Zohran Mamdani was riding high as the mayor of New York City earlier this summer, after fulfilling a campaign pledge to put a new tax on the wealthy, flexing his political might with successful endorsements of three progressive congressional candidates and handing the victorious New York Knicks the keys to the city.
Now, after a streak of good fortune, Mamdani is facing growing discontent from New Yorkers upset with his anti-Israel rhetoric and slights against the business community. Efforts to fulfill some of his marquee campaign pledges have stumbled, including the messy launch of the pied-à-terre tax. His relationship with the City Council is fraying.
The latest setback for the mayor came this week when a judge swiftly paused a new tax on luxury second homes after a group of residents, including one of Mamdani’s own supporters, filed a lawsuit accusing the city of botching the rollout. The city quickly appealed the decision, automatically putting the lower-court order on hold, but not before the judge criticized the administration’s handling of the matter.
The city posted an online list of more than 900,000 properties, which included homes that might be subject to the tax but many more that likely won’t. It also sent out notices to 17,000 property owners saying they might be subject to the tax, including some who said they were longtime New Yorkers.
At a hearing Monday, Justice Wayne Ozzi questioned why the city needed to post such a broad list. “I’m sure it caused concern amongst people,” the judge said. “Some may be embarrassed, some may be quizzical.” He also said the city had made “missteps,” noting that it could have done more due diligence before sending out the mail notices.
President Trump—who earlier in the year had appeared to have struck up an avuncular political friendship with the new mayor—chimed in on Tuesday, saying his administration was looking into legal action the federal government could take to stop the tax. He called it a “dangerous political experiment.”
Mamdani, a Democratic socialist who has been mayor for nearly eight months, continues to score high approval ratings from his supporters. It is not uncommon for the early euphoria around new administrations to cool when confronted with the realities of governing.
Juan Carlos Polanco, a political strategist and professor at the University of Mount Saint Vincent, said that while every mayor has dealt with highs and lows in office, they are amplified for Mamdani. His meteoric rise from a relative political unknown to the winner of last year’s mayoral race turned him into an international sensation, Polanco said, but his résumé was thin before taking office.
“I think that he’s going to experience this roller coaster more intensely, because he had no track record and a lot of us are still uncomfortable with him being mayor because he had no experience to sit there,” he said. “Now he’s in charge, and we are walking on eggshells making sure that this doesn’t go too crazy.”
A mayoral spokeswoman highlighted the mayor’s efforts in recent weeks to promote the city’s economy, including reducing regulations on small businesses and creating a business advisory council. She also noted that the mayor has fixed more than 170,000 potholes, expanded universal child care, and balanced the budget amid a $12 billion deficit. The city has seen the lowest murder and violent-crime rate on record, she said.
“This is what it looks like when government works: balancing the books without balancing them on the backs of New Yorkers, making life more affordable, protecting workers and consumers and delivering the services people rely on every day,” she said.
In recent weeks, the mayor’s relations with fellow Democratic politicians have grown more tense. Bronx Councilman Oswald Feliz, who endorsed Mamdani in the general election, slammed the mayor last month for not providing funding needed for a bus lane project in a busy corridor in his district.
“It’s disappointing that, rather than making meaningful investments, the administration has chosen to offer crumbs,” said Feliz, noting that wealthier communities receive such funding without asking.
Some members of the City Council have been frustrated that Mamdani has announced nominees for positions in his administration that require the approval of the council before the body can vet the candidates themselves, people familiar with the matter said. Past administrations gave the council time to conduct its own due diligence on a candidate before going public with a pick, the people said.
The mayor came into office with an uneasy relationship with Wall Street, and his relations with the city’s wealthiest residents have only grown more strained in recent weeks. Some have been turned off by the mayor’s combativeness over the pied-à-terre tax, including in a recent social-media post in which he told wealthy second-home owners to “check your mailbox” as tax notices were going out.
Mamdani recently fired scores of corporate leaders from his advisory board to the Mayor’s Fund to Advance New York City, a multimillion-dollar philanthropic fund that in the past served as a point of access to City Hall for real-estate developers and business titans. The mayor said the dismissals reflected his “commitment to a new era.”
His continued anti-Israel rhetoric has also rattled the city’s Jewish leaders, who say it has left their community unsafe. Their concerns intensified last month when the mayor put out a video acknowledging he couldn’t make good on a campaign promise to order the arrest of Benjamin Netanyahu but in which he also called the Israeli prime minister a war criminal and urged federal officials to arrest him.
“My perspective is that the relationship has deteriorated in a substantial way,” said Rabbi Ammiel Hirsch, the president of the New York Board of Rabbis.
The mayor has said that antisemitism will never be tolerated in New York City and that he is mayor for all New Yorkers, including members of the Jewish communities. In recent weeks, he has met with rabbis to discuss their concerns.
One of the mayor’s pledges—free bus service—has ruffled feathers at the Metropolitan Transportation Authority, the agency that operates the city’s bus and subway service. Janno Lieber, chairman of the authority, complained to reporters late last month that all the talk about free bus service has contributed to passengers trying to evade paying their fare.
“With malice towards none, I say all the talk of free bus has an impact, it does have an impact,“ Lieber said.
The mayor later said that he and the MTA chairman have their differences of opinion but that they both agree on the need for faster bus trips.
Write to James Fanelli at james.fanelli@wsj.com