At City Hall, Randy Mastro is in charge

First Deputy Mayor Randy Mastro isn’t one to tiptoe around the edges, timid. Less than a year after the City Council torpedoed his nomination to lead the city’s Law Department as corporation counsel in a grueling 11-hour hearing, he’s certainly made his mark on City Hall, embracing the No. 2 position in city government with gusto. And he wants everyone to know he’s having a blast.

Take his office. It’s decked out with court sketches from his time as a federal prosecutor for the famed Southern District of New York, a weathered wooden seat from the old Yankees stadium, a baseball bat inscribed with the name of the first mayor he served under roughly 30 years ago, Rudy Giuliani, slews of framed photos and a kaleidoscope of other items that would befit an eclectic exhibit on New York City history. 

A glossy portrait of Mayor Fiorello LaGuardia hanging by the door to Mastro’s office is a new addition. Having championed the phrase “there’s no Republican or Democrat way to clean the streets or pick up the trash,” the beloved late mayor is “a symbol of everything that is good about government.” 

“To me, that’s the essence of good governing,” Mastro said. “Delivering. It’s not about the politics, it’s about the people.” The fourth person to serve as New York City Mayor Eric Adams’ first deputy mayor, Mastro came in after an exodus of top City Hall officials. He’s been a staunch defender of the mayor, scarred from his dismissed federal corruption case and relationship with President Donald Trump. Three metal signs adorned with expressions perch atop his desk: “Do no harm,” “Always be closing” and “Get shit done.”

The words seem to have described his first 100 days on the job well. In interviews, several City Council members described Mastro as someone who, whether you agree with his politics or not, is a force.

“I’ve never spoken to a first deputy mayor as much as I have these past three months,” said City Council Member Rafael Salamanca, who, impressed by Mastro’s vibe and accessibility, had been one of the few members inclined to approve Mastro as corporation counsel last year. “He’s a solution thinker and I enjoy that.”

Mastro helped push for the creation of a new office to combat antisemitism announced in April, played a key role in stopping the destruction of Elizabeth Street Garden – a privately run garden in lower Manhattan that was supposed to be replaced with affordable housing for low-income seniors – signed a controversial executive order to allow Immigration and Customs Enforcement and several other federal agencies to reestablish offices on Rikers Island, spared landlords of smaller buildings from composting fines and called on Citi Bike to restrict e-bike speeds to 15 miles per hour. These moves have been both heralded and condemned. The City Council sued to stop the executive order restoring ICE’s access to city jails. Maria Torres-Springer, Mastro’s predecessor, took a thinly veiled shot on social media at the decision to nix the long-planned development for seniors. But nobody would argue Mastro is a passive presence.

“There is a before and after era in the Adams administration since Randy arrived,” City Council Member Lincoln Restler said. “There’s been a notable change and unusual clarity about who's in charge at City Hall. The power struggles have ended, and Randy Mastro is running the show.”

Mastro also played a big role in negotiations this year for the fiscal year 2026 budget – a process that culminated late last month with City Council members approving it unanimously for the first time since Adams took office. Finance Committee Chair Justin Brannan credited Mastro for contributing to this year’s unusually smooth negotiations. 

“Many of the priorities that the council has been fighting for and advocating for over the past four years were finally reflected in this budget,” Brannan said. “Now I don’t know if that’s because it's an election year or if it’s because Randy finally got OMB to spend some money, but whatever it is, he was definitely a helpful lubricant.”

City & State spoke with Mastro earlier this week about his unexpected return to City Hall, his relationship with the mayor, the unanimous budget passage and where his relationship with the City Council stands these days. This interview has been edited for length and clarity.

You’ve just hit 100 days as first deputy mayor. That’s a very different position than corporation counsel, the role you’d initially thought would bring you back to city government. Did you know immediately you would accept or did you have to think things through? 

