Photo copyright © 2026 by Gerry O’Brien

Much has been said about New York City’s new mayor, Zohran Mamdani, being a socialist. And so he is. What we should be asking is whether Zohran’s political ideology is a foundation or a ceiling.

Previous Mayors like Fiorello LaGuardia (a pro-FDR Republican endorsed by the Socialist and American Labor Parties) and Ed Koch (a Greenwich Village Reformer who marched against the Vietnam War), had solidly left-of-center views, but their ideology was a foundation: it gave them a philosophical grounding and a basic set of ideals in life and in politics. But they never let it constrain them, and New York was a better place for it.

To other Mayors, like Bill de Blasio, ideology was a ceiling: it boxed them in, limited their view of the city and the world around them, constrained their actions, and diminished their mayoral achievements. New York City suffered because of it.

Here’s hoping the new Mayor follows in the footsteps of Ed Koch (seen above in his City Hall Office in 1983), and Fiorello LaGuardia. Because in New York City, the sky’s the limit.