city hall

COLUMBUS, Ga. — It’s the longest walk in Georgia politics — the 600 steps from the mayor’s office in Atlanta’s towering City Hall to the governor’s office in the gold-domed state Capitol.

No Atlanta mayor has ever made the journey to the state’s top office, but Democrat Keisha Lance Bottoms is undeterred.

“I’m going to be the first because I am working to earn people’s votes across the state,” she said after a campaign appearance in Columbus last week. “So just because it hasn’t happened doesn’t mean that it can’t happen.”

The former mayor must initially overcome six others in a Democratic primary in May. If she pushes through that thicket, Republicans lie in wait to attack Bottoms on how she managed crime, disorder and the COVID pandemic as mayor before jolting Atlanta politicos by not seeking reelection.

“She is the easiest to run against,” said Republican strategist Brian Robinson, who calls Bottoms “unelectable.”

While Georgia Democrats are elated after two unknowns won landslide victories over Republican incumbents in statewide elections to the Public Service Commission on Nov. 4, they need a nominee who can reach independents and even some Republicans for the party to win its first Georgia governor’s race since 1998.

Democrats hoped Joe Biden winning the state’s electoral votes for president in 2020 marked a lasting breakthrough. But Republican Gov. Brian Kemp handily defeated Democrat Stacey Abrams in their 2022 rematch despite Abrams outspending Kemp. And 2024 saw Donald Trump substantially boost Republican turnout in his Georgia victory over Democrat Kamala Harris.

Early advantages

For some Bottoms supporters, the primary is a process of elimination in a field highlighting many of the fissures Democrats face nationally, including suburban-versus-urban, progressive-versus-centrist and fresh faces-versus-old warhorses.

Former state Sen. Jason Esteves is backed by some party insiders but is unknown statewide. Former state labor commissioner and DeKalb County CEO Michael Thurmond has vast experience but is 72 years old and has historically been a weak fundraiser. Former Republican lieutenant governor Geoff Duncan’s party switch has drawn curiosity, but apologies for past GOP positions may not be enough for lifelong Democrats. State Rep. Ruwa Romman promises Zohran Mamdani-style progressivism, but may face an uphill battle among moderate Democrats. And state Rep. Derrick Jackson boasts a military record but finished sixth in the 2022 Democratic primary for lieutenant governor.

Bottoms starts with advantages. She’s the best-known of the Democrats running. She’s got executive experience. Being considered by Biden as a possible vice presidential nominee and then joining his administration gave her national fundraising connections. Additionally, Bottoms is the only Black woman in the Democratic field in a state where Black women are the backbone of the party. In 2022, for 10 statewide offices, Georgia Democrats nominated five Black women.

Sheana Browning, who attended the Columbus event, said she liked Bottoms’ promise of pay raises for Browning and fellow state employees. Like 70% of the roughly 125 attendees, Browning is a Black woman. She cited Bottoms’ “previous mayoral status and the fact that she’s a Black woman” as key reasons to vote for her.

But other Democrats bet Bottoms’ early support is soft. A Biden connection could leave many voters cold. And no Black woman has ever been elected governor of any state.

Reminding voters who she is

For Bottoms’ part, she’s seeking to reintroduce herself. She’s reminding voters that her father, a ‘60s soul crooner, went to prison for dealing cocaine and that her mother enrolled in cosmetology school at night to support the family. She’s also burnishing her mayoral record. She rattled off a string of accomplishments in questions with reporters in Columbus — building city reserves to $180 million, avoiding property tax increases, giving raises to police and firefighters, creating or preserving 7,000 affordable housing units.

“That sounds pretty successful to me,” Bottoms said.

Bottoms also touts an affordability message, saying she will exempt teachers from state income taxes and do more to create reasonably priced housing, including “cracking down” on companies that rent tens of thousands of single family homes in Georgia.

“I think can really put a dent into this affordability issue that we’re having,” Bottoms said.

