He’s Zo-ing back on his word.
Many of Mayor Zohran Mamdani’s lofty campaign promises have already bitten the dust 100 days in, as he makes a U-turn or scales them back almost beyond recognition.
His improbable path from Democratic socialist also-ran to victory in 2025’s election came in no small part from the sweeping, voter-pleasing pledges.
While his marquee platforms of universal child care, fast and free buses and a rent freeze clearly captured voters’ imaginations, he made a slew of other promises that would quickly — and significantly — reshape New York City, including:
City-owned grocery stores
Mamdani’s early viral promise to open city-run grocery stores has all but disappeared from the conversation during his first 100 days in office.
The pitch that candidate Mamdani made repeatedly was that five grocery stores — one in each borough — could sell food to hard-working New Yorkers at wholesale prices if the city covered rent and property taxes.
But no such city-owned grocery stores have opened.
Instead, Mamdani has just proposed $70 million in new funding for the city’s Economic Development Corporation to scout potential locations for and build the five stores.
Department of Community Safety
Mamdani’s much-hyped major promise to launch a new city “Department of Community Safety” — with a $1.1 billion dollar price tag — that would have social workers respond to non-violent 911 calls instead of NYPD cops has fallen short of its lofty ambitions.
Hizzoner so far has just rolled out a “Mayor’s Office of Community Safety” — a lite version of his original promise with just two staffers and a murky $260 million budget.
Strategic Response Group
When Mamdani entered the mayoral race in 2024 as a longshot candidate, he vowed to disband the NYPD’s Strategic Response Group.
The elite unit tasked with responding to protests is still sticking around, though Mamdani has repeatedly vowed that he’ll dismantle it.
Zohran’s little red book: The Post reveals what it thinks Mamdani’s first 100 days would look like
January 1: Dear diary, I’m the mayor! AOC owes me $20, she of little faith. She’s refusing to pay, saying I should take solace in the “warmth of collectivism.” After the block party, stopped by the new office to change the definition of antisemitism and allow people to boycott Israel. Mission accomplished.
January 6: For some reason, my girl Cea Weaver is in trouble for saying she wanted to “seize private property” and that homeownership was a “weapon of white supremacy.” Duh! That was on my campaign platform! Also I moved into Gracie Mansion.
January 7: Still cleaning up after Eric. How many glo-sticks does one mayor need? This place really needs a bidet. How can the bedroom still smell of Bill deB’s weed?
January 14: King Don called. Apparently still upset that I’m letting illegal immigrant criminals go. I said he looked handsome on TV and he calmed down a little.
January 28: People are blaming me for homeless people freezing outside. I blame the patriarchy.
January 30: Got to try out my drop, the “City of New York” jacket. Beard well oiled. Had “aura” as the kids say. Put that on a propaganda poster! Smiling this much is starting to hurt.
February 11: Tax tax tax tax tax tax tax tax tax tax tax tax tax tax tax tax
February 12: I’ve been brainstorming some new taxes. What if we taxed millionaires for walking above 14th Street? Sidewalk congestion! Note: Bring this up at next politburo meeting.
February 17: Ugh, ‘Karen’ Hochul. I TOLD her I needed to have more taxes, and she went “uhhh.” Like c’mon that’s my brand. My X handle is @taxman. I’m seeing if anyone else from my college socialist group wants to run for governor.
February 18: Being mayor is hard.
February 26: I told Jessica that a kid throwing a snowball at cops is not a crime. Even if that kid is 27 years old with a criminal record and whacked the cop across the head.
March 1: Made a TikTok today.
March 2: Made another TikTok.
March 8: I don’t understand why folks don’t get it. When Rama is with me at official events, she’s a public figure. When she’s tweeting about how much she loves Hamas, she’s a private citizen. Easy peasy. Why can’t my press people get that across? Think we should stop calling on reporters.
March 16: Turns out the lawyers say I can’t “ban cars.” I thought I was the mayor! But someone said in meeting I can lower speed limit to make walking faster.
April 2: Reminder: Get more Crest white strips.
April 8: Turns out giving everyone free buses and puppies costs a lot of money. All my friends at the Havana convention are going to be mad.
April 9: How is my approval rating only 48%?! Everyone in Park Slope says they love me!
The mayor told the New York Times this week that the SRG was part of an “active conversation” with NYPD Commissioner Jessica Tisch, who supports keeping it. He said he’d overrule Tisch if necessary.
“I remain steadfast in my commitment to disband the SRG, to do so in a manner that upholds both First Amendment rights of New Yorkers and keeps New Yorkers safe,” he told the paper.
Homeless encampments
Soon after winning the 2025 mayoral race, Mamdani vowed that he’d stop his predecessor Eric Adams’ practice of clearing homeless encampments and focus instead on trying to line up housing for vagrants.
But Mamdani reversed course soon after taking office when the city was walloped by back-to-back winter storms that led to at least 29 deaths, most outdoors.
He revamped the policy by instructing city workers to return to homeless encampments for seven days in a row and try to convince people to move off the streets before tearing down their makeshift living structures.
NYPD gang database
Lefties, including Mamdani on the campaign trail, have long argued that the NYPD’s gang database perpetuates racial profiling and should be abolished.
But Mamdani’s once-firm opposition has started to evaporate as he goes deeper into his mayoralty.
The mayor stood silent last week as Tisch said cops use the database “every day.” When asked about the database Monday, Mamdani said he made his “critiques of the database clear” and claimed that the NYPD was in the process of making reforms.
Housing vouchers
Adams infuriated City Council progressives and housing advocates alike when he fought the expansion of CityFHEPS, the Big Apple’s housing voucher program.
Seeking to capitalize off that anger, Mamdani’s campaign website explicitly promised that as mayor, he’d drop Adams’ lawsuits against the expansion.
But once Mamdani was elected mayor, he reversed course by formally filing an appeal to keep an anti-CityFHEPS lawsuit alive — a move that one advocate bitterly called a “betrayal.”
Class size law
Mamdani, as a Queens state assemblyman, voted in 2022 for the state’s controversial class size law requiring New York City public school classrooms to shrink.
He largely kept mum on the law — which Adams maintained would bust the city’s already bloated education budget — until late in the mayoral campaign, when he renewed his support.
As a mayor facing a massive budget shortfall, however, Mamdani started to quietly push for the law’s mandate to be relaxed — an effort that a key state lawmaker has backed.
Libraries
The city’s public libraries have been the victim one of Mamdani’s most egregious flip-flops from his campaign promises.
Then-candidate Mamdani had promised both to “end the practice of using library funding as a bargaining chip in budget negotiations” and commit 0.5% of New York City’s budget to libraries — a direct rebuke against a much-criticized practice under Adams.
But Mamdani brazenly reneged on the pledges as mayor by slashing library funding by $30 million in his preliminary city budget and only allocating 0.39% of it toward libraries.
“Mayor Mamdani has broken his promise,” incensed librarians with the NYC Public Library Action Network raged.
“The honeymoon is over for Mamdani,” said Ryan Adams, managing director at Actum, a consulting firm. “But I don’t think the marriage has soured with New York.”
The consultant pointed out that Mamdani “reversed his no-sweeps pledge within two months, triggered an uproar over CityFHEPS from advocates for the homeless and unhoused, walked back his approach to the gang database, and his signature affordability agenda — city-owned supermarkets, free buses, a rent freeze — is stalled behind outside forces who won’t play along.”
“The campaign was a movement,” he said, “the administration is a negotiation. That’s a hard landing.”