I’d already crossed the rubicon that I wanted to return to public service. I’d thought that would be in the capacity of a lawyer, but I had the experience as an administrator. I think I'm perhaps the first person in modern city history who has ever served in this capacity – first deputy mayor or its equivalent – in two different administrations, under two different mayors. So when Mayor Adams called me and asked me to serve in this capacity I was immediately drawn back to public service.

One, it's about serving the city. Two, it's also about serving this mayor and this administration. I felt he'd gotten a raw deal from my old office, the Southern District of New York, where I had once been a federal prosecutor. I felt he had his heart in the right place and that he had a vision for the city that I shared. I wanted to help him achieve that vision and to build on the successes he already had that I felt New Yorkers didn’t fully understand because it had been obscured by events that had nothing to do with how effectively he was governing.

I felt the call and it is a calling. Public service is a calling. And to serve before in my late 30s as a deputy mayor and a chief of staff under a prior administration then to return to government in my late 60s, is a special opportunity. I served in a Republican administration 30 years ago. Now I’m serving a Democrat running as an independent. I look at city government and it’s not about partisan politics, but delivering for New Yorkers. 

From helping establish a new antisemitism office, signing the executive order allowing federal immigration authorities back onto Rikers Island, and saving Elizabeth Street Garden, you’ve taken on critical pieces of the mayor’s agenda. Clearly there’s got to be a lot of trust there. What’s the relationship between yourself and the mayor like? 

I think actions speak louder than words. And in a job like this, it's not about your portfolio and what it looks like on paper, it’s about how you conduct yourself and what you accomplish. That means building the team, working with your colleagues and supporting the mayor and his agenda.

I think Eric Adams has been a fantastic mayor. I so enjoy working with him. He's a genuinely nice guy, and as I like to say, he's got a head and a heart. That's not something that all politicians have. He tries to do the right thing. Sometimes the decisions are hard, but he always does them with compassion – like the way he approached the migrant crisis. I don't know that a lot of folks would have approached it that way, but what he did to help so many of those who needed assistance when they came to our city was quite remarkable in such a short period of time. But it was also such a totally unexpected burden that put an almost $8 billion hole in the city budget coming out of COVID-19. Yet he’s achieved so much – crime down, jobs up, affordable housing being produced in unprecedented levels and quality of life improving every day. What a wonderful record to run on. 

I call him the comeback kid. He always keeps that optimistic disposition and always champions the city. It’s refreshing and inspiring. He’s not someone I knew on a personal level. We knew each other from government circles and respected each other going back 30 years back when he was the head of 100 Blacks in Law Enforcement. We just followed each other's careers, stayed in touch over the years, and then when he nominated me to serve as corporation counsel, we bonded in that adversity. I was so impressed with him because he was just a constant source of support. A lot of executives might have said ‘this isn’t working out well,’ and cut and run. That’s not his style at all. I came to admire him more through that short period of time. 

What's your relationship with City Council leadership like these days? How did you approach those relationships after members torpedoed your nomination as corporation counsel? 

I actually started as first deputy mayor on a pro bono basis on March 31. That was a Monday, and there was a cabinet meeting that morning, which I attended and told those officials how excited I was to be working with all of them. We talked about strategic priorities and how to achieve them – something I’d done with the deputy mayors even before I started working. Then I called on the other side of the hall and asked to see City Council Speaker Adrienne Adams. I went over to pay my respects, and she was kind enough to see me and we spent about a half hour together. I have the conversations I have with the mayor or the speaker for that matter in confidence. That’s what lawyers do. But we had a very cordial meeting. As I’ve said often publicly, it doesn’t matter what you ever said about me in the past, that’s water under the bridge, let’s talk about what we can do to work together in the future. 

I’ve had an open door to the City Council and I have met with most of the members. I've always responded to their calls whether they were previously perceived as friend or foe. There's no foes. There's only partners in government, and you figure out how to work together. I’ve been surprised by how many have said they’ve never actually been to this side of the hall, but I have already developed a lot of good relationships here. That’s how we’ve been able to achieve the successes we have in the budget unanimously, Hudson Yards, Atlantic Avenue – there’s more to come.

