Julie Menin Coasts to Victory for Speaker of the NYC City Council

Julie Menin

• Julie Menin was unanimously elected speaker of the City Council on Wednesday. The first Jew in the role and a centrist Democrat, she will be a significant check on Mayor Zohran Mamdani, who promised to “govern as a democratic socialist.”
• Menin’s mother and grandmother survived the Holocaust hiding in a cellar in Hungary, and her grandfather was killed.
• In her inaugural speech, Menin celebrated the new frontiers she shared with Mamdani. “We live in a day with the first Muslim mayor of New York City and now the first Jewish speaker of the Council serving at the same time,” said Menin.
• But the two have strong ideological differences. Mamdani sought to thwart her bid in favor of a more progressive candidate, Politico reported, and Menin declined to endorse him for mayor.
• Menin invited Rabbi Joseph Potasnik, the head of the New York Board of Rabbis, to deliver her invocation. The organization recently criticized Mamdani for revoking two of his predecessor’s executive orders related to defining antisemitism and banning boycotts of Israel. (Potasnik sat on one of Mamdani’s transition committees.)
• Menin herself called Mamdani to say she was “extremely concerned” about repealing the orders, according to the New York Post.
• She referenced a recent anti-Zionist protest outside a Manhattan synagogue in her speech, saying, “We cannot let what happened outside Park East Synagogue ever happen again, at any house of worship.” Mamdani suggested that the event, which promoted migration to Israel, misused a “sacred space.”
• But Menin also said that Mamdani seemed open to a bill she plans to pass, which would prohibit protests in a perimeter around houses of worship and schools. Gov. Kathy Hochul said she will announce a similar statewide measure on Tuesday.

Reprinted from a recent JTA posting on the Jewish Week.