The 2028 presidential race is already taking shape, and there’s a Zohran Mamdani-shaped hole in it. New York City’s relentlessly upbeat new mayor is filling potholes, removing scaffolding, and, yes, taxing the rich. Not since FDR has there been a happier liberal warrior. But assuming nobody amends the Constitution, the Ugandan-born Mamdani will not be going from Gracie Mansion to the White House.
Yet after breaking bread with local leaders across the political spectrum and around the world, from Athens, Greece to Atlanta, Georgia—including with Mayor Mamdani in my hometown of New York—I’m convinced that a mayor should be our next president.
Only three mayors have ever become president. Calvin Coolidge, who served as mayor of Northampton, Massachusetts, from 1910 to 1911 before later becoming the 30th U.S. president in 1923, is the last U.S. president with past mayoral experience. Coolidge and before him, Grover Cleveland, are remembered as saving money for their cities, a mission that can be translated to protecting constituents from today’s roaring inflation.
I would argue that the fact that we haven’t had a mayor as president since then explains the discontent and lack of community in American politics. Too often, it seems that the higher up you go in the political food chain, the less functional things become. As the federal government fails to address skyrocketing costs, the case for a mayor-president has never been stronger. The things Washington hasn’t been able to tackle or has failed to accomplish for decades are precisely the muscles mayors flex every day.
The mayors I’ve met are can-do optimists, free of the cynicism and vitriol that has poisoned much of American politics. Many were political outsiders who felt called to serve. Haris Doukas was a mechanical engineering professor before being elected mayor of Athens, Greece. Patrick Payton, the now-former mayor of Midland, Texas, was a pastor. Each signed up for a relatively unglamorous job that’s part CEO, part building inspector, part mediator—and, on a bad week—part first responder and grief counselor.
In my experience, mayors tend to be deeply committed to their fellow human beings and their livelihoods. Henriette Reker was stabbed in the neck the day before being elected mayor of Cologne, Germany, while still in a coma. Her would-be assassin opposed Germany’s “influx of refugees,” and yet when Russia invaded Ukraine in 2022, a fully recovered Reker didn’t hesitate to welcome more than 100,000 Ukrainians fleeing the war.
This commitment is also crucially expressed in empowering citizens. A Mayor President can launch citizen assemblies, like the kind Mayor Carlos Moedas has championed in Lisbon, that invite citizens to participate in community decision-making and budgeting that have the same force as legislative action.
Plus, mayors are unavoidably accessible and accountable to the people they represent. While some members of Congress likely fear accountability from their constituents, Mayors encounter impromptu town halls whenever they pick up milk at the grocery store. As I witnessed on several occasions, residents were happy to fist-bump or prob their mayor in the middle of our interviews.
When not engaging face-to-face with their constituents, mayors from Santiago to Düsseldorf have rolled out apps that allow residents to track garbage collection or report power outages directly to City Hall. In the birthplace of democracy, Mayor Doukas keeps a monitor in his office tracking complaints as they’re received and how fast they’re resolved. It took the FDA roughly two months to respond to the cyclosporiasis outbreak that sickened many. Can anyone imagine a mayor ducking the public that long?
In Chile, Santiago’s cop-turned-Mayor Mario Desbordes has reduced kidnappings without castigating his opponents as soft-on-crime. Desbordes considers Felipe Muñoz Vallejos of Estación Central, a mayor from an opposing party, not just a frequent partner but a friend. “When one holds these positions,” he told me, “one must do so thinking of the citizens, not of one’s personal political standing.”
And Lisbon’s Mayor Moedas modeled his policy of making public transit free for residents under 23 and over 65—more than doubling ridership—on similar efforts in Estonia and Luxembourg. The inspiration for Lisbon’s new system of tunnels and reservoirs, which saves millions of euros by using rainwater for street-cleaning and irrigation, came from London.
Finally, mayors aren’t afraid to innovate, especially when it comes to guaranteeing Americans dignified lives. Local leaders understand it’s not freedom if you can’t afford it. That’s why Atlanta Mayor Andre Dickens turned COVID-era shipping containers into housing for city residents—and, blocks away, opened a city-owned grocery store in a downtown food desert.
This is not to say that all mayors throughout history have always acted in a manner befitting the Oval Office. In the 1800s, many municipal governments were faceless corrupt bureaucracies. It was said you couldn’t fight City Hall.