A long shadow from 2020

But her mayoral record also poses problems, centering on the challenging summer of 2020. The high point of Bottoms’ political career may have come on May 30, 2020, when she spoke emotionally against violence and disorder in Black Lives Matter protests, upbraiding people who vandalized buildings, looted stores and burned a police car.

“We are better than this! We are better than this as a city, we are better than this as a country!” Bottoms said in a speech that raised her profile as a possible vice presidential pick for Biden. “Go home! Go home!”

But the low point followed weeks later on July 4, when an 8-year-old girl riding in an SUV was shot and killed by armed men occupying makeshift barricades near a Wendy’s burned by demonstrators after police fatally shot a Black man in the parking lot. A “blue flu” of officers called in sick after prosecutors criminally charged two officers in that shooting of Rayshard Brooks. Bottoms said she gave a City Council member more time to negotiate with protesters to leave without police intervention.

“She took the side of the mob over the Atlanta police over and over again,” is how Robinson puts it.

The reelection that never happened

In May 2021, Bottoms became the first Atlanta mayor since World War II not to seek a second term. She later served for a year as Biden’s senior adviser for public engagement, then joined his reelection campaign.

Esteves has been sharpening attacks, telling WXIA-TV that Bottoms is “a former mayor who abandoned the city at a time of crisis, and decided not to run for reelection” and saying Bottoms is one of several candidates who have “baggage that Republicans will be able to focus on.”

Bottoms denies she’s a quitter, saying her political position remained strong and that she would have won reelection. “I ran through the tape,” Bottoms said in May. “We ended the term delivering.”

In May, Atlanta City Council President Doug Shipman and Atlanta City Council members Eshé Collins, Amir Farokhi and Jason Dozier endorsed Esteves. Shipman, elected citywide as City Council president in 2021, said voters told him that year that they were unhappy with crime, garbage collection, and efforts to split the city by letting its Buckhead neighborhood secede.

“I think that that frustration is something that people are going to have to revisit,” Shipman said of the 2026 governor’s primary, saying Democrats need “a fresh start” and “some new energy.”

But Bottoms says her experience and record should carry the day.

“Who I am is a battle-tested leader and what I’ve been saying to people across the state is, I know what it’s like to go into battle,” she said. “I know what it’s like to go up against Donald Trump. I know what it’s like not to back down against Donald Trump.”

Amy writes for the Associated Press.

NEW YORK — New York City Mayor-elect Zohran Mamdani announced Wednesday that the city’s current police commissioner, Jessica Tisch, has agreed to remain in the post, a major coup for the incoming mayor as he moves to assuage concerns over his past criticism of the police department.

For Mamdani, a democratic socialist who once called to defund the New York Police Department, the appointment seals one of the most consequential decisions of his nascent administration and provides further insight into the progressive’s looming stewardship of City Hall.

“I have admired her work cracking down on corruption in the upper echelons of the police department, driving down crime in New York City, and standing up for New Yorkers in the face of authoritarianism,” he said in a statement.

Tisch’s decision to remain commissioner could provide comfort to city business leaders and others who worried that Mamdani’s criticism of the department at the height of Black Lives Matter protests would translate into radical changes at the NYPD.

But the official announcement didn’t sit well with some progressives who helped elect the democratic socialist and wanted to see a bigger shake-up atop the nation’s largest police force.

Shared priorities, some disagreement

The appointment marked a budding political alliance between two leaders with starkly different backgrounds and some ideological differences.

Mamdani, a 34-year-old democratic socialist who once called for defunding the police, has vowed to remake the department as mayor by shifting some responsibilities from the police to new mental health care teams. Tisch is the heiress to a multibillion-dollar family fortune and is considered a steady, establishment moderate with nearly two decades in public service.

She has been a fierce critic of the state’s bail reform laws, which Mamdani supports, and has called on the city to hire more officers. Mamdani has walked back his previous comments about defunding the police, but said he will keep the department’s headcount even.

