(100) Days of Wilson and Mamdani
Is winning elections the same thing as being ready to govern?
Katie Wilson and Zohran Mamdani have spent their first 100 days as mayors learning that elections reward whoever can sell the best vibe. Governing requires locking in.
Neither Wilson nor Mamdani had any experience where it counts: pushing shit through city government. They’d never made a mistake that landed on someone who couldn’t afford it.
Candidates will say what voters want to hear. If Katie Wilson had said, ‘homelessness is never going to be solved, it’s going to take 50 years, and it’s a long, boring process,’ she wouldn’t get elected. If Zohran had said, ‘New York is unaffordable, I can implement a few policies that will make your life marginally better,’ nobody’s showing up for that.
So they became who the voters wanted them to be.
Wilson campaigned on delivering 4,000 shelter units in four years. Her own staff admitted in an interview that the 500-unit deadline by June is a stretch. She never shared her plan with the city council. They added an amendment requiring her to submit one.
In a March 2025 interview with The Stranger, she said, “I’m not coming into this as a novice in how politics works and how government works and how governing works.” Two weeks ago, she announced that 75 micro units would be built on privately owned land in Interbay. City analysts noted that her plan doesn’t specify how the units will be funded beyond their first year.
Zohran was easy to root for. But my bubble burst when I saw a debate clip online three weeks before he won. New York Governor Kathy Hochul had just endorsed him. The moderator asked candidates to raise their hands if they supported her reelection. Mamdani didn’t raise his hand.
Then he got into office and immediately backtracked on one of his more ambitious campaign promises: free, fast buses. Making it happen requires the approval of the New York State Legislature, the MTA, and Governor Hochul. The state legislature included a pilot program to run one free bus line per borough, not the citywide free bus system he promised. A reporter asked if he’d given up. He said he was “encouraged by the conversations.”
Conversations.
They’re both millennials. They lived through 9/11, the 2008 recession, COVID, and now AI is eating jobs while rent eats everything else. That context shaped the voters who elected them as much as it shaped how they lead.
According to the Citizens Budget Commission, only 34 percent of New Yorkers rated their quality of life as good or excellent. Cities get broke enough and broken enough that voters stop trusting insiders. That opens the door for the outsider who can make you feel something.
Seattle needed someone who wasn’t Bruce Harrell. New York needed someone who wasn’t Eric Adams. Wilson and Mamdani were genuinely good at that. The conditions that made people desperate enough to vote for a vibe haven’t changed. If anything, they’re worse.
In a recent Seattle City Council meeting, two members proposed amendments to legislation Wilson introduced to fund her shelter plan. Meanwhile, in New York, Mamdani’s preliminary budget proposal did not include funding to expand Fair Fares — an existing program that could provide free or reduced bus and train fares to more than a million low-income residents.
While they figure out how to actually govern, real people are paying the price.
But here’s the thing about the people who created the conditions that made Katie Wilson and Zohran Mamdani necessary: they said the same things. Stood in the same rooms. Made the same promises. Couldn’t do it either.