President Donald Trump to deploy the National Guard to the city.
"His threats are inevitable," Mamdani said. "This has nothing to do a safety, it has to do with intimidation."
"If it was safety, President Trump would be threatening to deploy the National Guard to the top 10 states of crime, eight out of which are all Republican-led," Mamdani added. "But because of that party he won't actually be doing it."
Mamdani said the White House had not reached out to him to congratulate him but that he remains open to speaking with the administration about affordability while remaining opposed to anything the administration may do that adversely impacts the city.
The President did mention Mamdani's victory while speaking in Miami on Wednesday.
"And now let's see how a communist does in New York. We're gonna see how that works out. And we'll help him. We'll help him. We want New York to be successful, we'll help him maybe a little bit," Trump said.
Trump said Mamdani should reach out.
He also tried to bring the focus back to the municipal level: "It will be my job to stand up for the city and also to ensure that we do not look at Washington, DC as if it is the reason for all of the problems right here in New York City. Many of the issues we are speaking about, they predate President Trump."
Mamdani said he had not heard from Cuomo or the city's outgoing mayor, Eric Adams. He did speak with Republican candidate Curtis Sliwa.
At an event on Wednesday, Eric Adams said, "He needs to go to Washington, D.C. and sit down with the president and say here are the needs of this city. You have to put all of that anger behind you."
It' unclear is Mamdani will follow that advice but did say he weants to meet with the outgoing mayor.
In his victory speech to supporters, Mamdani had wished Cuomo the best in private life, before adding: "Let tonight be the final time I utter his name, as we turn the page on a politics that abandons the many and answers only to the few."
Asked about the comments Wednesday, Mamdani said he was "quite disappointed in the nature of the bigotry and the racism we saw in the final weeks." He noted the millions of dollars in attack ads that were spent against him, some of which played into Islamophobic tropes.
A spokesperson for Cuomo, Rich Azzopardi, said he would "let their respective speeches be the measuring stick for grace and leave it at that."
Asked about where he was and what he did when he learned that he won, he responded, "I think the first thing I did was drink some water. And it took, it took a moment for it to settle in," as he contemplated the " opportunity we have to deliver" for people in the city.
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ABC News and the Associated Press contributed to this article
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