In an email to officers Wednesday, Tisch acknowledged the different views she has with Mamdani but said a series of conversations with him had made her “confident” that she can lead the department under his mayoralty.

“In speaking with him, it’s clear that we share broad and crucial priorities: the importance of public safety, the need to continue driving down crime, and the need to maintain stability and order across the department,” Tisch wrote in the email, which was shared with The Associated Press.

Hours after the announcement, Mamdani and Tisch appeared together at a Manhattan memorial for officers who died in the line of duty. Both declined to answer questions about their past differences, with Tisch saying she wanted to “leave politics out of it today.”

Tisch’s tenure

Tisch was appointed to lead the department last November as current Mayor Eric Adams and the city’s police force were reeling from overlapping scandals.

In September, federal authorities seized phones from Adams and several high-level appointees, including the police commissioner, Edward Caban, who soon resigned. Agents then searched the home of his interim replacement, Thomas Donlon, just a week after he took over.

During her first weeks as commissioner, Tisch reassigned several top officials, including some seen as allies to the mayor. The department’s top uniformed official, a longtime friend of Adams, resigned in December amid harassment allegations.

Her tenure has coincided with a drop in shootings and several categories of major crime, earning praise from the business community and some police reform groups.

A mixed reception

The announcement of Tisch’s appointment drew split reactions among Mamdani’s left-leaning supporters. The Justice Committee, a police reform group, called the move “a rebuff of his promises to New Yorkers and a disturbing endorsement of NYPD’s ongoing violence and corruption.”

The New York Civil Liberties Union, meanwhile, offered tepid praise for Tisch, while urging her to “join the Mayor-Elect in seeking to reduce the City’s misplaced demands on police to solve entrenched problems.”

New York Gov. Kathy Hochul, a moderate Democrat who endorsed Mamdani, called the appointment “a very good outcome” and said Tisch remaining in the job could help stave off a federal intervention in the city, as Republican President Trump has suggested could occur if Mamdani were elected.

“This is an important step to send a message to the Trump administration that, if you’re coming here on the pretext that we need the National Guard because crime is going up in the city, that is not the story being told here in New York. Not at all,” Hochul said at an unrelated news conference.

Since winning the election, Mamdani has moved to surround himself with a cast of seasoned officials as he prepares to enter City Hall while facing some concern that his limited public experience could create headaches once he assumes control of America’s biggest city.

He tapped a veteran budget official with deep experience in state and city government to be his first deputy mayor, and named a team that includes two former deputy mayors to help guide his transition into City Hall.

Tisch, a Harvard-educated scion of a wealthy New York family, previously led the city’s sanitation department, becoming TikTok famous for declaring “The rats don’t run the city, we do” in 2022.

Her first job in city government was in the NYPD’s counterterrorism bureau. She has helped shape post-9/11 security infrastructure in the city and, as deputy commissioner for information technology, spearheaded the use of body cameras and smartphones.

Izaguirre and Offenhartz write for the Associated Press.

The revelers who packed Tuesday’s election night party in L.A.’s Highland Park neighborhood were roughly 2,500 miles from the concert hall where New York City Mayor-elect Zohran Mamdani celebrated his historic win.

Yet despite that sprawling distance, the crowd, heavily populated with members of the L.A. chapter of Democratic Socialists of America, had no trouble finishing the applause lines delivered by Mamdani, himself a DSA member, during his victory speech.

“New York!” Mamdani bellowed on the oversized television screens hung throughout the Greyhound Bar & Grill. “We’re going to make buses fast and — “

“Free!” the crowd inside the bar yelled back in response.

In Los Angeles, activists with the Democratic Socialists of America have already fired up their campaigns for the June election, sending out canvassing teams and scheduling postcard-writing events for their chosen candidates. But they’re also taking fresh inspiration from Mamdani’s win, pointing to his inclusive, unapologetic campaign and his relentless focus on pocketbook issues, particularly among working-class voters.

