Mayor Zohran Mamdani has announced his first-ever executive budget proposal, a $125 billion behemoth whose topline takeaway was what it didn’t have: property tax hikes, service cuts or dwindling reserves. That outcome was a startling turnaround from a few months ago, when the new mayor and some fiscal watchdogs were warning that the city was staring at a $12 billion gap.
Of course, getting from that threat of disaster to this balance involved more than a bit of luck – and of fiscal sleight of hand. Strong tax revenues cut the gap to $5.4 billion, and Mamdani included more than $1 billion in cuts. But his budget does not address a projected gap of $7 billion next year, and relies on some big moves by the state and Gov. Kathy Hochul that might be classed as hand-waving or can-kicking. The state gave the city an estimated additional $4 billion based on a combination of a delay in city payments to its pension funds, delayed implementation of the state class size mandate, a tax on high-end pieds-à-terre (luxury apartments owned by out-of-state residents) and other measures. The deal also included a number of so-called one-shots, i.e. one-time revenue sources that are used to pay for policy items that will require funding for future years. The most notable of those items is the rollout of expanded childcare, for which Hochul has promised $1.6 billion to cover its first two years only.
This doesn’t mean the budget is finalized; the City Council will have its own response, and this merely provides the framework for negotiations. Mamdani seems to have tried to preempt some of the Council’s potential efforts to insert budget-increasing priorities by increasing funding in his budget for common asks like parks and CUNY. And external factors could complicate the budget picture: The impact of the Iran war on the economy is uncertain, as is the effect of Trump’s tariffs and general unpredictability and the potential bubble around AI.
Still, the city’s budget is a pretty notable achievement after a period of intense consternation about the city’s finances, and one made possible above all by close cooperation between Mamdani and Hochul.
This is to a large extent a story about the relationship between the two. They are political figures who on paper seem almost comically mismatched — avatars for the insurgent progressive and moderate Democratic wings of the party that are ostensibly in open war over the liberal political project’s future.
This is a surface-level similar dynamic to that of former Mayor Bill de Blasio and former Gov. Andrew Cuomo — the progressive orator with visions of a city beset by inequality and the business-friendly political operator who came up through the establishment — which sparked genuine animosity that often prevented them from working effectively together. Yet aside from pointed disagreements over Mamdani’s calls for broader tax hikes on the rich, Hochul and Mamdani seem to have entirely avoided this trap, and have repeatedly made a big show of standing arm in arm for the benefit of New Yorkers.
This resulting budget really seems like the best case for a balance of their priorities; Mamdani gets money for many of his priorities and avoids huge budget cuts, while Hochul avoids tax hikes on state residents and gets to be seen reaching out from Albany to prop up the city and bolster Mamdani’s agenda. Neither gets exactly what they would have wanted in their ideal worlds, but both walk away looking pretty good, I think. Some of the motivations involve raw political calculation, as I’ve gotten into before: the mayor knows that he needs Hochul for success in the bulk of his long-term priorities, and the governor knows that Mamdani can help deliver the turnout she needs for her own reelection bid this year.
I think it’s more than that, though. Some of it does come down to personality and political approach. I don’t think that Cuomo, were he in Hochul’s shoes now, would be working with Mamdani in the same way just out of political expediency, because that wouldn’t have fit into his governing style. Cuomo’s politics rested on personal dominance. He enjoyed torturing de Blasio and felt that doing so bolstered his image as a takes-no-prisoners tough guy who voters could trust to Get Stuff Done while bullying the progressive weenies who didn’t have what it took – even if his compulsive ball-busting got in the way of getting things done.
On the flip side, while de Blasio certainly made some compromises, he did so while radiating a sense that the self-evident goodness of his vision was being tainted by the grubby machinations of politics. He continuously pissed off potential allies with what felt to many to be an aloof smugness. Working with a brute like Cuomo was unpalatable to him and so he mostly didn’t try, which left both of them sniping at each other. It was abundantly clear that their feuds were more important than the work of jointly advancing policy to benefit New Yorkers.
I don’t want to get over my skis here and suggest that Hochul and Mamdani will be a model of Uniting the Party™ going forward. I have my own perspectives on the utility of insurgent movements within parties: I think that especially now as the Republican party has been subsumed entirely into the anti-democratic MAGA movement, the Democrats have to think hard about the right level of militancy – of how much they’re willing to fight fire with fire or explore messages they have traditionally been uncomfortable with, such as that they have to bend some norms themselves to safeguard the republic (like packing the Supreme Court and getting comfortable with holding former officials accountable).
Still, we’re going to have a mix of progressives and moderates in the Democratic base for the foreseeable future. So it’s not a bad idea for some prominent elected officials to model ways in which, despite very different political backgrounds and priorities, they can put the public interest first and resist calls for reflexive conflict. I saw some griping in left-leaning circles that Mamdani had erred in his early endorsement of Hochul, which wedded him to her and helped force out a more progressive primary challenger, Lt. Gov. Antonio Delgado, and I just want to say: c’mon. There’s no world where Delgado had even a remote chance of defeating Hochul in this contest. Had Mamdani endorsed Delgado instead, or just held off on supporting Hochul, the political result would still have been the same – but with less maneuverability for Mamdani, and that would itself have probably resulted in a worse budget deal.
That certainly doesn’t mean that Democrats should extend the hand of bipartisanship or whatever to the avowed fascists or fascist apologizers that have come to constitute a dizzying proportion of the Republican party. It does mean that there are absolutely ways in which institutional and insurgent liberal officials can align their interests in a manner that benefits everyone.
