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They can’t staff an administration — but they sure can plan a soirée!
Zohran Mamdani’s self-congratulatory mayoral inauguration block party appears to be the most planning his transition team has done, as they’re still scrambling to fill major City Hall spots with just days to go.
The mayor-elect’s well-funded transition — which had $1.8 million on hand as December dawned — will pay for the massive “Inauguration of a New Era” expected to draw up to 50,000 New Yorkers on Jan. 1, The Post exclusively learned.
But Hank Sheinkopf, a veteran Democratic political consultant, argued the spectacle will be more for political “show” — and more costly — than advertised.
“This is the way for the people who love him to send him off to City Hall to see what he can do,” he said.
“The reality is that having it in the street is a way of telling everybody ‘He’s the people’s mayor’ and not a fancy guy. When in fact, it’s a very fancy event — taking over the streets, costing the city an awful lot of money to do it.”
Mamdani’s team dodged questions about how much the shindig will ultimately cost, other than the transition will pick up the tab.
A source involved with planning the event refused to reveal how many cops will be deployed, but said Mamdani’s transition team will hire and pay for additional private security to reduce the burden on the NYPD — and presumably drive down the cost to taxpayers.
“Mayor-elect Zohran Mamdani’s inauguration block party will allow for thousands of New Yorkers who are excited for a new era to celebrate the bold vision for the city we are ready to lead,” transition spokesperson Dora Pekec said in a statement.
Insiders said they expect the shindig to be in line with the price tag of prior inaugurations. Outgoing Mayor Eric Adams had raised $1.9 million for his 2022 inauguration that was supposed to be held at Brooklyn’s King Theater. The Adams transition team had to return $800,000 to donors after COVID concerns delayed the party and he didn’t spend the funds within a required timeframe.
Mamdani’s transition has drawn nearly 30,000 donors, of whom more than half hailed from outside New York, according to campaign finance records.
Those out-of-state donors include a pair of gamer YouTubers with millions of followers each, Ludwig Ahgren and Ethan Nester, records show.
The party planning for the inauguration — including closing off streets near City Hall and along the Canyon of Heroes, and tapping socialist Sen. Bernie Sanders to swear in Mamdani — comes as the transition team drags its feet on revealing high-level hires for actual governance.
Mamdani did pick former EMS chief Lillian Bonsignore on Tuesday to head the FDNY, but who’ll fill other key roles — such as the schools chancellor — remain question marks.
And the transition team has also been dogged by criticism of its vetting process and antisemitism accusations against an uncomfortable number of appointees.
One of Mamdani’s few appointees — Catherine Almonte Da Costa — abruptly resigned last week after her past antisemitic posts on X resurfaced.
After Da Costa — who had been tapped to become the city’s next director of appointments — left, Mamdani’s transition hired an unnamed firm to do vetting of job candidates.
Ken Frydman, who was campaign spokesman for Rudy Giuliani’s 1993 mayoral campaign, said Mamdani hasn’t yet done anything to deserve a grandiose block party.
“Rudy held his post-inauguration party at CUNY’s nearby Borough of Manhattan community college. We marched there on foot, not up the Canyon of Heroes,” Frydman said.
“You’ve gotta earn that right.”
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