The Mamdani Franchise — an independent, non-partisan, open-source playbook. Not affiliated with the Mayor of New York City, the City of New York, or any campaign or party. Status: DRAFT v0.1 (Stage 2 synthesis) · Evidence cut-off: 2026-11-10.
1. Purpose and independence
| Item | Disclosure |
|---|---|
| Publisher | The Mamdani Franchise, published at franchisemamdani.com. An independent civic project; no company or consultancy is credited. |
| Affiliation | None. Not affiliated with, commissioned by, or reviewed by the Mayor of New York City, the City of New York, any campaign, party, union or advocacy group. |
| Funding | Self-funded by a private individual, a U.S. resident, acting in a civic capacity. No funding from the City, the administration, any campaign, party, union, advocacy group or other party covered in this document. |
| Intended use | A reference for officials, candidates, staff and residents in other cities who want to understand how specific tactics worked in NYC: their mechanisms, costs, preconditions and results. |
| What it is not | Not an endorsement or an opposition document. Not campaign material. Not legal, financial or investment advice. It makes no causal claims about why outcomes occurred unless a cited source does, and then it attributes the claim. |
| Why the "franchise" format | A Franchise Disclosure Document organizes what a buyer must know before adopting a system: who runs it, what it costs, how it operates, what was promised and delivered, the risks, and where it fits. Items 1–10 follow that order. |
2. Evidence standard
2.1 The evidence register
Every factual claim in Items 1–10 cites at least one row in the evidence register as EV-###. IDs are permanent: rows are only ever appended, never renumbered or deleted, so a citation in any edition points to the same source. Before publication, a row's text may be corrected in place; each such correction is tagged in the row's Notes ("Corrected … after independent review"). After publication, corrections are added as new rows. Each row records:
ID · Chapter · Phase · Claim · Source title · URL · Publisher · Date · Source type · Data available? · Confidence · Notes
Register at this edition (Nov 11, 2026): 278 rows (EV-001 to EV-278).
| Source type | Rows | Share | Meaning |
|---|---|---|---|
| Primary-gov | 86 | 31% | City, State or federal documents and datasets (budgets, executive orders, releases, NYC Open Data, Checkbook NYC) |
| Watchdog | 41 | 15% | Comptroller, IBO, CBC, Financial Control Board, Council Finance, independent pollsters, nonpartisan research |
| News | 132 | 47% | Reporting by news organizations |
| Critic | 15 | 5% | Think tanks, advocacy groups and opinion pieces, from all directions |
| Social | 4 | 1% | Official social-media posts |
| Confidence | Rows | Rule |
|---|---|---|
| H | 104 | Confirmed on the primary or originating page |
| M | 166 | Confirmed in a reputable secondary source |
| L | 8 | Single source, aggregator, or unclear |
Unverified items. No rows are currently marked "UNVERIFIED" (17 before the first independent review, 8 after it; the last 8 were checked against original sources on Nov 11, 2026). If a claim cannot be confirmed in future, its row is marked UNVERIFIED in red and the chapter flags it [UNVERIFIED]. One row (EV-032) records an absence: a document not yet published.
2.2 Source hierarchy and conflicts
- Hierarchy: Primary-gov → Watchdog → News → Critic → Social. A higher-ranked source is preferred for a figure; a lower-ranked source is used for context, reaction or critique.
- Conflicting figures are shown side by side, each with its scope. No figure is silently chosen. Examples:
- budget gap estimates of $4.7B, ~$7B and ~$12B (Item 2);
- the Office of Community Safety at a press-reported $260M versus its own $3.08M appropriation (Items 7–8);
- pension re-amortization payback estimated at ~$5B vs ~$7.6B, with critics dating repayment into the 2040s and the Comptroller to FY2033–37 (Items 2 and 9).
- Critiques are attributed to their authors ("Manhattan Institute fellows said…") and are never stated as findings.