The message that propelled Mamdani to victory resonates just as much in L.A., said City Councilmember Eunisses Hernandez, who won her seat in 2022 with logistical support from the DSA.

“What New York City is saying is that the rent is too damn high, that affordability is a huge issue not just on housing, but when it comes to grocery shopping, when it comes to daycare,” she said. “These are the things that we’re also experiencing here in Los Angeles.”

City Councilmember Eunisses Hernandez, appearing at a rally in Lincoln Heights last year, said New York City Mayor-elect Zohran Mamdani’s message will resonate in L.A.

(Jason Armond / Los Angeles Times)

DSA-LA, which is a membership organization and not a political party, has elected four of its endorsed candidates to the council since 2020, ousting incumbents in each of the last three election cycles. They’ve done so in large part by knocking on doors and working to increase turnout among renters and lower-income households.

The chapter hopes to win two additional seats in June. Organizers have begun contemplating a full-on socialist City Council — possibly by the end of 2028 — with DSA members holding eight of the council’s 15 seats.

“We would like a socialist City Council majority,” said Benina Stern, co-chair of DSA’s Los Angeles chapter. “Because clearly that is the logical progression, to keep growing the bloc.”

Despite those lofty ambitions, it could take at least five years before the L.A. chapter matches this week’s breakthrough in New York City.

Mayor Karen Bass, a high-profile leader within the Democratic Party with few ties to the DSA, is now running for a second term. Her only major opponent is former schools superintendent Austin Beutner, who occupies the center of the political spectrum in L.A. Real estate developer Rick Caruso, a longtime Republican who is now a Democrat, has not disclosed his intentions but has long been at odds with DSA‘s progressive policies.

In L.A., DSA organizers have put their emphasis on identifying and campaigning for candidates in down-ballot races, not citywide contests. Part of that is due to the fact that L.A. has a weak-mayor system, particularly when compared with New York City, where the mayor has responsibility not just for city services but also public schools and even judicial appointments.

L.A. council members propose and approve legislation, rework the budgets submitted by the mayor and represent districts with more than a quarter of a million people. As a result, DSA organizers have chosen the council as their path to power at City Hall, Stern said.

“The conditions in Los Angeles and New York I think are very different,” she said.

Since 2020, DSA-LA has been highly selective about its endorsement choices. The all-volunteer organization sends applicants a lengthy questionnaire with dozens of litmus test questions: Do they support diverting funds away from law enforcement? Do they oppose L.A.’s decision to host the Olympics? Do they support a repeal of L.A.’s ban on homeless encampments near schools?

Once a candidate secures an endorsement, DSA-LA turns to its formidable pool of volunteers, sending them out to help candidates knock on doors, staff phone banks and stage fundraising events.

During Tuesday’s party, DSA-LA organizers recruited new members to assist with the reelection campaigns of Hernandez and Councilmember Hugo Soto-Martínez, a former labor organizer. They distributed postcard-sized fliers with the message, “Hate Capitalism? So do we.”

Standing nearby was Estuardo Mazariegos, a tenant rights advocate now running to replace Councilmember Curren Price in a South L.A. district. Mazariegos, 40, said he first became interested in the DSA in the seventh grade, when his middle school civics teacher displayed a DSA flag in her classroom.

The crowd at the Greyhound in Highland Park reacts to results on Tuesday.

(Eric Thayer / Los Angeles Times)

Mazariegos hailed the results from New York and California, saying voters are “taking back America for the working people of America.” He sounded somewhat less excited about Bass, a former community organizer who has pursued some middle-of-the-road positions, such as hiring more police officers.

Asked if he supports Bass’ bid for a second term, Mazariegos responded: “If she’s up against a billionaire, yes.”

“If she’s up against another comrade, maybe not,” he added, laughing.

When Bass ran in November 2022, DSA-LA grudgingly recommended a vote for her in its popular voter guide, describing her as a “status quo politician.”

