Editor’s note: A keen sense of timing

There’s an art to deciding when to pursue a story, and when to publish. I was thinking about New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani’s relationship with the lobbying industry nine months ago, at the Somos conference in Puerto Rico.

I talked to a few lobbyists who weren’t sure what business would be like with this incoming mayor they barely knew. And I talked to a few folks from good-government groups who were feeling optimistic.

“I’m very hopeful with the Mamdani administration,” Common Cause New York Executive Director Susan Lerner said at the time. “Because his message is ‘We’re one city together, and we need to figure out how to make life better for everybody.’ So that is a much more open attitude than ‘I’m now your mayor of swagger.’”

But I decided to wait and see before I wrote anything. Give the Mamdani administration a chance to work – and the lobbyists trying to influence the administration too. When City Editor Annie McDonough checked in again, halfway through the mayor’s first year, we found a widespread sense of relief, and that became the basis for this week’s cover story.

I was also happy with the timing of last week’s cover story, on Julio Peña III, a contender to be the next leader of the Brooklyn Democratic Party. Sahalie Donaldson introduced him, and laid out the stakes – and days later, the party exploded in controversy after current leader Rodneyse Bichotte Hermelyn announced an audacious scheme to pack the committee and keep Peña from winning. We’ll be covering that story as it develops – and relying on our keen sense of timing.