By Gloria Pazmino, CNN
(CNN) — New York City Mayor-elect Zohran Mamdani has spent the last several weeks sprinting towards a deadline.
After publicly committing to filling many of the top posts in his new administration before taking office, Mamdani, 34, is closing 2025 with a still-evolving image of the team that is going to help steer his government and enact an ambitious agenda to tackle the affordability crisis in the nation’s largest city.
During the campaign, Mamdani – a former state assemblyman who will make history as New York’s youngest mayor in a century when he takes the oath of office at midnight on New Year’s Day – battled criticism that he lacked the experience needed to lead the city’s massive bureaucracy.
Since his election, Mamdani’s transition has continued to try to swat away that criticism even as it has slow-rolled some of its appointments, leading critics and political insiders watching from the sidelines to wonder if the pace of the transition is an indication of what the Mamdani era of government will bring.
The appointments of newly elected mayors are closely watched affairs, as they provide an early test for a new administration. Mamdani has continued to name new appointees, including as recently as Tuesday afternoon.
Still, several members of the transition granted anonymity to speak freely about confidential proceedings acknowledged the transition has indeed moved slower than previous administrations, in part due to Mamdani’s limited network of seasoned government hands and a struggle to appease competing constituencies inside the transition.
“He wants to broaden his coalition,” said one Mamdani transition member granted anonymity to discuss confidential proceedings. “But he also has a lot of very hard left people internally who are less interested in compromising, and that push and pull is really delaying things.”
Another member described the effort as a “careful managing of everyone’s political feelings.” And while some have been quick to focus on the delays, members of the transition have also praised some of Mamdani’s picks so far, describing them as “sane, sober choices” that should put at ease anyone worried Mamdani would place a “bunch of radical kids” in charge.
“I feel confident about the team we’re putting together,” Mamdani said earlier this month when asked about the pace of his appointments. “We are going to be building out a team that New Yorkers will see being the ones who will help to make the decisions that will shape their lives and their ability to afford living in this city.”
A massive bureaucracy
Since winning the general election in November, Mamdani hasn’t quite stopped running.
He has held a series of quasi-campaign events in the past two months: Rallying alongside independent Sen. Bernie Sanders and Starbucks workers on strike, distributing hot chocolate to tenants in the freezing December temperatures to highlight his proposal to freeze stabilized rents, meeting with daycare workers to talk about his universal childcare pitch and traveling to Washington, DC, for an Oval Office meeting with President Donald Trump.
All the while, his team has been working to fill out key roles in the administration.
New York City’s municipal gears turn with the help of more than 300,000 public workers and dozens of agencies, mayoral offices and boards. They’re tasked with everything from picking up the more than 10,000 tons of garbage the city produces daily, to leading the city’s public hospital system, helping small businesses, and awarding city contracts, to name a few of their collective responsibilities.
So far, Mamdani has named leaders to the