Mamdani Celebrates 200,000th Pothole Repair — Critics Say City Hall’s Victory Lap Doesn’t Match de Blasio-Era Pace
Mayor Zohran Mamdani marked New York City’s 200,000th pothole repair of the year Thursday, using the milestone to promote his administration’s focus on delivering basic city services. But the celebration quickly drew criticism from political figures who accused the mayor of turning routine municipal work into a publicity event — while comparisons cited by the New York Post showed that the current pace of repairs trails a benchmark reached during Bill de Blasio’s tenure.
Mamdani joined Department of Transportation workers on Troutman Street in Bushwick, where he helped patch the pothole that City Hall designated as the 200,000th repaired in 2026. The mayor’s office said DOT crews are currently repairing roughly 3,000 potholes each week while simultaneously carrying out a major street-repaving effort.
The event gave Mamdani another opportunity to promote what his administration calls “pothole politics” — an emphasis on highly visible, everyday government services as evidence that City Hall is responding to residents’ concerns.
“Fixing the broken water fountain at the playground our kids love, upgrading the catch basin on the corner that always floods and, of course, making a bumpy road smooth again,” he said in a statement.
“That is what public service should look like.”
According to City Hall, Mamdani had previously participated in repairing the city’s 100,000th pothole in early April on Staten Island. The administration said that milestone represented the largest number of potholes repaired during the first 100 days of a year in more than a decade.
The latest appearance, however, was met with criticism from some veteran New York political figures.
Former Republican U.S. Sen. Alfonse D’Amato, who earned the nickname “Senator Pothole” during his political career, had already dismissed the earlier April event when speaking to the New York Post.
Scott Stringer, the former New York City comptroller who competed against Mamdani in the 2025 Democratic mayoral primary, was similarly dismissive of Thursday’s event.
“Mamdani wouldn’t know how to fill a pothole if he fell in one,” he said.
Stringer argued that the mayor should devote greater attention to broader problems facing New Yorkers rather than staging events around individual repairs.
“Everywhere I go in this city people are bemoaning the dirty streets, the tragedy of homelessness. He’s got to figure out to do the work and not do this performative stuff. They didn’t believe under de Blasio, they won’t under Mamdani.”
The comparison with de Blasio also complicated Mamdani’s effort to highlight the 200,000-repair milestone.
De Blasio, whom Mamdani has identified as his favorite living New York City mayor, celebrated the repair of one million potholes during his first two years at City Hall. Based on the figures cited by the New York Post from contemporaneous Daily News reporting, that worked out to approximately 1,268 potholes for every day he had been in office.
By comparison, the Post calculated Mamdani’s 2026 pace at approximately 769 potholes per day. The periods are not directly identical, however: the de Blasio figure covered his first two full years in office, while Mamdani’s 200,000 figure represents repairs from January 1 through September 17 of this year.
City Hall has emphasized that pothole repairs are only one part of its street-maintenance work. The administration said DOT has paved 757 lane miles across the five boroughs so far this year, while describing repaving as the more effective long-term method of preventing potholes from developing.
Still, Thursday’s milestone offered Mamdani another chance to put his governing philosophy on display — and his critics another opportunity to argue that City Hall’s highly publicized pothole events amount to more show than substance.
{Matzav.com}
