Mamdani's First Loss

Mayor-elect of New York bows to "national security." Will it last?

Zohran Mamdani and Jessica Tisch

Zohran Mamdani says he’s keeping New York Police Commissioner Jessica Tisch. It is his first major concession not just to the political establishment but more significantly to the national security system.

This week, I credited Mamdani with having run a campaign that literally met voters where they were at — in bodegas, subway stations and busy sidewalks, where he asked ordinary people to share their concerns. It was a rare moment where people rather than the politician were the main character. His decision to keep Tisch, however, is a whiplash-inducing swing back to the usual protagonists of American life.

The Harvard-educated Tisch, 44, is daughter of billionaire James Tisch, the Chairman of the Board of Loews Corporation. (Members of the Tisch family contributed over $1.2 million to the Cuomo-aligned Super PAC Fix the City.) Though she’s only been Police Commissioner for a year, Tisch has taken national security doctrine to heart.

At a press briefing last month, Tisch called a proposed $80 million federal cut to the NYPD’s counterterrorism budget a “betrayal” and demanded that the matter be placed above politics.

“Counterterrorism funding cannot be a political issue,” Tisch said. “If these cuts go through as planned, it will represent a devastating blow to our counter-terrorism and intelligence programs in New York City.”

Tisch went on to describe the tools that would be effected, including:

• “intelligence analysts who uncover plots before they become attacks”

• “camera systems that enable us to monitor conditions in real time”

• “heavy weapons who guard our subways in major events”

• “counter-terrorism patrols”

When asked if the loss of these tools would affect actual crimefighting (as opposed to the pre-crime focus of counterterrorism), Tisch conceded that they wouldn’t.

“No, just to be clear, these cuts are devastating or would be devastating if they go through to our counter-terrorism programs, as opposed to our crime-fighting abilities,” Tisch said.

As a candidate, Mamdani repeatedly emphasized how seriously he takes “public safety” — perhaps in order to distance himself from defund-the-police rhetoric. Mamdani may think that keeping Tisch on is merely a concession to public safety, but it’s really a concession to the system of National Security, as Tisch’s counter-terrorism rhetoric illustrates.

No, not national security like the big, bad CIA, FBI or ICE, but national security in a more subtle, corrosive sense: the belief that some decisions are just too important to be left to elected officials, to voters, to democracy. Some things, as Tisch put it, “cannot be a political issue.”

Mamdani might believe that national security can be left to the national security experts, while he focuses on his affordability agenda. This ignores the budgetary tribute exacted by the national security apparatus. Most importantly, it ignores the suffocating effect it has on democracy: namely, its bone-deep conviction that national security is too important be left to civilians.

It is, instead, the only sanctioned way of thinking in America: There’s no alternative in American society other than to comply with its unwritten rules, even for a popular mayor of the largest American city. Everything is subordinate to it.

“I’ve made my decision to retain Commissioner Tisch,” Mamdani told Good Morning America on Wednesday, the day after the election.

When asked by Will Menaker of the popular leftist podcast Chapo Trap House to explain his support for Tisch, Mamdani’s reply was uncharacteristically vague, saying that she was focused on public safety.

“I’ve seen in the work that she has done and also in the, in the commentary that she has shared in public as to her focus being on public safety,” Mamdani said. “I’m looking to build on that under my administration, and deliver the public safety agenda I’ve been running on.”

The purported focus on public safety is certainly the impression left by the innumerable major media profiles of her. When I asked an NYPD counterterrorism officer about all the positive press about her, he joked: “Daddy’s dollars have reach.”

Tisch’s name does command outsized influence in New York. In the weeks leading up to the election, the Mayor-elect had teased the decision — to the praise of party bigwigs like House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries and New York Governor Kathy Hochul. Jeffries has repeatedly cited Mamdani’s decision to retain Tisch among his reasons for endorsing him, despite their disagreements on Israel.

“ I did think it was interesting yesterday and a strong step that was taken by Zohran, the Democratic nominee, when he indicated his intention to retain our current police commissioner, Jessica Tisch,” Jeffries told Bloomberg shortly before the election. “I think that probably will provide a lot of comfort to people, uh, throughout the city of New York. She’s done a great job. She’s well respected.”

The national security consensus is at times surreal. During one of their election debates, all three candidates — Mamdani, Cuomo, and the beret-donning Curtis Sliwa — agreed to keep Tisch. Mamdani’s joining in was a total inversion of the image that first catapulted him into the public consciousness, when he was the lone candidate who would not pledge to visit Israel.

And Tisch seems to know how strong a hand she’s holding. As Bloomberg reported shorty before the polls closed: “Tisch is willing to remain in her post under Zohran Mamdani as long as the progressive mayor-elect allows her to keep pursuing her agenda.”

Mamdani might think he’s choosing the path of least resistance, but what he’s really chosen is a straitjacket. As he moves forward as mayor, he has suggested in his decision that the NYPD will operate autonomously, or at least in accordance with the rules of national security. As a result, the mayor may have trouble questioning the premise, the priorities, the means of policing, or the accepted assumptions behind fighting whatever national security labels terrorism — a term that is becoming increasingly political.

Asked to comment on the growing politicization of counterterrorism (see: NSPM-7) and how she plans to skirt that trend, Tisch’s office did not respond to a request for comment. Mamdani’s campaign also did not respond to a request for comment.

So will Mamdani ask Tisch to do anything differently regarding police intervention at colleges and universities, its obsession with Muslims, or assisting the feds and Trump administration? Will he attack NYPD practices and biases with regard to profiling or discrimination, or sexual harassment, or corruption, or cronyism?

Mamdani has been willing to break a number of the supposedly ironclad rules of politics. Let’s see if he’s willing to do the same with the cult of national security.

— Edited by William M. Arkin