- City self-reports are labeled as City-reported or self-reported (e.g., the 100-day tracker).
2.3 The data lab (NYC Open Data, payroll, Checkbook NYC)
Rows EV-201 to EV-223 come from a separate analysis of public datasets, pulled on Nov 10, 2026 and independently re-checked against a 2024 baseline. Method files, scripts and review reports are kept in data-lab/. The rules that govern how these results are presented:
| Rule | Application |
|---|---|
| Departures vs trends | Only three findings are presented as departures from the 2024–25 trend: (a) the Street Condition slowdown and backlog; (b) the heat-complaint backlog (94.1% closed within 7 days in Jan–Mar 2026 vs 99.6% in 2025 and 99.8% in 2024); (c) Office of the Mayor growth. All other measures are presented as continuing earlier trends. |
| Fiscal-year attribution | FY2026 figures cover July 2025–June 2026, half under the prior administration; this is stated wherever they are used. |
| No causal claims | Weather and other drivers were not analysed. City explanations are attributed to the City. |
| Scope labels | Budget lines are reported at their stated scope (e.g., the Office of Community Safety's own $3.08M appropriation). |
| Privacy | Aggregates only. No individual names from payroll or 311 records appear in any chapter. Raw files (data-lab/raw/) are excluded from any published bundle. |
| Pre-publication refresh | Before publishing, MMR, Checkbook and 311 figures are re-pulled from each row's URL, because the City revises these data. |
3. Neutrality rules
| Rule | What it means in practice |
|---|---|
| Describe, don't characterize | Chapters state actions, mechanisms, costs and outcomes. Ideological labels are used only when quoting or attributing a source. |
| No causal language without a source | Words such as "caused", "drove" or "due to" are not used for the playbook's own findings; each chapter was scanned for them before release. |
| Equal placement for setbacks | Phase sections carry a "Reversals / critiques" line ("None recorded" where none apply). Item 8 lists promises not met alongside promises delivered. Item 9 is devoted to reversals, critiques, litigation and risks. |
| Critics from all directions | Fiscal watchdogs, market-oriented think tanks, left and allied critics, landlords, unions and transparency groups are all cited where relevant (Item 9 critique register). Business-group critiques are thin in this edition. Where a critique is reported, any counter-view in the same or another cited source is reported too. |
| Symmetric treatment of polls | Favorability and job approval are labeled separately; samples (city vs state, adults vs registered vs likely voters) are stated. |
4. Phases and cut-off
| Phase | Dates | Notes |
|---|---|---|
| Transition | Nov 4 – Dec 31, 2025 | Election to inauguration |
| First 100 days | Jan 1 – Apr 10, 2026 | |
| First budget (FY27) | Preliminary (Feb) → Adopted (Jun 30, 2026) | Overlaps the first 100 days for budget items |
| Year 1 | Jul – Dec 2026 | |
| Present | Rolling | Last updated at each edition's cut-off |
Evidence cut-off for this edition: Nov 10, 2026. Known items pending at cut-off include the November 2026 Financial Plan, the rent-freeze ruling, the DC 37 contract and the para-pay lawsuit.
5. How to read a chapter
| Section | Purpose |
|---|---|
| Status banner | Draft level and evidence cut-off |
| Summary disclosure | The chapter's main findings with citations |
| Key questions — status | Each question rated Answered / Partial / Not answered |
| Findings by phase | Summary, a Tactics table and the reversals/critiques for each phase |
| Tactics table | Tactic · Mechanism · Primary source + date · Measured outcome · Cost/trade-off · Preconditions · Transferability (H/M/L + why) |
| Franchise notes | What transfers to other cities and why |
| Open questions & gaps | What the evidence does not yet support (also on the register's Gaps tab) |
| Changelog | Dated edits ("Editor" = the project's editor) |
Transferability ratings: H = works in most U.S. cities with ordinary mayoral or managerial powers; M = transfers with adaptation or specific preconditions; L = depends on NYC-specific powers, scale or State arrangements (see Item 10).
