The Heiress Who Could Make or Break the Socialist Mayor
Last night, as he faced down Andrew Cuomo and Curtis Sliwa for the second and final time, Zohran Mamdani made what was arguably the biggest news of his campaign since the summer: He will keep Jessica Tisch as police commissioner if he becomes mayor..
The decision puts to rest months of speculation that Mamdani, a democratic socialist and former supporter of defunding the police, could possibly spurn the well-regarded, billionaire technocrat who has been in charge of the NYPD since last year. Keeping Tisch, in many ways, is the path of least resistance for Mamdani and could very well set him up for immediate success in the policy areas where he has been most focused on, such as affordability. (Disclosure: In 2018, when I ran for office, Mamdani was my campaign manager.) Tisch is a favorite of the city’s business and finance elites — she is also very popular with the right-wing New York Post — and she’s also Governor Kathy Hochul’s preferred choice. Retaining her as commissioner could allow Mamdani to win concessions from Hochul as he attempts to secure state funding for child care and free buses while satiating, in part, the Post, which will want to savage him each and every day.
If Mamdani wins, as all the polls forecast, and Tisch accepts the offer — she’s previously said she would like to remain commissioner — it would mark the beginning of a partnership that will either be highly successful or eventually devolve over the obvious political differences between the two young power brokers. Tisch, 44, is a Harvard-educated Zionist who has denounced many of the criminal-justice-reform laws passed by Democrats in Albany, including a partial end to cash bail and “raise the age,” which prevents teenagers under 18 from being tried as adults. It is not hard to imagine Mamdani, as mayor, defending a certain progressive reform measure that Tisch openly reviles. They would have to come to an agreement over controversial plain-clothes anti-crime units, the maintenance of gang databases, and how, ultimately, to approach counterterrorism. Mamdani wants to maintain the department’s headcount. What happens if Tisch demands he hire more cops? What if a police officer shoots and kills a civilian and Mamdani and Tisch disagree openly on whether the NYPD is truly at fault? For how long can they maintain a united front?
Such tension between a mayor and a police commissioner would not be new. In 2014, Bill de Blasio, the newly elected progressive mayor, chose Bill Bratton, Rudy Giuliani’s old police commissioner, to lead the department. Like Mamdani, de Blasio hoped Bratton could shore up his right flank and ease the fears of city elites who believed the new mayor would usher in an era of high crime. Crime did fall, but the relationship proved unsustainable. Bratton often contradicted de Blasio in public and was, as a pugnacious law-and-order conservative, an ill fit for a mayor who was striving to repair relations between the police and the city’s Black communities. In 2016, Bratton quit, and de Blasio had better luck with less prominent successors who could work more seamlessly with City Hall.
One advantage Mamdani might have in an alliance with Tisch is that he is, in every sense, the bigger political star. Bratton was a charismatic, nationally renowned crimefighter who had once appeared on the cover of Time, and he had a natural rapport with the New York press corps. It was that magazine cover that helped doom him with Giuliani, who could not tolerate one of his own commissioners outshining him. Tisch, conversely, is shyer in public and far more soft-spoken. In any media spat, Mamdani could have the upper hand. He’s a potent communicator with his own fervent fan base that will, for a while at least, buoy him. What helps Mamdani, for now, is that his supporters do not feel betrayed by his choice to keep a more conservative police commissioner who is popular with the finance and real-estate titans of New York. The Democratic Socialists of America aren’t denouncing him, nor are progressive and leftist politicians.
Left unsaid is that the radical police reform favored by the left in 2020 and 2021 has fallen out of vogue. If the DSA wants to defund or even abolish the police today, they no longer prioritize that demand. Among leftists, there’s a recognition that if Mamdani can follow through on his affordability promises, he can tack to the center on policing. The pressure on him, when it comes to criminal justice, simply isn’t there — not yet, anyway.
Tisch is not necessarily a panacea. Violent crime has plunged under her watch, but New York’s decline has merely mirrored national trends. If Mamdani wins and Tisch serves under him, he’ll have to manage, like prior mayors, a police commissioner who has her own power base and who could, Robert Moses–like, threaten to quit whenever she doesn’t get her way. This is challenging, if possible. There is a world where Tisch genuinely reforms the department, avoids scandal, and gives Mamdani enough room to maneuver to achieve his major campaign promises. And there is one where it all unravels. We’ll find out soon enough.
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