Councilmember Nithya Raman, who represents a Hollywood Hills district, is far more enthusiastic. Raman has worked closely with Bass on efforts to move homeless Angelenos indoors, while also seeking fixes to the larger systems that serve L.A.’s unhoused population.

“Karen Bass is the most progressive mayor we’ve ever had in L.A,” said Raman, who co-hosted the election night party with the other three DSA-aligned council members, DSA-LA and others.

Raman was the first of the DSA-backed candidates to win a council seat in L.A., running in 2020 as a reformer who would bring stronger renter protections and a network of community access centers to assist homeless residents.

Two years later, voters elected labor organizer Soto-Martínez and Hernandez. Tenant rights attorney Ysabel Jurado became the fourth last year, ousting Councilmember Kevin de León.

Stern, the DSA-LA co-chair, said she believes the four council members have brought a “sea change” to City Hall, working with their progressive colleagues to expand the city’s teams of unarmed responders, who are viewed as an alternative to gun-carrying police officers.

The DSA voting bloc also shaped this year’s city budget, voting to reduce the number of new recruits at the Los Angeles Police Department and preserve other city jobs, Stern said.

To be clear, the four-member bloc has pursued those efforts by working with other progressives on the council who are not affiliated with the DSA but more moderate on other issues. Beyond that, the group has plenty of detractors.

Stuart Waldman, president of the Valley Industry and Commerce Assn., said DSA-backed council members are making the city worse, by pushing for a $30 per hour hotel minimum wage and a $32.35 minimum wage for construction workers.

“No one is ever going to build a hotel in this city again, and DSA were a part of that,” he said. “Pretty soon no one will build housing, and the DSA is a part of that too.”

The union that represents LAPD officers vowed to fight the DSA’s effort to expand its reach, saying it would work to ensure that “Angelenos are not bamboozled by the socialist bait and switch.”

“Socialists want to bait Angelenos into talking about affordability, oppression and fairness, get their candidates elected, and then switch to enact their platform that states ‘Defund the police by rejecting any expansion to police budgets … while cutting [police] budgets annually towards zero,’” the union’s board of directors said in a statement.

In New York City, Mamdani has proposed a series of measures to make the city more affordable, including free bus fares, city-run grocery stores and a four-year freeze on rent increases inside rent stabilized apartment units.

Some of those ideas have already been tried in L.A.

In 2020, weeks into the COVID-19 shutdown, Mayor Eric Garcetti placed a moratorium on rent hikes for more than 600,000 rent-stabilized apartments. The council kept that measure in place for four years.

Around the same time, L.A. County’s transit agency suspended mandatory collection of bus fares. The agency started charging bus passengers again in 2022.

City Councilmembers Nithya Raman and Eunisses Hernandez celebrate at the election night party they co-hosted with Democratic Socialists of America’s L.A. chapter and two other council members.

(Eric Thayer / Los Angeles Times)

In recent months, the DSA-LA has pushed for new limits on rent increases inside L.A.’s rent-stabilized apartments. Raman, who chairs the council’s housing committee, is backing a yearly cap of 3% in those buildings, most of which were built before October 1978.

Hernandez, whose district stretches from working-class Westlake to rapidly gentrifying Highland Park, is a believer in shifting the Overton Window at City Hall — moving the political debate left and “putting people over profits.”

Like others at the election party, Hernandez is hoping the council will eventually have eight DSA-aligned members in the coming years, saying such a shift would be a “game changer.” With a clear majority, she said, the council would not face a huge battle to approve new tenant protections, expand the network of unarmed response teams and place “accountability measures” on corporations that are “making money off our city.”

“There’s so many things … that we could do easier for the people of the city of Los Angeles if we had a majority,” she said.

NEW YORK — Fresh off winning New York City’s mayoral election, Zohran Mamdani announced Wednesday that a team including former city and federal officials — all women — would steer his transition to City Hall, and that he would “work every day to honor the trust that I now hold.”

