After Zohran Mamdani clinched the New York City mayoral race on Tuesday night, his campaign announced former FTC chair Lina Khan as one of the transition team’s four co-chairs.
Khan has been an ally of Mamdani’s, praising him in a New York Times op-ed about his outreach to small business owners. But her appointment to a formal role on his transition team sends a message to Wall Street and the tech industry, whose most powerful players have already been critical of Mamdani, a Democratic socialist who ruffled the feathers of the tech elite by criticizing billionaires and proposing a 2% tax of incomes over $1 million.
“What we saw last night was New Yorkers not just electing a new mayor, but clearly rejecting a politics where outsized corporate power and money too often end up dictating our politics,” Khan said in a speech on Wednesday.
Khan described Mamdani’s victory as “a clear mandate for change where New Yorkers can get ahead, and where all workers and small businesses can thrive — not just get by.”
Airbnb co-founder Joe Gebbia, as well as investors like Bill Ackman and Mike Bloomberg, each spent millions of dollars to oppose Mamdani and advocate for former New York governor Andrew Cuomo, who finished second in the polls. DoorDash also gave $1 million to a pro-Cuomo super PAC. Mamdani’s platform, however, advocated for increased regulation of delivery apps and protections for their subcontracted gig workers.
Like Mamdani, Khan has enemies in high places. As an outspoken critic of tech giants like Amazon, Microsoft, Meta, and Google, Khan moved to block various high-profile tech mergers during her tenure in the Biden administration. When those actions failed, many in Silicon Valley still held Khan responsible for slowing down the flow of acquisition deals.
Even those who supported the Biden-Harris presidential ticket, like LinkedIn co-founder Reid Hoffman and billionaire investor Vinod Khosla, were public about their criticisms of Khan; in an interview with TechCrunch editor-in-chief Connie Loizos last year, Khosla described Khan as “not a rational human being.”
Khan, a professor at Columbia Law School, is described as “the nation’s leading antimonopoly champion” on Mamdani’s transition website.
In addition to Khan, the other three co-chairs include Grace Bonilla, president and CEO of the non-profit United Way of New York City; Maria Torres-Springer, the former first deputy mayor of New York City; and Melanie Hartzog, president and CEO of the non-profit New York Foundling.
The four will be led by Elana Leopold, an advisor to Mamdani’s campaign who held various senior roles across the de Blasio mayoral administration.
