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Other than announcing that Jessica Tisch will be staying on as Police Commissioner, Mayor-elect Zohran Mamdani has named very few people to any major posts in his administration. He also hasn’t declared much in the way of official policy. One of the rare instances when he has, however, caught many people off-guard, as he declared he’d end the Mayor Adams-approved elimination of homeless encampments. The lack of clarity in his transition period has left many people stumped as to what kind of leader New York City will have starting in three weeks. Craig McCarthy is the City Hall bureau chief for the New York Post; he appeared on 710 WOR’s Mendte in the Morning show to describe the pitfalls the mayor-elect is facing as the time that he finally starts running the city is just days away.
McCarthy told host Larry Mendte we should pay closer attention to the names on Mamdani’s transition team because we don’t know much about them, or about Mamdani’s true style of leadership: “These committees historically haven’t been very influential… it’s considered more of a name [or] resume buffer rather than much of an actual influence. But I think what we’re extrapolating here in the press is, we don’t know much about Zohran Mamdani and his actual political picking, who he’s going to staff out this entire city with, so we have to read the tea leaves of anybody that’s surrounding him, regardless if they’re influential or not at this point, because they’ve been named to this transition.”
McCarthy did point to Mamdani’s handling of Chi Osse, Brad Lander and Jessica Tisch to suggest Mamdani may have a lot of fires to put out just among his base of support once he’s in charge: “I think at this point he’s placating the left here. I mean, he has to placate his base. He’s struggled mightily to hold this faction together of the far left, the progressive left, and the moderate left… so it’s going to be interesting to see with this outsider group of the DSA, when they have one of their own in office, how long it takes for them to, as people have said to me, the left eat their own.”
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