Lina Khan Joins Zohran Mamdani's Mayoral Transition Team

4 hours ago7 min read5 comments

In a move that signals a profound shift in the political landscape, Mayor-elect Zohran Mamdani is assembling an administration that reads like a manifesto against corporate hegemony, with the appointment of Lina Khan, the former Federal Trade Commission Chair under President Joe Biden, as a transition co-chair standing as its most potent symbol. This is not merely a staffing decision; it is a declaration of war on the entrenched power dynamics that have long dictated policy from city hall to the White House.Khan, whose tenure at the FTC was defined by a relentless, if often thwarted, crusade to rebuild its anti-monopolist backbone and champion the rights of consumers and small businesses, now brings her formidable intellectual arsenal to the gritty arena of New York City politics. Her alignment with Mamdani is a meeting of philosophical kin, a fusion of federal regulatory ambition with municipal grassroots action.Mamdani’s platform, laser-focused on affordability through the dismantling of corporate corruption, finds its natural architect in Khan, who famously targeted the very same structural inequities—from hidden junk fees that bleed household budgets dry to non-compete clauses that stifle worker mobility and entrepreneurial spirit. Her public admiration for the Mamdani campaign’s focus on small business, articulated in a poignant New York Times op-ed, was a prelude to this formal alliance.At the press conference announcing her role, Khan framed the election not as a simple change of personnel but as a fundamental rejection of a politics where 'outsized corporate power and money too often end up dictating our politics,' a clear mandate for a future where New Yorkers and small businesses can 'thrive, not just get by. ' This partnership also serves as a deft political countermove to the criticisms of Mamdani’s relative inexperience, surrounding the state assemblyman with a cadre of seasoned operatives like Grace Bonilla, Maria Torres-Springer, and Melanie Hartzog, but it is Khan’s presence that carries the most symbolic weight.It demonstrates a sophisticated understanding that the levers of power are not confined to a single agency in Washington; when the federal landscape shifts, as it has with the Trump administration effectively remaking the FTC in its own pro-business image, the battle must be taken to new fronts—city halls, state legislatures, and the court of public opinion. This is the new frontline in the fight for economic democracy, a test of whether the principles of aggressive antitrust and consumer protection can be translated into tangible municipal policy that directly lifts the burdens of monopoly power from the shoulders of everyday New Yorkers.

#featured

#Lina Khan

#Zohran Mamdani

#mayoral transition

#New York City

#corporate power

#FTC

#antitrust

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