Looking back on your time as a deputy mayor under former Mayor Rudy Giuliani, do you see any commonalities between him and Mayor Adams? If not in character, perhaps in the way they ran the city? 

They have very different personalities, but share a common foundation of profound love of the city and a work ethic that I think most New Yorkers don’t necessarily appreciate. Mayor Adams goes nonstop from early in the morning well into the evening. That’s something the two of them share. Both are workaholics in the best sense of the term and totally devoted to the city. I think there’s a lot of revisionist history about the Giuliani administration because of some of his activities in more recent years, but both mayors came into office during a time of crisis. 

Giuliani came into office with more than 2,000 murders a year, the private sector economy hemorrhaging hundreds of thousands of jobs, the city in decline. Time Magazine ran a cover story at the time: “The Rotting of the Big Apple” Mayor Adams came into office in the midst of the COVID crisis, the economy was in free fall – over a million private sector jobs lost – and was hit very early on with the migrant crisis. Both faced enormous challenges and both shared that same resiliency, spirit and total dedication to New York City.

Mayor Adams has faced a great deal of criticism for his relationship with President Donald Trump. Where do you stand on this?

Now this mayor stands up for the city when he feels New York is being wronged, but he's a mayor who wants to deliver for the city. He has to work with governors. He has to work with presidents. He worked with President Joe Biden even when they disagreed about immigration policy. Now he’s working with President Trump on issues that they agree are in the city's interests, like cracking down on violent transnational criminal gangs and assisting federal criminal law enforcement in apprehending those gang members. That's good for public safety.  That the City Council chose to intervene and attempt to block us in the courts from cooperating in federal criminal law enforcement against violent transnational gangs still confounds me. But by the same token, the mayor whose administration helped tens of thousands of migrants pursue amnesty applications, said I’m not going to allow any ICE agents to go into schools or churches and hospitals where people are simply accessing city services. We’ve gone into court to support every one of those high school kids who got snatched off the streets, on the courthouse steps, when they were coming out of their asylum hearings.

And because we've kept the lines of communication open with the president, he's been able to help our city achieve things that other similarly situated cities whose mayors or governors are ‘never Trumpers’ never could. 

You don't see the National Guard coming here. You don't see the kinds of intrusions when it comes to our immigrant community going on here that you see in other parts of the country. You don't see the federal government suing the mayor and the city. And I don't think you're ever going to see that here, because this mayor is managing in the city's interests – standing up for the city when the federal government is doing wrong and finding ways to work with the federal government when it's ready to do right by New York City. 

With your tenure at SDNY in mind, I’d like to hear your opinion on this – are you worried about the office’s famed independence under President Trump? I’m thinking specifically about the firing of Maurene Comey, but I’m curious about your opinion more broadly.

The Southern District holds a very dear place in my heart. I was honored to serve there. As a young lawyer, it’s the place where you want to go to become a great trial lawyer and do public service. It’s the premier government prosecutors office in the country. I’ve always wished that office well. 

I’ve known Jay Clayton (the interim U.S. attorney for SDNY) for many years. He’s a class act. The last U.S. attorney who served during the Trump administration, Greg Berman, was also someone who I knew for many years. I think these individuals will continue to serve that office well in their capacities. Jay, heading that office. Greg, I think, also headed that office with distinction, despite issues. It’s a shame we even have to discuss those kinds of issues in the Southern District or anywhere else in the Justice Department, but I for one think that the office has so many great lawyers of integrity.

How do you feel about the charges SDNY leveled at Mayor Adams and how President Trump handled them? 

I thought that Mayor Adams got a raw deal from my old office. I don’t think it was my old office’s proudest moment. I read the indictment and like many of my colleagues in the defense bar and former Southern District prosecutors thought that it was pretty thin and should never have been brought as a federal case.

I think that if that had never happened, we wouldn't even be talking about this election cycle.  I'm not here to talk about politics, but given the exceptional record this mayor has had – crime down, jobs up, affordable housing at unprecedented levels and improved performance in our public school system – there'd be no question about the future of the city.