A New Year; A New Mayor

Happy New Year! 

"It is the common custom in meeting of friends at this season, to greet each other with a Happy New Year! This is a praiseworthy and pleasant custom, and in accordance with it, I greet you all, my dear brethren, with a Happy New Year! Happy New Year to all our friends and the inhabitants of this city, and to all our countrymen, whether dwelling north or south, east or west, in this our native land. Happy New year to all men of whatever race or clime; for God is our common Creator, and in Christ we are all sons of God, and therefore brethren." (Servant of God Isaac Hecker, Sermon How To Be Happy, January 1, 1863).

And, speaking of "this city," with this new year comes a new mayor, Zohran Mamdani, New York City's 111th mayor since Thomas Willett first bore the title after the office was established in 1665. Things were a lot different then. Willett was appointed by the British colonial governor. Mamdani attracted 140,000 volunteers to his campaign and was elected by a majority of the city's voters. Mamdani is also the first South-Asian and the first Muslim to be elected New York City's Mayor. 

After the overthrow of the Orleanist monarchy and subsequent unexpected events in mid-19th-century France, Karl Marx famously wrote, "all France has been surprised by Paris." Perhaps, with Mamdani's election, it can likewise been said that the United States has been surprised by New York. Whatever else his election many portend, it has highlighted the widespread and deep dissatisfaction with neoliberal oligarchy (what AOC at Mayor Mamdani's Inauguration called "the barbarism of extreme income inequality") and a general desire for something better, for a city that fulfills the promise of a more flourishing life for its citizens.

It was little over a year ago that Mamdani was barely even noticed at the 2024 San Juan Somos conference. "I was blending into the walls," was how he described it to New York Magazine's David Freedlander. That he is now mayor reflects the amazing intersection of  personal political talents and the exigencies of this challenging moment in our history. (Something similar happened nationally in the 20th century when FDR's and LBJ's unique personal political talents intersected with the unique opportunities presented by the 1930s and the 1960s. It was FDR who famously said "the country demands bold, persistent experimentation.")

There are and will be many obstacles to any mayor's achieving his objectives. At best, local politics is about choosing which scarce resources will be allocated among which competing constituencies, and so which constituencies must settle for less than they want. But politics-as-usual has a way of narrowing the very possibilities of politics. As Mamdani himself has acknowledged to Freedlander, "the longer you spend in politics, the less possible you think things are in politics." Perhaps the biggest challenge to any newcomer to our rigid and sclerotic governance is to convince the relevant political constituencies that things actually can be accomplished, that changes actually can occur. 

Fittingly, in his inaugural address promising an agenda of :safety, affordability, and abundance," Mayor Mamdani said, "the only expectation I seek to reset is that of small expectations.

Photo: Senator Bernie Sanders administers the mayoral oath of office to New York Mayor Zohran Mamdani, City Hall, January 1, 2026.