NYC DSA leaders get plum roles in Zohran Mamdani transition team

He’s governing by committee.
Two New York City Democratic Socialists of America leaders scored plum roles on Zohran Mamdani’s transition team — as the mayor-elect Monday named a who’s who of progressive advocates and veterans of Bill de Blasio’s administration to staff its committees.
The 400 comrades tapped by Mamdani to help his transition into City Hall include the local DSA’s co-chairs Gustavo Gordillo and Grace Mausser, who recently bragged that the mayoral election’s outcome counted as a “mandate” for their shared socialist agenda.
“We’re looking to actually build a very different City Hall,” Mamdani, a DSA member, said during a press conference in East Harlem announcing his 17 transition team committees.
Gordillo will serve on the economic development and workforce development committee, while Mausser was named to the committee on small businesses and Minority and Women-Owned Business Enterprise.
The committees largely follow the template of past mayoral turnovers, covering traditional issues such as health and economic development — with the exception of two new ones focused on the lefty causes of “community organizing” and “worker justice.”
More than 70,000 New Yorkers applied from every single ZIP code in the city to work in Mamdani’s administration when he takes office Jan. 1, Mamdani said.
Whether Mamdani will lean on his largely untested lefty allies — especially from the DSA — or tap veteran public servants for his City Hall staff has been an open question, but the makeup of his transition brain trust skews toward experience.
Several notable high-profile names on the committees include:
Former FDNY Commissioner Laura Kavanagh, a veteran of Eric Adams’ administration, who is on the government operations committee.
Rodney Harrison, a widely respected NYPD and Suffolk County police official, will serve on the community safety committee.
De Blasio’s former health Commissioner Oxiris Barbot sits on the health committee.
Kathryn Wylde — who heads the business group Partnership for New York City, is part of Mamdani’s economic and workforce development committee.
Jed Walentas, the chair of Real Estate Board of New York, gives the real estate industry a voice in Mamdani’s transition as part of its housing committee.
Christine Marinoni, wife of lefty “Sex and the City” actress and onetime gubernatorial candidate Cynthia Nixon, is on the youth and education committee. She had donated $1,100 to Mamdani’s campaign.
Mamdani was flanked by several lower-profile, but still influential advocates and experts who’ll be part of his transition committees — including Annemarie Gray, executive director of the vocal YIMBY group Open New York, on one focused on housing.
Gray, who’s also a veteran of the de Blasio administration, and Open New York helped push voters to pass ballot measures giving the mayor new powers over building new housing.
“I joined this committee because Zohran is committed to an all-of-the-above approach to the housing crisis that we know New York City needs, one that protects current tenants, while also building the homes of future families,” she said.
The two new committees consist of a grab bag of local organizers, labor leaders and policy experts, including Ai-jen Poo, who heads the National Domestic Workers Alliance, received a 2014 MacArthur “Genius” Grant and once attended the Golden Globes with actress Meryl Streep.
Mamdani argued the worker justice committee was necessary because of how the city has failed blue-collar New Yorkers in the past.
He said the community organizing committee likewise addresses a gap.
“There has too often been a distance between the intent of what City Hall does and the impact of what it actually has in any given neighborhood across the five boroughs,” he said. “And you will typically find out from the New Yorkers who live there of the ways in which it’s fallen short.
“We want to use this period as an opportunity where we learn from those lessons, we learn from that history, and we also learn how City Hall could be far more effective in actually executing its vision.”
— Additional reporting by Carl Campanile