After Zohran Mamdani clinched the New York Metropolis mayoral race on Tuesday evening, his marketing campaign introduced former FTC chair Lina Khan as one of many transition group’s 4 co-chairs.
Khan has been an ally of Mamdani’s, praising him in a New York Instances op-ed about his outreach to small enterprise homeowners. However her appointment to a proper position on his transition group sends a message to Wall Avenue and the tech business, whose strongest gamers have already been vital 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 noticed final evening was New Yorkers not simply electing a brand new mayor, however clearly rejecting a politics the place outsized company energy and cash too usually find yourself dictating our politics,” Khan stated in a speech on Wednesday.
Khan described Mamdani’s victory as “a transparent mandate for change the place New Yorkers can get forward, and the place all employees and small companies can thrive — not simply get by.”
Airbnb co-founder Joe Gebbia, in addition to traders like Invoice Ackman and Mike Bloomberg, every spent thousands and thousands of {dollars} to oppose Mamdani and advocate for former New York governor Andrew Cuomo, who completed second within the polls. DoorDash additionally gave $1 million to a pro-Cuomo tremendous PAC. Mamdani’s platform, nevertheless, advocated for elevated regulation of supply apps and protections for his or her subcontracted gig employees.
Like Mamdani, Khan has enemies in excessive locations. As an outspoken critic of tech giants like Amazon, Microsoft, Meta, and Google, Khan moved to dam numerous high-profile tech mergers throughout her tenure within the Biden administration. When these actions failed, many in Silicon Valley nonetheless held Khan accountable for slowing down the movement of acquisition offers.
Even those that supported the Biden-Harris presidential ticket, like LinkedIn co-founder Reid Hoffman and billionaire investor Vinod Khosla, had been public about their criticisms of Khan; in an interview with TechCrunch editor-in-chief Connie Loizos final 12 months, Khosla described Khan as “not a rational human being.”
Khan, a professor at Columbia Regulation College, is described as “the nation’s main antimonopoly champion” on Mamdani’s transition website.
Along with Khan, the opposite three co-chairs embrace Grace Bonilla, president and CEO of the non-profit United Method of New York Metropolis; Maria Torres-Springer, the previous first deputy mayor of New York Metropolis; and Melanie Hartzog, president and CEO of the non-profit New York Foundling.
The 4 can be led by Elana Leopold, an advisor to Mamdani’s marketing campaign who held numerous senior roles throughout the de Blasio mayoral administration.
