Zohran Mamdani’s Staffing Decisions Are the Talk of the Town

With New York City Mayor-elect Zohran Mamdani hitting the gas on staffing appointments barely a week after his election, many in commercial real estate are wondering who will take control of key departments and fill roles that strongly influence real estate development throughout the city.

Given how early it is in the process, a lot is up in the air, but that doesn’t stop the rumor mill from doing what rumor mills do.

“Everybody was talking about Brad Lander as deputy mayor, though he’s also [thinking about] running for Congress. But there’s a lot of talk that he’s thinking about City Planning,” said Sid Davidoff, founding partner at law firm Davidoff Hutcher & Citron and chair of the firm’s Government Relations practice, and a man who has served New York City mayors from John Lindsay to Eric Adams. 

Davidoff’s take would position Mamdani’s close campaign pal Lander to fill Dan Garodnick’s enormous shoes should the latter vacate his current post as director of the New York City Department of City Planning and chair of the Planning Commission.

The well-respected Garodnick, though, has himself been rumored, according to several sources, as a potential choice to serve as Mamdani’s deputy mayor for housing, economic development and workforce.

(Lander confirmed to amNewYork last week that he is “seriously considering” running for the 10th District congressional seat currently held by Rep. Dan Goldman.)

Another name being bandied about for a potential high-ranking position in the administration, according to several sources, is Anthony Shorris, who served as first deputy mayor in the de Blasio administration from 2014 to 2017, and who has also served as executive director of the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey and deputy budget director at the New York City Mayor’s Office of Management and Budget (OMB). 

As Mamdani ramps up his staff, Shorris sounds like just the sort of veteran insider who could help quell doubts about the millennial mayor-elect’s own lack of managerial experience.    

One well-placed source tells Commercial Observer that both Andrew Kimball, president and CEO of the New York City Economic Development Corporation (NYCEDC), and James Oddo, commissioner of the New York City Department of Buildings (DOB), have expressed interest in remaining in their current positions. There is no official word yet on Mamdani’s plans for either of those roles. (Officials in the Mamdani administration did not immediately respond to a request for comment.)

Another source mentions that Paimaan Lodhi is also being considered to head the Department of City Planning. Lodhi is a senior director at developer and owner Tishman Speyer; a former senior vice president of the Real Estate Board of New York, where he worked on the Midtown East rezoning; and a former urban planner for Manhattan Borough President Scott Stringer. (Lodhi did not immediately respond to a request for comment.)

But another source with deep government connections tells CO that so far the Mamdani administration has been exceedingly disciplined in keeping a tight lid on most of the names it’s seriously considering, even going so far as to say that too much gossip about any one prospective appointee could work against them.

That said, the source noted that Steve Banks, commissioner of the New York City Department of Social Services for eight years under de Blasio, is in the mix for several possible roles, including deputy mayor for health and human services; and that City Councilman Justin Brannan, de Blasio’s director of intergovernmental affairs at the city Department of Education, is someone that Mamdani would like to place in some role within his administration. 

(Kimball, Oddo and Brannan did not immediately respond to requests for comment, while Shorris and Banks could not be reached for comment.) 

Of course, all of this is simply conjecture until more of Mamdani’s staff announcements roll out between now and his Jan. 1 inauguration. But there are some ways in which the few appointments he’s made so far can educate us about how Mamdani will govern.   

The best thing a big city mayor-elect with questionable big government experience could do immediately following his election is to reassure the electorate that he’ll have experienced hands by his side, as he undertakes to learn his new role with the eyes of the world laser-focused in his direction.

Since his Nov. 4 election, Mamdani has been doing just that.

Presumably understanding that his earliest appointments could signal much about his administration’s general direction, priorities, deference to experience and ideological slant, Mamdani is taking pains to show that his administration will have smart, veteran leaders.

The first such signs came the Wednesday after Election Day, with the announcement of a five-person transition team of well-respected politicos from different administrations.

Led by Elana Leopold, a veteran of the de Blasio administration whom Mamdani named executive director of his transition team, the group also includes de Blasio deputy mayor for health and human services Melanie Hartzog; United Way head and veteran of Michael Bloomberg’s administration Grace Bonilla; former Federal Trade Commission chair Lina Khan; and Maria Torres-Springer, Eric Adams’s former first deputy mayor.

Then, on Nov. 10, Mamdani named the first two high-ranking members of his administration: Dean Fuleihan, a 74-year-old veteran of city government who served as both first deputy mayor and head of the OMB under Mayor de Blasio; and Elle Bisgaard-Church, a Democratic Socialist like Mamdani who is regarded as the brains and the engine behind her fellow 34-year-old’s mayoral campaign.   

While some of the names will no doubt rankle business leaders (Lina Khan, known for aggressively enforcing antitrust laws, is particularly notorious), these announcements have spread optimism among others about Mamdani’s hiring choices, as they show that the mayor-elect is approaching staffing with a marked seriousness of purpose.

“Those are good first steps,” said Travis Terry, founder and CEO of the strategy consulting firm Immortal Strategies. “Dean is a well-respected government official who understands the city and state very well. And, given that a lot of Mamdani’s agenda is going to require state cooperation, I think it’s a smart move by him.”

On the transition team, the choice of Torres-Springer, who served as commissioner of the New York City Department of Small Business Services under de Blasio, in particular has been widely praised. 

“I’ve known her since she was in Small Business Services — she’s an absolute superstar,” said Lou Coletti, senior adviser at law firm Davidoff Hutcher & Citron and the former longtime president and CEO of the Building Trades Employers’ Association (BTEA). “I wonder if maybe she ends up coming back, because she’s a very public service-oriented individual, and very, very smart.”

