The Mamdani-Tisch Odd Couple

The joint press conference today featuring Mayor Zohran Mamdani and Police Commissioner Jessica Tisch underscores the implausibility of this oddest of political couples. The appearance came one day after Hizzoner clarified that Ms. Tisch reports directly to him, a bit of bureaucratic business that Ms. Tisch reiterated on Tuesday. As Shakespeare once quipped, “doth the lady protest too much?”The confusion over the City Hall chain of command was precipitated by an executive order signed by Mr. Mamdani that appeared to mandate that Ms. Tisch report not to the boss but to a deputy mayor, same as the commissioner of, say, sanitation. Ms. Tisch made the case for declining crime and “I’d also like to thank Mayor Mamdani, to whom I report directly and with whom I am developing a close and productive working relationship.”Ms. Tisch announced that “there is no change planned to the crime-fighting strategy that has delivered historic results,” despite Mr. Mamdani’s hostility to New York’s Finest. In 2020 he called the NYPD “racist, anti-queer & a major threat to public safety” and advocated for defunding. In 2023 he declared that “when the boot of the NYPD is on your neck, it’s been laced by the IDF.” He has apologized for some, not all, of those comments.Now, though, Mr. Mamdani appears eager to take credit for Ms. Tisch’s work. The commissioner declared that 2025 was Gotham’s safest ever year for gun violence. Major crime on the subway also fell four percent and homicides dropped 20 percent between 2024 and 2025. There were 1,600 fewer robberies in 2025 than in 2024. In other words Mr. Mamdani is inheriting an improving safety situation for which credit is owed Ms. Tisch and Mayor Adams.Ms. Tisch, whom the Times calls a “data-centric billionaire heiress,” wrote to the force after Mr. Mamdani’s victory in November that “Do the mayor-elect and I agree on everything? No, we don’t.” One possible zone of discord could be Mr. Mamdani’s vision of a civilian-led Department of Community Safety, which he wants funded with a billion dollars. It’s hard to see how that jibes with what Ms. Tisch calls an NYPD “that’s firing on all cylinders.”Yet Mr. Mamdani appears to grasp — for now — the importance of keeping Ms. Tisch. After the election the director of the National Economic Council, Kevin Hassett, painted the White House as “reassured” that Mr. Mamdani “kept the police commissioner. In previous administrations in New York, we have seen law and order really go south.” Especially since District Attorney Alvin Bragg, notoriously soft on crime, won his reelection campaign going away.Still, there have been signs that this shotgun marriage could go south. Ms. Tisch’s brother Benjamin called Mr. Mamdani an “enemy of the Jewish people.” The commish had to apologize for that. Ms. Tisch on Tuesday called antisemitism “the most persistent hate threat that we face” and related that Jews are targeted more than all other groups combined. Meanwhile Mr. Mamdani is unwinding protections against the oldest prejudice.We’d like to see Ms. Tisch stay on and build on the gains she has made in respect of public safety. All the more so because Messrs. Mamdani and Bragg appear ideologically committed in the opposite direction. It could be, though, that Ms. Tisch comes to realize that she cannot in good conscience serve a mayor of such hard left commitments. It could also be that she succeeds to a degree that prods the new administration in the right direction.

The Mamdani-Tisch Odd Couple

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