Fran Lebowitz: New NYC mayor won’t deliver on promises
Cultural icon Fran Lebowitz reveals why Zohran Mamdani faces a near impossible task delivering his radical agenda for the city - and why she voted for him anyway.
The American cultural commentator Fran Lebowitz says the newly elected New York City mayor Zohran Mamdani doesn’t have the power to deliver on many of his promises and may end up making not much difference to the city at all.
The 75-year-old writer and public speaker has lived in the city for more than 50 years and describes herself as an “old Democrat” who was “angry at the Democrats who are in office”. As a result, she cast her vote for the 34-year-old Mamdani chiefly because “he wasn’t Eric Adams and he wasn’t Andrew Cuomo”.
“Of all the million times I voted, I’ve hardly ever voted for anyone who wins,” Lebowitz told The Australian Weekend Magazine.
But, she adds: “If he doesn’t turn out to be a great mayor, it doesn’t matter, in a way, because New York City is not the United States. New Yorkers? If the mayor’s bad, they just ignore him.”
Lebowitz said the democratic socialist, whose campaign centred on affordability issues and whose signature policies included free bus fares, city-run grocery stores, and universal childcare, would likely struggle to implement any of it.
“Some of the things he says he’s going to do, he can’t do because the mayor does not have that power. The mayor is not in charge of buses; the governor is. So, I hope he knows this at least.
“I don’t know whether young people think he can (do it all), but I know that he can’t. So I’m not sitting around waiting for the buses to be free.
“It doesn’t matter as much as people think it does. I mean, it’s a terribly hard job, it’s like the second hardest job in the country, it’s a gigantic job, and there are certain aspects of it that I think he’s gonna have a lot of trouble with, but I mean, most people I know, in fact, everyone I know, is very happy he won. So even to be happy for five seconds about politics in this country is a win.”
The Manhattanite said she was shocked at times by her own personal political shift further to the left.
“You know, the right wing in this country has become so horrible that I have been pushed way to the left. I am much more left than I was when I was at 30.”
Lebowitz spoke to The Australian Weekend Magazine to promote her May 2026 speaking tour, which takes in dates in Sydney, Melbourne, Adelaide, Brisbane, and Perth.
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