Randy Mastro can’t stop suing Zohran Mamdani’s City Hall

In the eight months that former New York City Mayor Eric Adams has been out of office, he has traveled the world, gained Albanian citizenship and advocated for data centers in the dreaded Midwest. Though his split with City Hall was as acrimonious as it gets, Adams has kept a healthy distance from his old place of work. 

One of his top allies is having a harder time making a clean break.

Randy Mastro, the spirited 69-year-old attorney who served as Adams’ first deputy mayor in his final year in office, has become the de facto general in a multi-front war against the new City Hall, using the courts and a blitz of lawsuits to take on democratic socialist Mayor Zohran Mamdani.

Mastro, a former federal prosecutor for the Southern District of New York, has represented clients in five new lawsuits against the city this year. In doing so, he’s cast a wide net. While each lawsuit has sought to foil Mamdani’s plans, targets vary from halting the relocation of a homeless shelter, fighting for the city to adopt an open primary election system, trying to undo the Rent Guideline Board’s rent freeze on rent-stabilized apartments and backing a Forbes journalist pro bono who sued the city for allegedly not sharing records about the overturning of executive orders tied to antisemitism and Israel. The bumpy rollout of the city’s pied-à-terre tax on luxury second homes is the latest issue to draw a legal challenge from Mastro. 

Mastro, for his part, insists that none of this is personal. Rather, it’s about “the rule of the law.”

“Who better than a former deputy mayor who litigates to know when local government screws up,” Mastro quipped in an interview with City & State, noting he’s sued multiple administrations. “I’m non-denominational. I’m not a politician. I’m just a lawyer who believes in the rule of law and holding the government accountable when it breaks it.” 

But there seems to be a particular fervor to Mastro’s various battles against the Mamdani administration. A forceful presence in the waning days of the Adams administration, Mastro was critical of Mamdani from the start. When he submitted his resignation last December, Mastro stated – unnecessarily, of course – that he’d never “work for a socialist.” Mastro started as a partner at the firm Dechert LLP in January.

“When somebody tells you who they are, believe them,” Mastro said of Mamdani. “While I think many New Yorkers are shocked, they shouldn’t be because he’s doing exactly what he said he would do – and in the process his administration has been breaking the law.” City Hall has vigorously defended those lawsuits, and has logged some successes. A state judge ruled last month that Mamdani acted lawfully in disbanding Adams’ zombie Charter Revision Commission, for example.

But clearly, Mastro has gotten under the mayor’s skin – at least in wake of his latest legal challenge against the controversial pied-à-terre tax. Speaking to reporters last week after a Staten Island judge issued a temporary restraining order pausing the city’s rollout, Mamdani called Mastro out directly. 

“There are a few things more certain in New York City than death, taxes and Randy Mastro filing a lawsuit against this administration,” he joked, before adding that he was confident in the legality of the city’s action. Indeed, the pause was only a short-lived victory for Mastro. A state appeals court judge reversed the move last week, ruling that the city can move forward with implementation for now – at least until a court hearing set for the end of August. 

Mastro appeared to remain on the mayor’s mind as the week went on. After word broke that the city would drop its plans to tear up Elizabeth Street Garden and replace it with affordable housing – something Mamdani had promised to find a way to do in the first year of his tenure – the mayor laid the blame squarely on Mastro. Last fall, shortly after Mamdani won the mayoral election, Mastro had the garden designated as “parkland,” thus making it much harder for the future administration to build there. 

Mastro has been a constant thorn in Mamdani’s side – certainly more than any other person from the Adams administration. Beyond issuing some criticism on social media or in the odd cable news interview, Adams himself has been preoccupied with other matters. While Mastro said he’s been in touch with the former mayor, he declined to go into details about the extent of their communication. 

Mastro said he doesn’t blame anyone from the prior administration for staying out of things. 

“This isn’t for everyone. It’s hard to fight City Hall. It takes a lot of guts,” Mastro said. “These clients, I give them so much credit, because they are standing up to City Hall and that’s not an easy thing to do.”

Mastro will be back in court later this week, on August 21 for the rent freeze case and August 31 for the pied-à-terre lawsuit. He’s looking forward to it. 

“Oh no, it energizes me,” Mastro said when asked whether he expects to be exhausted juggling his various lawsuits. “I’m young at heart.”