NYC Mayor-elect Zohran Mamdani names de Blasio administration vet and top adviser to 2 key posts

Dean Fuleihan, an Albany and New York City Hall veteran, will join Mayor-elect Zohran Mamdani's administration as first deputy mayor and will run the city day to day, while Elle Bisgaard-Church, the top adviser who ran Mamdani's shockingly successful election campaign, will become his chief of staff.

As first deputy mayor — a job he also did for Bill de Blasio — Fuleihan, 74, will bring nearly five decades of government experience to the administration of Mamdani, 34, who will become the youngest mayor in over a century.

"My goal is that the triumph we won last Tuesday to quickly be subsumed under the drumbeat of achievements that we deliver from City Hall, achievements that make immediate, meaningful differences in the lives of New Yorkers too often forgotten and ignored," Mamdani said in an event Monday in Manhattan at the Roosevelt House Public Policy Institute, which is in the Upper East Side mansion where FDR in 1932 coordinated his presidential transition. 

For de Blasio, Fuleihan was budget czar before being elevated to the first deputy position. Fuleihan also had been a top negotiator in the State Legislature and a senior aide (and "right arm") to the then state Assembly speaker, Sheldon Silver, experience that will be key in trying to execute the mayor-elect's campaign pledges, particularly those requiring state authorization, such as free buses and raising taxes on the rich.

Bisgaard-Church, 34, oversaw the then-tiny campaign staffed mostly by young people to elect Mamdani, a state assemblyman for Astoria, Queens. That mayoral campaign went from polling around 1% less than a year ago to the shocking defeat of ex-Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo in June's primary and again in last week's general election.

Mamdani will take office on Jan. 1 as the city's 111th mayor. He has pledged to boost social services, including universal child care, fast and free buses, five government-run grocery stores and a rent freeze for the city's 2 million tenants in rent-regulated apartments.

Last week, Mamdani announced that his transition team would be headed by senior officials, all women, from the Adams, de Blasio, Bloomberg and Biden administrations. 

Mamdani has previously committed to retaining Mayor Eric Adams' police commissioner, Jessica Tisch. She hasn't said whether she will stay.

By Matthew Chayes

matthew.chayes@newsday.comchayesmatthew

Matthew Chayes, a Newsday reporter since 2007, covers New York City.