Red Sky in Morning
New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani is empowering freelance busters—and creating a big opportunity for New Jersey Governor-elect Mikie Sherrill.
Back in 1980, at the beginning of Ronald Reagan’s presidency, the idea that “people are policy” got thrown around a lot. It became almost like a slogan as conservative activists insisted that Reagan’s administration should be staffed by loyal, ideologically aligned Reaganites who would do what was needed to advance conservative policy ideas.
That concept—that people are policy—doesn’t just apply in conservative circles. We’re seeing it in action right now as newly sworn-in Mayor Zohran Mamdani continues to fill out his inner circle in New York City.
Mamdani, a Democratic Socialist, is surrounding himself with a who’s who of individuals from the leading edge of the freelance-busting brigade nationwide.
The moves signal a strong possibility that we’ll see action in New York City involving independent contractors—the kind of action that freelance busters might call creative and visionary, while those of us on the receiving end would call it harmful and extreme.
A Who’s Who of Freelance Busting
One of Mayor Mamdani’s first appointments was Lina Khan, who used her authority during the Biden administration as head of the Federal Trade Commission to say that antitrust law would not be enforced so that union organizers could target independent contractors.
Attorneys and analysts pointed out for several years that “Biden’s appointees have looked for ways to push the labor exemption’s limits,” and, “This is not the first instance of the FTC under the Biden administration and current-Chair Lina Khan to encourage collective bargaining among independent contractors.”
As one analyst noted about a year ago:
“[T]he FTC is laying the groundwork for future Democratic administrations to act on this issue.”
According to The New York Times, Khan has most recently been trying to figure out ways to do things in New York City that we haven’t seen under previous mayors:
“The list of options was provided in recent days by a team led by Lina Khan, a leading progressive legal scholar, that has spent weeks scouring New York City’s laws to find dormant or underused mayoral authority that could allow Mr. Mamdani to take action in a hurry.”
After bringing Khan into his fold, Mamdani also tapped former Biden administration Acting Labor Secretary Julie Su to join his team, giving her the newly created title of Deputy Mayor for Economic Justice.
Prior to her stint in Washington, D.C., as California’s Labor Secretary, Su helped to enforce that state’s disastrous freelance-busting law Assembly Bill 5. She went on to oversee the implementation of an independent-contractor rule at the U.S. Department of Labor that North Carolina Congresswoman Virginia Foxx and California Congressman Kevin Kiley described as “nationalizing a California disaster.”
Foxx and Kiley wrote:
“As California’s Secretary of Labor, Julie Su was the architect and chief enforcer of AB 5 which wiped out countless independent contractors. Su is bringing that same radical, destructive ideology to the national level.
“Plain and simple, this rule constitutes a war on the independent contractor model.”
(I’m a plaintiff in one of five lawsuits that were filed over that Biden-era rule, which the Trump administration now appears to be in the process of rescinding.)
Given Su’s background, it’s certainly notable to see the unionists at the multimillion-dollar nonprofit National Employment Law Project celebrate her new role in New York City. NELP—which has been a key driver of freelance busting nationwide for years—wrote this about Su bringing her ideas to Gotham:
“The creation of a Deputy Mayor for Economic Justice position led by someone of Ms. Su’s stature and abilities signals the crucial role that cities now play in protecting workers and in breaking through the gridlock and special interests that too often derail efforts by Washington and the states to act and innovate. With Ms. Su at his side, Mayor-elect Mamdani will be positioned to lead the way in making cities places where working people can make a decent living and thrive.”"
The crucial role that cities now play when the freelance busters can’t get their deeply misguided policies through in Washington or at the state level.
Consider that concept as leading freelance busters at the AFL-CIO and SEIU cheer Su’s appointment, too.
And as if that’s all not chilling enough for self-employed individuals and the many businesses that we help to succeed every single day, Mayor Mamdani just added yet another name to his team that we all know well: Rafael Espinal.
Previously, Espinal used his position as head of the Freelancers Union to coordinate attacks against independent contractors with the AFL-CIO and the Democratic Socialists of America. Among other things, Espinal joined with them to promote the Protecting the Right to Organize Act, which would have injected the freelance-busting regulatory language from California’s Assembly Bill 5 into federal labor law.
Here’s how Mamdani described Espinal joining the mayoral administration in New York City:
We stand with union workers is a notable statement for the media and entertainment industry at a time when the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics reports:
63% of writers and authors are self-employed, with New York City as a hub of this type of work.
Only 8% of employees in the motion picture and sound recording industries are members of unions.
Possibilities Across the River
While much of what’s happening in New York City right now appears to portend calamity for independent contractors, freelancers like me who live across the Hudson River in New Jersey are hoping that our incoming governor and Democrat-controlled Legislature will want to distinguish themselves—and the Democratic Party in general—from the Democratic Socialist agenda.
Remember: New York City and New Jersey are in the same media market. Whatever the Mamdani team does in the Big Apple, it’s going to be all over the airwaves in the Garden State, too.
Which is why, perhaps, my home state’s Governor-elect, Mikie Sherrill, is already saying things that set her apart from Mayor Mamdani. She recently stated quite clearly on The Bulwark podcast that she’s not a Democratic Socialist.
Here’s how she described her thinking, during a conversation with the show’s host about the similarities in the campaigns that she and Mayor Mamdani just ran:
So, perhaps here in New Jersey, we’ll have an incoming administration that understands the difference between extremism and entrepreneurism.
Boy, would that be a refreshing change of pace after we’ve all been forced to spend the better part of a decade now fending off extreme legislation and proposed regulations that would follow California’s lead.
As we saw with mass opposition at New Jersey’s State House in 2019 and again with even greater opposition to New Jersey’s Department of Labor & Workforce Development in 2025, freelance busting is widely opposed. The more the unionists try to force this kind of extreme policymaking on independent contractors and the broader business community, the more it organizes even greater opposition from all across the political spectrum.
With that in mind, if the Democratic Socialist administration in New York City wants to keep pushing that kind of deeply unpopular, extreme agenda, it creates a big opening for the incoming Sherrill administration and Legislature in New Jersey to demonstrate that they stand apart from that kind of thinking, and that they actually do support entrepreneurs.
Admittedly, it’s hard to tell right now if that will be the case. While the words that Governor-elect Sherrill spoke on that podcast sounded great, she hasn’t yet announced her nominee for Labor Commissioner, a choice that will be telling. She also supported the PRO Act during her time in Congress, and she hasn’t taken a firm stance against the proposed independent-contractor rule at New Jersey’s Labor Department. That proposed rule still could be finalized at any moment, despite 99% public opposition.
It’s possible that what Sherrill said on that podcast was just words, and that policymaking in New Jersey will remain anti-entrepreneur and anti-business.
Or maybe, just maybe, we will see New Jersey’s Democratic Party leadership find ways to support employees who wish to join unions without attacking those of us who choose to be our own bosses as independent contractors.
That approach—as opposed to the Democratic Socialist approach—would be a far better way to lay some desperately needed groundwork for the future.
Everything I read about Mamdani said that he was breaking away from the old-line Democrats, but here he is filling his administration with old-line Democrats!