This week’s biggest Winners & Losers

Assembly Member Zohran Mamdani is abuzz in New York City after scoring endorsements from both Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and state Sen. John Liu and holding his own during Wednesday’s mayoral debate. New York City Council Speaker Adrienne Adams landed the second-place ranking from Ocasio-Cortez, edging out city Comptroller Brad Lander, and also got an endorsement from Rep. Yvette Clarke. Together, Mamdani and Adams are inching closer to giving former Gov. Andrew Cuomo a run for his money.

School’s out, but Michael Mulgrew is in. In a tough race, the longtime president of the United Federation of Teachers was reelected for his sixth term. First elected president since 2009, Mulgrew has won six consecutive elections, but by smaller margins each time. He won 54% of the vote this election, 12 percentage points less than in 2022. It may be his slimmest victory to date, but hey, a win is still a win.

Sometimes playing the long game pays off. Iris Rodriguez-Rosa has been with the New York City Department of Parks & Recreation since 1986 and was recently appointed to the top job. She’s making history as the first Latina to lead the department. And the job comes with perks like attending the annual Met Gala, since the parks commissioner serves as an ex-officio member of the Met board of trustees and many other city cultural and arts institutions.

It could be worse for acting Columbia University President Claire Shipman; she could have been publicly humiliated by Florida officials like former University of Michigan President Santa Ono was this week. But Columbia’s embattled leader hasn’t fared much better. The Trump administration is now threatening the university’s accreditation in the wake of alleged federal civil rights violations. Angry calls from alumni and parents may make Shipman want to flee to London like her predecessor in Columbia’s merry-go-round of presidents.

When you’re a kid, a midweek break from school is a treat, especially when it coincides with perfect weather, as was the case on Thursday, June 5 – which the NYC Department of Education’s calendar listed as a day off in observance of the Muslim holiday of Eid al-Adha. But if DOE Chancellor Melissa Aviles-Ramos used the calendar as her study guide, she’d get a failing grade, because Eid was actually on Friday, June 6. While students took advantage of the snafu, parents scratched their heads and Muslim public officials expressed frustration over the mix-up.

Right in the middle of primary season, NY1 broke the news that Public Advocate Jumaane Williams had to put his longtime chief of staff on administrative leave, reassign two people on his security detail and launch a formal investigation into a bizarre workplace harassment allegation. A former staffer claims one of Williams’ security detail officers sprayed her with something at an office holiday party that made her “dizzy and weak” and resulted in a hospital visit. In a statement to NY1, Williams’ office called it an “alarming allegation of a colluded assassination attempt via poison during a daytime workplace event.” To be fair, it sounds like maybe we’re not getting the whole story here. There’s no evidence so far that the staffer, who worked for Williams for less than a year, was drugged, but it’s still a major headache as Williams faces a spirited primary challenge from Jenifer Rajkumar.