Why can't modern mayors just be normal about living in Gracie Mansion?

Zohran Mamdani shocked New York City’s political establishment when he pantsed sex pest and former governor Andrew Cuomo twice in one year, but the mayor-elect is at least carrying out one tradition 21st century mayors have followed: being weird about moving into Gracie Mansion.

On Monday, Mamdani issued a four-paragraph, 216-word statement that he would be moving into Gracie Mansion. The statement was odd for its apologetic tone, especially “While I may no longer live in Astoria, Astoria will always live inside me (pause - Ed) and the work I do,” but also that it exists at all. I don’t recall the president ever putting out a press release informing us “By the way, I’m going to move into the White House” and the governor has never hemmed and hawed for weeks over whether they would move into the Executive Mansion. But Mamdani, like the three mayors before him, made a whole thing out of the question of moving into a free mansion overlooking a park and the East River. What fucking gives?

Like I said, Zohran is not alone in this. Since the calendar turned to the new millennium, each mayor has decided to make a whole stink about living in Gracie Mansion. Mike Bloomberg never moved in. Bill de Blasio pushed off a move into Gracie until almost the eighth month of his first term. Eric Adams at one point suggested he didn’t need any furniture in the house as if that was supposed to impress us.

It wasn’t always that way. Gracie Mansion became the official casa de mayor in 1942, after Robert Moses convinced Fiorella LaGuardia that the city should have an official mayoral residence. LaGuardia’s successor William O’Dwyer initially said he was going to forego living in Gracie Mansion before he realized that actually a free mansion is a cool job perk, officially making it tradition for the mayor to live in Gracie Mansion. There was an uninterrupted string of mayors who lived in the Mayor’s House, up until the 21st century. The persnickety Ed Koch was a little weird about it, initially preferring to spend weekends in his West Village apartment, but he also had a pretty good reason: who doesn’t want a second home? In his book, Mayor, a book he wrote about being the mayor while he was still the sitting mayor of the city, Koch wrote “The apartment is helpful. It is a break in my routine. Other people go out of town. I go to my apartment.” 

Post-Rudy Giuliani though, we haven’t had a single mayor who’s acted like a free mansion is a good thing. When Mike Bloomberg declared he didn’t want to live there, he said it was a waste of taxpayer dollars to live in a free mansion. Which is such bullshit, as we all know he just had his own mansion that he liked better. But even his two less-wealthy successors made a big public show out of rejecting a free house. When de Blasio finally moved in (after blaming his son’s enrollment in a Brooklyn high school for the delay) he of course insisted on living his regular Brooklyn life of getting chauffeured to the Park Slope Y to use the stair machine and to get his favorite coffee. And Eric Adams waffled on whether he would move in, trying to convince New Yorkers that the man who already had one home in New York and one home in New Jersey wouldn’t want a third home. He also made sure to be extremely strange about the whole thing, claiming that all he needed was “a mattress on the floor” as if this landmarked mansion was the flophouse where I stayed after I moved out of the McKibbin Lofts.

Why have these men acted like this? Not to judge, but it is true that following Giuliani’s divorce, a city judge officially ruled that you are not allowed to have your sidepiece take up residence in the mansion. But I won’t make any accusations or raise any eyebrows at these mayors, who have proven themselves to be excellent stewards of regular sex stuff.

I think this all has more to do with the authenticity trap in modern politics, this attempt to relate to common schlubs like you and me. Yes, even when it came to Mike Bloomberg, whose common man “I ride the subway” thing still involved him being chauffeured to the subway every morning. We want our elected officials to be two people at once, the cold-blooded lizard-like political operators, but also we want them to be just like us. We want them to take public transportation and ride bikes, we want them to have normal opinions about local sports and to show a connection to the culture around us that, for the most part, they can’t really take part in. We want them to be engaged with local media and to come to our communism-themed holiday party. But it’s hard for someone to live half a life in such a way that they become the mayor of New York City while being your average person. Also what everyday person wouldn’t take a free house?

Unless you’re young enough to be Zohran Mamdani, who avoided the isolation of decades of political experience, and is still close to his regular guy bonafides to make a claim on them. Like so many millennials, he’s a weird little soccer goblin of the type who you could find in a bar at 11 a.m. on a Saturday yelling about how Erik ten Hag needs to be sacked. He met his aloof wife on Hinge, as a younger man he was ignored by some girl when he tried to dance with her during “I Bet You Look Good On The Dance Floor”, he gets high sometimes, he knows me, Dave. 

With all that in mind, there is no reason to be apologetic about getting a free house to live in for four, or maybe even eight years. After all, people will find so many more reasons to resent him during his tenure as mayor. If he wants to stay normal, he can always just invite me over for an edible and an Arsenal game.