As Mamdani looks to City Hall, de Blasio reemerges
NEW YORK — As Zohran Mamdani mulls staffing up as New York City mayor, the Democratic nominee has an obvious starting point: people from the administration of former Mayor Bill de Blasio, who swept into City Hall a decade ago with a singular focus on economic inequality.
“There’s a lot of people from my administration who’d be excited to work for him if he was mayor,” de Blasio told POLITICO a day after Mamdani’s primary victory. “We credentialed a whole generation of progressives to be ready to serve in senior positions in city government. So I do think he’s got a pretty deep bench to draw on.”
Mamdani is the prohibitive favorite in the November general election. If he succeeds, the assemblymember would inherit a sprawling city government led by appointees of one of the men he needs to defeat, Mayor Eric Adams. The challenge of filling top positions will be made even more daunting by the fact that the 33-year-old with no direct city government experience has only managed a staff of five before the campaign and lacks the rolodex — or iPhone contacts — of many of his predecessors.
Mamdani, a democratic socialist, would be under tremendous pressure to keep city services moving and deliver on his key campaign promises like enacting universal, free child care, while facing off against a hostile Trump administration and a local press corps eager to point out the failures of government.
https://www.politico.com/news/2025/07/13/de-blasio-sets-an-example-as-mamdani-thinks-about-staffing-up-00449610