Zohran Mamdani is naming a new campaign manager and hiring additional staff, CNN has learned, as the Democratic nominee for New York City mayor aims both to consolidate support heading into the November general election and to begin planning a potential administration.
Elle Bisgaard-Church, Mamdani’s chief of staff in the state assembly and the manager of his primary campaign, will become chief adviser, people familiar with campaign operations told CNN. Her new role reflects Mamdani’s desire to begin long-term planning – not technically transition work, since he has to win in November first – and thinking through the implementation of his sweeping ideas.
She will be succeeded as campaign manager by Maya Handa, who ran the mayoral primary campaign of state senator Zellnor Myrie. Handa has worked for notable local and national progressive figures including former New York Rep. Jamaal Bowman and Massachusetts Sen. Elizabeth Warren, as well as the locally powerful Working Families Party.
Bisgaard-Church, in a statement, told CNN she’s “incredibly proud of the historic campaign we ran in the primary. While our focus now is singularly to ensure Zohran is elected as the next mayor of New York City, I’m excited to take on this new role and continue building toward the future.”
Mamdani, who was largely unknown before his primary campaign took off, has held conversations with elected and community leaders whose support he is trying to win, lining up endorsements even as top New York Democrats have declined to back him. His campaign is absorbing supporters and top aides from his former rivals, part of his efforts to unite different camps of progressives and mainstream Democrats.
Handa will be joined by Afua Atta-Mensah as political director and Deandra Khan as director of labor and intergovernmental affairs. Atta-Mensah is taking a leave from her position at the group Community Change.
Khan was an adviser to the president of 32BJ SEIU, a union of mainly building workers that backed former Gov. Andrew Cuomo in the primary, arguing he was the leader the city needed to deliver for working people in the city. The union has since endorsed Mamdani.
A 33-year-old who has never run a staff larger than his state assembly office, Mamdani is hoping to become the chief executive of a city of 8 million people with a nearly $116 billion annual budget and over 300,000 employees. He’ll be hoping to do that while radically reworking city operations, from launching government-run grocery stores to trying to make buses free, all while managing complications like union contracts and the massive police force.
The staff expansion comes while the candidate himself has been in Uganda for most of the last half of July for another celebration of his wedding. Mamdani this week also expanded his press and communications staff and shifted aides who were in top roles for the primary campaign to other spots internally.
Mamdani aides argue this is part of the natural growth and maturation as the campaign moves to a bigger stage, pointing out that no one has left, only more people have joined.
In something of a shift since his shocker primary victory, Mamdani himself has adapted his own approach since the primary win, with more of his public time spent standing behind a lectern at set events, while Cuomo, who is staying in the race as an independent, has taken to making low-cost videos out on the streets in the hopes of breaking back through.
Incumbent Mayor Eric Adams, also running as an independent, has spent much of his time mocking both.
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