NYC election: Zohran Mamdani announces all-women team to steer transition to City Hall

Fresh off winning New York City’s mayoral election, Zohran Mamdani has announced that a team including former city and federal officials - all women - will steer his transition to City Hall.

Mr Mamdani vowed on Wednesday to “work every day to honour the trust that I now hold”.

“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.

He named political strategist Elana Leopold 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.

With his win over former governor Andrew Cuomo and Republican Curtis Sliwa, the 34-year-old democratic socialist will soon become the city’s youngest mayor in more than a century.

“I’m confident in delivering these same policies that we ran on for the last year,” he said.

Mr Mamdani said he had not heard from Mr Cuomo or the city’s outgoing mayor, Eric Adams.

He did speak with Republican candidate Curtis Sliwa.

More than two million New Yorkers cast ballots in the contest, the largest turnout in a mayoral race in more than 50 years, according to the city’s board of elections.

With roughly 90 per cent of the votes counted, Mr Mamdani held an approximately nine percentage point lead over Mr Cuomo - with 50.4 per cent to 41.6 per cent - while Mr Sliwa received 7.1 per cent.

Mr Mamdani, who was criticised throughout the campaign for his thin resume, will have to begin staffing his incoming administration and planning how to accomplish the ambitious but polarising agenda that drove him to victory.

“The directive here has to be one of ensuring that it is excellence that characterises the people I surround myself with, both in the appointments in the team and in the general expectation that is being set for my City Hall,” Mr Mamdani said.

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 Mr Mamdani will pay for such initiatives, given Democratic governor 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.

Mr Mamdani was a fierce critic of the department in 2020, calling for “this rogue agency” to be defunded and criticising it as “racist, anti-queer and a major threat to public safety”.

He has since apologised for those comments and has said he will ask the current NYPD commissioner to stay on the job.

US President Donald Trump on Wednesday admitted that the results of a slate of elections, in which Democrats swept major races including New York City, was bad for his Republican Party.

“Last night, it was, you know, not expected to be a victory, it was very Democrat areas, but I don’t think it was good for Republicans,” he said during a meeting at the White House with senators from the party.

“I’m not sure it was good for anybody,” Mr Trump said.

“But we had an interesting evening and we learned a lot, and we’re going to talk about that.”

with DPA