Lina Khan to co-chair NYC mayor-elect Zohran Mamdani’s transition team

Lina Khan to co-chair NYC mayor-elect Zohran Mamdani’s transition team

After Zohran Mamdani clinched the New York City mayoral race on Tuesday evening, his campaign announced former FTC chair Lina Khan will likely be one in all the transition team’s 4 co-chairs.

Khan has been an ally of Mamdani’s, praising him in a New York Times op-ed about his outreach to small enterprise house owners. But her appointment to a proper function on his transition team sends a message to Wall Street and the tech business, whose most highly effective gamers have already been essential of Mamdani, a Democratic socialist who ruffled the feathers of the tech elite by criticizing billionaires and proposing a 2% tax on incomes over $1 million.

“What we saw last night was New Yorkers not just electing a new mayor, but clearly rejecting a politics where outsized corporate power and money too often end up dictating our politics,” Khan said in a speech on Wednesday.

Khan described Mamdani’s victory as “a clear mandate for change where New Yorkers can get ahead, and where all workers and small businesses can thrive — not just get by.”

Airbnb co-founder Joe Gebbia, in addition to buyers like Bill Ackman and Mike Bloomberg, each spent thousands and thousands of {dollars} to oppose Mamdani and advocate for former New York governor Andrew Cuomo, who completed second in the polls. DoorDash also gave $1 million to a pro-Cuomo tremendous PAC. Mamdani’s platform, however, advocated for elevated regulation of supply apps and protections for his or her subcontracted gig staff.

Like Mamdani, Khan has enemies in high locations. As an outspoken critic of tech giants like Amazon, Microsoft, Meta, and Google, Khan moved to block numerous high-profile tech mergers during her tenure in the Biden administration. When those actions failed, many in Silicon Valley still held Khan answerable for slowing down the circulation of acquisition offers.

Even those who supported the Biden-Harris presidential ticket, like LinkedIn co-founder Reid Hoffman and billionaire investor Vinod Khosla, have been public about their criticisms of Khan; in an interview with TechCrunch editor-in-chief Connie Loizos last yr, Khosla described Khan as “not a rational human being.”

Khan, a professor at Columbia Law School, is described as “the nation’s leading antimonopoly champion” on Mamdani’s transition web site.

In addition to Khan, the other three co-chairs embody Grace Bonilla, president and CEO of the non-profit United Way of New York City; Maria Torres-Springer, the former first deputy mayor of New York City; and Melanie Hartzog, president and CEO of the non-profit New York Foundling.

The 4 will likely be led by Elana Leopold, an adviser to Mamdani’s campaign who held numerous senior roles across the Bill de Blasio mayoral administration.

“Lina is focused on getting set up to assist the transition on economic policy and personnel,” Douglas Farrar, a spokesperson for Khan, told TechCrunch.

Updated, 11/5/25, 2:20 PM ET with remark from Douglas Farrar.

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