“I and my team will build a City Hall capable of delivering on the promises of this campaign,” the mayor-elect said at a news conference, vowing that his administration would be both compassionate and capable.

He named political strategist Elana Leopold as executive director of the transition team. She will work with United Way of New York City President Grace Bonilla; former Deputy Mayor Melanie Hartzog, who was also a city budget official; former Federal Trade Commission chair Lina Khan; and former First Deputy Mayor Maria Torres-Springer.

With his win over former Gov. Andrew Cuomo and Republican Curtis Sliwa, the 34-year-old democratic socialist will soon become the city’s first Muslim mayor, the first of South Asian heritage, the first born in Africa and the youngest mayor in more than a century.

He now faces the task of following through on his ambitious affordability agenda while navigating the bureaucratic challenges of City Hall and a hostile Trump administration.

“I’m confident in delivering these same policies that we ran on for the last year,” he said in an interview earlier Wednesday on cable news channel NY1.

More than 2 million New Yorkers cast ballots in the contest, the largest turnout in a mayoral race in more than 50 years, according to the city’s Board of Elections. With roughly 90% of the votes counted, Mamdani held an approximately 9 percentage point lead over Cuomo.

Mamdani, who was criticized throughout the campaign for his thin resume, will now have to begin staffing his incoming administration and planning how to accomplish the ambitious but polarizing agenda that drove him to victory.

Among the campaign’s promises are free child care, free city bus service, city-run grocery stores and a new Department of Community Safety that would expand on an existing city initiative that sends mental health care workers, rather than police, to handle certain emergency calls. It is unclear how Mamdani will pay for such initiatives, given Democratic Gov. Kathy Hochul’s steadfast opposition to his calls to raise taxes on wealthy people.

On Wednesday, he touted his support from Hochul and other state leaders as “endorsements of an agenda of affordability.”

His decisions around the leadership of the New York Police Department will also be closely watched. Mamdani was a fierce critic of the department in 2020, calling for “this rogue agency” to be defunded and slamming it as “racist, anti-queer & a major threat to public safety.” He has since apologized for those comments and has said he will ask the current NYPD commissioner to stay on the job.

Mamdani has already faced scrutiny from national Republicans, including President Trump, who have eagerly cast him as a threat and the face of a more radical Democratic Party that is out of step with mainstream America. Trump has repeatedly threatened to cut federal funding to the city — and even take it over — if Mamdani won.

”…AND SO IT BEGINS!” the president posted late Tuesday to his Truth Social site.

Mamdani, for his part, said at his news conference that “New Yorkers are facing twin crises in this moment: an authoritarian administration and an affordability crisis,” and that he would tackle both.

While saying he was committed to “Trump-proofing” the city — to protect poor residents against “the man who has the most power in this country,” as he explained — the mayor-elect also reiterated that he was interested in talking to the president about ”ways that we can work together to serve New Yorkers.” That could mean discussing the cost of living or the effect of cuts to the SNAP food aid program amid the federal government shutdown, Mamdani suggested.

“I will not mince my words when it comes to President Trump … and I will also always do so while leaving a door open to have that conversation,” Mamdani added.

Mamdani also said during his news conference and interviews that he had not heard from Cuomo or the city’s outgoing mayor, Eric Adams. He did speak with Republican candidate Curtis Sliwa.

A spokesperson for Cuomo, Rich Azzopardi, said he would “let their respective speeches be the measuring stick for grace and leave it at that.”

In his victory speech to supporters, Mamdani wished Cuomo the best in private life, before adding: “Let tonight be the final time I utter his name, as we turn the page on a politics that abandons the many and answers only to the few.”

Asked about the comments Wednesday on NY1, Mamdani said he was “quite disappointed in the nature of the bigotry and the racism we saw in the final weeks.” He noted the millions of dollars in attack ads that were spent against him, some of which played into Islamophobic tropes.

Izaguirre and Colvin write for the Associated Press. AP writers Jake Offenhartz and Jennifer Peltz contributed to this report.