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Nearly two weeks after his Election Day victory, New York mayor-elect Zohran Mamdani finally had his much-anticipated meeting with NYPD Commissioner Jessica Tisch. Mamdani played it coy with reporters afterwords by not revealing any details of the meeting or whether Tisch wants to stay on as police commissioner. That was a concern many voters and Democrats had, however, going into the voting booth; will crime surge if Tisch chooses not to stay on, and would Mamdani convince voters he could keep crime rates under control with or without her leadership? Ari Hoffman is the associate editor of the New York Sun; he appeared on 710 WOR’s Mendte in the Morning program to lay out Tisch’s options as January 1st draws closer.
Hoffman told host Larry Mendte what many in the city don’t want to hear- that Tisch might be better off leaving the Mamdani administration in her rear-view mirror: “Keeping Jessica Tisch became a kind of, I think, fig leaf for a lot of Democrats who felt that they should support Mamdani but didn’t want to appear too radical, so this became kind of the test. But I don’t think this is a match destined for happiness, Larry. Jessica Tisch has to evaluate and make some decisions here, too… If she thinks he’s anti-police, anti-safety, anti-law and order, I think it’s incumbent on her not to serve in the position and not, in turn, to be a fig leaf for his radical administration.”
Hoffman also made an observation about Mamdani that should probably serve as a warning not just to Tisch, but to anyone dealing with the mayor-elect: “Part of what we’ve seen about Mamdani’s m.o. is, he doesn’t really have a lot of gratitude. I mean, look at what’s happened with Brad Lander, right. Lander went to the mat for him- basically threw himself behind Mamdani- and reporting that’s come out in the last few days suggest Mamdani said, ‘No jobs for you here; good luck against Dan Goldman’.”
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