Davidoff echoed the sentiment.

“Torres-Springer is a pro who knows what the government needs,” he said. “She’s realistic and yet still very much a believer. I think she’s a very smart choice.”

Brad Gerstman, managing partner at the government relations and lobbying law firm Gerstman PLLC, is not surprised that Mamdani is leaning heavily on de Blasio administration veterans so far, and expects that we’ll see more of this as the new mayor’s team fills out.

“He’s going to put together a competent administration — people who have been there and done it,” said Gerstman. “He’s going to rely heavily on de Blasio alumni. There are a lot of them out there, and a lot of them are looking to get back into the action since the Adams administration displaced a lot of them.”

Gerstman said that de Blasio was “a main figure in Zohran Mamdani’s life,” and that his staffers are likely to be people Mamdani can trust. “Those are very progressive-minded people, and they are all very competent.”

Coletti was at the annual Somos Conference in Puerto Rico last week with Mamdani, Gov. Kathy Hochul and other New York political bigwigs, and he likes what he’s seen and heard so far about Mamdani’s staffing selections.

“What I heard at Somos is that he’s talking to the right people,” said Coletti. “I’ve heard him say that he isn’t necessarily going to dismiss people from the Adams administration just because they worked for the former mayor — that he’d make his decisions based on their ability and whether he thinks they would fit within his administration.”

Coletti believes that Mamdani’s early appointments provide an encouraging sign for what’s ahead.  

“His chief of staff is a very bright woman who’s worked for him for a long time. That’s a very logical chief of staff selection,” said Coletti. “His first deputy mayor is somebody who’s got a lot of experience and knows how city and state government works — also a logical selection.”

In discussing Mamdani’s staffing approach so far, Davidoff recalls how former New York City mayors like John Lindsay and Ed Koch, both congressmen prior to becoming mayor, were light on managerial experience when they took office. But they learned on the job thanks to smart staffing decisions.

“They made mistakes. Ed had like 11 deputy mayors or some crazy number that he realized was unwieldy,” said Davidoff. “But he surrounded himself with professionals, people who gave him the opportunity to really emerge, as did John. I think this is the theory that Mamdani is going on. He’s installed some professionalism and some idealism so far, and I think that’s a good start.”

Travis notes that Mamdani publicly set one very promising parameter for his appointments.

“If you take Mamdani at his word, he’s going to be looking for people who are true experts in each of their fields,” said Immortal Strategies’ Terry. “So he wants his DOT commissioner to be a true expert in transportation who aligns with his vision of how you handle the public realm, he wants his HPD commissioner to be a real housing expert, etc. He wants to appoint people who have substantive expertise in those areas. Those are encouraging comments.”

Gerstman believes that the picks so far should be viewed as encouraging signs even by those — including many in commercial real estate — who are no supporters of our new mayor-to-be.“I may not agree with [his appointees] because I represent business interests — real estate developers, construction, etc. — as a lobbyist in New York City and state,” said Gerstman. “But there’s nothing worse than incompetence. That’s scary. That’s super dangerous. If [a mayor is] going to pick people to run agencies because they’re his friends, and they’re incompetent, that [would be] a scary thing for New York City.”

Rather, Mamdani has picked “a very competent transition team,” Gerstman said. “These people know government and they know a lot about politics. It doesn’t mean that the business community is going to align with them necessarily, but at least they’re competent, and that’s really, really important.”

One key appointment that may wind up somewhat out of Mamdani’s hands, though, is that of police commissioner. 

Mamdani has said that he would like the current commissioner, Jessica Tisch, to remain on the job, and Tisch reportedly wants to stay. On Nov. 12, Politico reported that while the two hadn’t personally spoken since July, the teams for both have remained in touch since the election and that a meeting between the two was now on the books.

But given their very different philosophies regarding the position, many believe that Tisch will only stay if she feels she can do the job her way, which has led to drops in certain categories of violent crime in recent years. 

Observers wonder if the difference in their philosophies on issues such as Mamdani’s proposed Department of Community Safety and his desire to not hire additional officers might make it impossible for Tisch to stay on.

“Jessica has to make the decision, and needs to have long conversations with Mamdani to assure that she can run the department in the manner she’s comfortable with,” said Coletti of Davidoff Hutcher & Citron. “That’s going to really give us a signal about public safety and crime. She’s built such a strong reputation as a law and order police commissioner. If she finds it difficult to accept the way he wants to do it, then does she really want to stay?”

While people throughout commercial real estate are examining Mamdani’s appointments and scuttlebutt about potential appointments with a magnifying glass, hoping to glean any hints about how his mayoralty will impact New York, it’s important to remember that current hires might wind up being mere shots across the governmental bow as opposed to institutions guaranteed to leave a long-term impact on the city.

“Don’t read that much into the transition team,” said Gerstman. “Nobody ever remembers who was on the transition team, because the reality is there’s a number of people in the background that are also in that mix that are helping shape the administration.”

Given positions where turnover is hardly unusual, keeping a sense of flexibility regarding the administration might be the best strategy in the long term.    

“One of our mayors said to me when I was a little bit upset about an appointment or two at the highest level, ‘Believe me, a year from now, this administration will look different than it does on the day it starts.’ And he was right,” said Davidoff. “It’s not catastrophic if someone is not in the right place if you catch it early enough.”

Larry Getlen can be reached at lgetlen@commercialobserver.com.