Zohran Mamdani’s first seven months highlight the limits of a mayorship

When Zohran Mamdani took office on Jan. 1, becoming New York’s first Indian, Muslim, socialist mayor, he didn't wait to show New Yorkers what kind of leader he was going to be. Within hours of his oath, he revoked a set of executive orders that his predecessor, Eric Adams, had signed on his way out, including a law that had expanded the definition of “antisemitism” and another that barred city employees and agencies from boycotting or divesting from Israel. That day-one decision is the clearest window into how Mamdani intended to govern. It was proof that he is willing to spend real political capital undoing policies on his very first day before he'd done anything else.

The throughline of the first seven and a half months is clear. He is a mayor willing to take positions others in his office typically avoid. This reached its strongest and most direct expression on July 21, when Mamdani released a video calling Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu a “war criminal” and stating plainly that he is not welcome in the city of New York. In the same video, Mamdani acknowledges the limits of his role as mayor without beating around the bush. “It is clear that we do not have the independent legal authority to enforce this,” he says, speaking of the International Criminal Court (ICC) warrant against Netanyahu, who has been carrying out the war on Gaza. Instead, Mamdani calls on the federal government to join the ICC and execute the arrest warrant, giving a direct action to those above him.

The reversal of Adams’ policies leading to the video Mamdani posted last week weren’t the only things that moved fast after he began his tenure as mayor of New York City—especially on the platforms that he visibly ran on. Eight days into office, Mamdani and New York Gov. Kathy Hochul announced a $1.2 billion investment in universal child care for New Yorkers, with the state committing $8 billion toward childcare infrastructure. By his 100th day, the administration reported more than 100,000 potholes filled citywide, crews clearing more than 16,000 crosswalks during winter storms, repairing 4,000 fire hydrants, and adding 7,000 bus stops. He delivered early on his promise of infrastructure improvements.

On housing, Mamdani used his mayoral control of the Rent Guidelines Board to deliver the rent freeze on regulated apartments as he had promised. Two of his most noted promises during his campaign—free buses and higher taxes on the wealthy—currently remain unmet, but the holdup is at the state capitol in Albany, not at City Hall. Hochul has refused to implement a wealth tax, and the free bus plan has stalled at the state level because the Metropolitan Transit Authority (MTA) answers to the state. The city and state's new bus plan is now focused on speed of service rather than eliminating fares, leaving Mamdani’s free bus promise open-ended for now.

Though there are many wins for the city, on the campaign trail, Mamdani had pledged to fund the city's library systems at 0.5 percent of the total city budget, ending the back-and-forth of budget cuts and restorations for library employees and patrons (libraries across the city previously had to close on Sundays due to budget cuts). His preliminary budget in February actually proposed a cut on that number instead, and after months of pressure from library workers and advocacy groups, his executive budget in May settled on 0.42 percent of the city budget for the library, an improvement over an earlier proposal, but still short of his original target. By some counts, this move was seen as a somewhat of a failed promise, with the library budget Mamdani signed into action being lower than the 0.45 percent budget his predecessor had appropriated to the library the year before. Even though he has delivered on many of the things he ran on, some have fallen through and taken second stage at the moment.

The mix of real promised deliveries and unexpected limitations to his actions is responsible for the reaction of many New Yorkers when summing up the first six months of Mamdani’s mayorship—generally positive but still weary. In several ways, the city feels genuinely easier to live in—the potholes are filled, the sidewalks are shoveled when you need to commute, and a rent freeze puts money back in tenants' pockets. But despite that, groceries are still expensive, rent is only frozen for specific regulated units, and some of his promises are unable to be fulfilled due to restrictions from the state. There is still work to be done, but the work that’s been done is very close to where we hoped to be.