Making of the Mayor 2025

This blog has existed for two decades under three different NYC mayors. Unsurprisingly I have a blogged from time to time about the mayors and the elections that make them.

You can read that archive here. 

Currently there is a very crowded Democratic primary for mayor that includes a Muslim Socialist, a disgraced ex-Governor (and they're the frontrunners), yet another doomed Comptroller, and a bunch of Others. In some ways this primary resembles the 1977 mayoral election -- an unpopular, failed mayor who has become so irrelevant that the question isn't should he be replaced but by who, and lots of people are running to be that replacement.

And one of them might be a guy named Cuomo. 

Recently there was a contentious debate amongst the candidates, and it's clear how high the stakes are for each of them -- and the city.

But the bigger, more unanswerable question is "what makes a good mayor?" 

Elections and campaigns are all about who is the best, most appealing candidate but, sadly, that doesn't always translate into doing the best job. And as this article states, most of all, New Yorkers think being a good mayor means being a good manager. They think the mayor should essentially be a great COO, making sure that city services are delivered consistently and well, keeping the metaphorical trains running, supervising the machinery of government and ensuring its smooth operation.

Here's the dirty secret: managing the city isn't really the job of the mayor.

Part of the job of the mayor is appointing the people who manage the city, and then appointing the people who manage the managers. The real job of the mayor is to make policy, to sign or veto laws passed by the City Council, to work with the state and federal goverment to get the city money and laws favorable to it, to be the city's main cheerleader and public spokesperson -- and to handle all of the politics that flow from all that.

In short, the job of the mayor is not to manage the city on a daily basis -- it's to determine the course of its history for years and decades to come. Mayors need to be big picture thinkers, visionaries, conducting the great orchestra of city government, policy, politics, and media -- not just be its manager. 

Sadly whoever becomes the next mayor will be not have the same kind of robust local reporters covering them. For example, the great NYC muckraker Tom Robbins has died. He wrote, on and off, for the Village Voice for decades, and who lifted the stones and looked underneath what was going on in this city for decades. His kind are becoming obsolete and this city, no matter who runs it, will be all the poorer for it.