How does a socialist mayor, elected as a consummate outsider, actually govern once elected in the face of pressures from all sides? It’s a question many heads of US cities, from Schenectady mayor George Lunn to the Milwaukee “sewer socialists” to a young Bernie Sanders in Burlington, have had to answer. One hundred days into his term, we are seeing how New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani is answering it.

We can see three distinct strategic tendencies at work in the Mamdani administration. First, the administration is seeking to revive and update the left-wing good governance tradition associated with the Milwaukee “sewer socialists” and Fiorello La Guardia’s New Deal–era tenure as New York City mayor. Second, it is working to pass the suite of ambitious redistributive reforms that Zohran campaigned on, like universal childcare and free buses. Third, the mayor is using his office to publicly call out the abuse and exploitation of workers and tenants and build their collective capacity to fight back against bosses and landlords, seen in initiatives like the “Rental Ripoff” hearings to solicit testimony from tenants about bad landlords and the mayor’s publicly touted prosecution of labor law violations.

On each of these fronts, Mamdani has scored major victories in his first one hundred days in office, on top of facing challenges. The wins are a testament to what a talented left-wing municipal executive can accomplish, even in the face of major political obstacles and structural constraints. The difficulties illuminate the seriousness of those constraints and the potential tensions between his strategic approaches.