Mamdani Fills 2 Top Posts With Government Veteran and Trusted Aide

Mayor-elect Zohran Mamdani made the first major appointment of his administration on Monday, tapping Dean Fuleihan, a well-known veteran of city and state government, to be his top deputy in City Hall.

It is a reprise role for Mr. Fuleihan, 74, who served as former Mayor Bill de Blasio’s first deputy mayor until 2021. Four decades Mr. Mamdani’s senior, Mr. Fuleihan will be responsible for the day-to-day operations of city government.

Mr. Mamdani also announced that Elle Bisgaard-Church, his top aide in the State Assembly and longtime right-hand, would serve as his chief of staff, as was expected.

The appointments sent the clearest signal yet that Mr. Mamdani, 34, plans to staff his administration with both members of his young, leftist inner circle and more seasoned government hands with greater knowledge of the city’s $115 billion budget and 300,000 public employees.

Speaking at a news conference in Manhattan, Mr. Mamdani said his administration would be judged not just on the success of his far-reaching economic agenda, but also on how it delivers more prosaic government services, like trash pickup.

He said that Mr. Fuleihan and Ms. Bisgaard-Church, 34, “possess the fresh, innovative ideas needed to transform our city and the expertise needed to execute.”

To underscore the scope of his ambitions as mayor, Mr. Mamdani made the announcement at Hunter College’s Roosevelt House, the Upper East Side mansion where Franklin D. Roosevelt plotted the early stages of the New Deal as he transitioned to the presidency.

Indeed, Mr. Mamdani will face a steep set of challenges when he takes office on Jan. 1. He campaigned on an expansive and expensive set of solutions to the city’s spiraling living costs: making buses free, expanding government-funded child care and freezing the rent on nearly a million rent-stabilized apartments.

To do most of it, Mr. Mamdani will have to persuade state lawmakers and Gov. Kathy Hochul not only to approve his plans but to raise billions of dollars in new revenue to pay for them, either through new taxes or other measures. Ms. Hochul has said she wants to work with Mr. Mamdani, especially on the child care initiative, but she raised doubts over the weekend about ending bus fares.

Then there is Mr. Trump, a former New Yorker, who has dismissed Mr. Mamdani as a radical “communist.” The president has already threatened to withhold billions of dollars in crucial federal funds from the city or send in National Guard troops if Mr. Mamdani pursues policies he does not like.

The timing of Monday’s announcement, just after the mayor-elect returned from an annual post-election political gathering in Puerto Rico, suggested that he was moving more quickly than his predecessors to roll out appointments.

Both Mayor Eric Adams and Mr. de Blasio before him waited until the month after they were elected to name their selections for first deputy mayor and other high-level positions.

Last week, Mr. Mamdani appointed five women to run his transition committee. He is expected to make additional appointments in the coming weeks and has been meeting with candidates for schools chancellor, among other positions.

Mr. Mamdani entertained several candidates for first deputy mayor, including Dan Garodnick, the head of the city planning department, and Maria Torres-Springer, a first deputy mayor under Mr. Adams.

Brad Lander, the city comptroller, was also said to have been interested in the job after he and Mr. Mamdani locked arms in the Democratic mayoral primary. But Mr. Lander was not seriously considered in the end, and is now laying the groundwork to run for the congressional seat held by Representative Daniel Goldman.

Mr. Fuleihan began his career in the 1970s and later served as a top aide to Sheldon Silver, the former Assembly speaker who was later convicted on corruption charges in 2015. (Mr. Fuleihan was not implicated.) He joined Mr. de Blasio’s administration in 2013 to lead the mayor’s Office of Management and Budget, where he helped negotiate labor contracts and implement universal prekindergarten, one of the mayor’s top achievements.

Mr. Fuleihan was later elevated to first deputy mayor. In that role, he served as acting mayor when Mr. de Blasio left the state, and helped him navigate a contentious relationship with Mr. Trump during the president’s first term.

“So much of Zohran’s success will resolve around his relationship with Albany,” Mr. de Blasio said in an interview. “There could not have been a better choice from that perspective.”

Mr. Mamdani said on Monday that he had first worked with Mr. Fuleihan years ago, on negotiations to secure debt relief for taxi drivers. More recently, Mr. Fuleihan had spent months quietly advising Mr. Mamdani, Ms. Bisgaard-Church and others on the campaign as they prepared for the prospect of governing.

The two men bonded over progressive politics but also shared personal experiences. Mr. Fuleihan is the child of Lebanese immigrants; Mr. Mamdani was born in Uganda to parents of Indian descent. (After Monday’s announcement, they shared lunch with Ms. Bisgaard-Church at a nearby Lebanese restaurant.)

Mr. Fuleihan’s appointment, though, is only likely to fuel comparisons between Mr. Mamdani and Mr. de Blasio, the city’s most recent progressive mayor, who left office with low approval ratings. During the campaign, Mr. Mamdani’s chief rival, former Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo, derided him as Mr. de Blasio’s “Mini-Me.”

Mr. Mamdani rejected the suggestion on Monday.

“The truth is I am 5’ 11,’’ he said, acknowledging that the figure made him several inches shorter than Mr. de Blasio. But, he added: “I am going to create a new City Hall.”

Ms. Bisgaard-Church, for her part, has never worked in city government. She is a democratic socialist like Mr. Mamdani, and led the small and unusually young group of campaign staff members who oversaw his remarkable rise from backbench member of the Assembly to the youngest New York City mayor-elect in more than a century.

On Monday, Mr. Mamdani called her “our moral compass, our brilliant strategic center.”

In her remarks, Ms. Bisgaard-Church argued that Mr. Mamdani, who won just over 50 percent of the vote, had earned a “democratic mandate,” and predicted, “we will be here a long time”

She also sought to reassure New Yorkers wary that the new administration could steer City Hall too sharply leftward.

“I promise,” she said, “that this administration will be open-minded, strategically oriented and pragmatically focused.”