Mayor-elect Zohran Mamdani is selecting a city and government veteran of Bill de Blasio’s administration and his closest campaign adviser to fill out two of the most important roles on his executive team as he prepares to take over City Hall on Jan. 1.
Mamdani announced Monday he is tapping Dean Fuleihan as first deputy mayor and Elle Bisgaard-Church as chief of staff.
Fuleihan is highly respected in government circles for his experience, management skills and knowledge of city and state budgets. He previously served as first deputy mayor for de Blasio. The first deputy mayor is considered the second-in-command at City Hall.
Bisgaard-Church managed Mamdani’s primary campaign and is considered one of the mayor-elect’s closest confidants. At his press conference announcing her and Fuleihan’s appointments Monday, she pledged City Hall under Mamdani would be “open-minded, strategically oriented and pragmatically focused.”
The news comes less than a week after Mamdani won the election and appointed his transition team, including four co-chairs with various government experience. At 34, the democratic socialist state assemblymember from Queens will be the city’s youngest mayor in more than a century and its first Asian and Muslim mayor.
“That is the kind of team that will help us shape and fill out our City Hall such that those first 100 days are ones where we are taking concrete and substantive actions to deliver on the cost of living crisis that is pushing so many New Yorkers out of the city,” he told Gothamist on Wednesday.
City Comptroller Brad Lander, who ran in the Democratic primary and cross-endorsed Mamdani, had been jockeying for the first deputy role in a Mamdani administration, Gothamist previously reported. But Lander is now weighing a congressional run against Rep. Dan Goldman, who represents parts of Lower Manhattan and Brooklyn.
Other Mamdani appointments remain to be seen. He has said he would like to keep NYPD Commissioner Jessica Tisch in her role, but she has not publicly said whether she will stay on.
The mayor-elect said Monday he would consider keeping other appointees of Mayor Eric Adams if they’ve performed well in their jobs.
This is a developing story and has been updated.
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