6. Evidence strength by chapter (this edition)
Formula on the register's Gaps tab: Strong = ≥12 rows and ≥50% Primary-gov; Moderate = ≥6 rows and ≥30%; otherwise Thin. Counts cover rows filed under each chapter. Chapters also cite rows filed under other chapters.
| Item | Status | Main evidence limitation |
|---|---|---|
| 01 Management | Draft v0.1 | No transition report; appointee backgrounds not coded |
| 02 Investment | Draft v0.1 | November 2026 Financial Plan pending |
| 03 Operations | Draft v0.2 | 311/MMR data subject to City revision |
| 04 Political | Draft v0.1 | State budget terms from releases and news, not bill text |
| 05 Communications | Draft v0.1 | No event counts; engagement data unverified |
| 06 Hiring | Draft v0.2 | Payroll proxies; postings dataset keeps no history; monthly agency headcount not yet pulled |
| 07 Resources | Draft v0.2 | Budget vs cash only to early November |
| 08 Performance | Draft v0.2 | Campaign platform text not yet in the register |
| 09 Risks | Draft v0.1 | Court dockets from news reports |
| 10 Territory | Draft v0.1 | National baselines partly secondary; 2018 form-of-government data |
The live strength rating for each chapter is on the register's Gaps tab.
7. Independent review
On Nov 10, 2026 an independent reviewer (a separate AI agent with no access to how the drafts were written) checked Items 0, 1, 4, 5, 9 and 10 claim by claim against the register, re-checked 56 sources on the web, and scanned for neutrality. It reported 66 issues (8 high, 29 medium, 29 low); corrections were applied the same day. On Nov 11, 2026 the same kind of review covered Items 2, 3, 7 and 8 (78 issues: 5 high, 28 medium, 45 low; 49 cited rows re-checked on the web) and Item 6 (45 issues: 2 high, 18 medium, 25 low). Corrections were applied the same day. Every Item has now had one full review. The reports are kept in review/ (files dated 2026-11-10 and 2026-11-11).
8. Corrections, forks and license
| Item | Policy |
|---|---|
| Corrections | Anyone, including the administration, its critics and the public, may submit a correction through a public web form (https://forms.gle/CPf4arSjVjdSq9wGA). Submissions are acknowledged within 7 days, tested against the source hierarchy, and logged; corrections requested by a party named in the playbook get a second independent review. Full process and log: the corrections page. |
| Right of reply | Where a chapter reports a critique, the subject's published response is added when one exists. |
| License | CC BY 4.0 for the playbook text and the evidence register. Third-party material (quotes, titles, data by others) is not covered; derivative versions must not imply endorsement; the title "The Mamdani Franchise" is not licensed for modified versions. See the license page. |
| Attribution | "The Mamdani Franchise, franchisemamdani.com, edition of [cut-off date]," with a link to the source. |
| Forks | Cities adapting the playbook are encouraged to keep the EV-ID convention and add their own register rows, so claims stay traceable. |
Open questions & gaps
- (Done 2026-11-10: license, funding disclosure and corrections form confirmed.)
- Run the pre-publication data refresh (Section 2.3).
- Consider an external reviewer for neutrality before release.
Changelog
| Date | Change | By |
|---|---|---|
| 2026-11-09 | Skeleton created (Stage 0) | Editor |
| 2026-11-10 | Corrections form published (https://forms.gle/CPf4arSjVjdSq9wGA) | Editor |
| 2026-11-10 | License (CC BY 4.0) and corrections process (web form) confirmed; LICENSE.md and CORRECTIONS.md added | Editor |
| 2026-11-11 | Section 7 updated: all Items now independently reviewed | Editor |
| 2026-11-10 | Funding disclosure confirmed by publisher; statistics and examples updated after independent review | Editor |
| 2026-11-10 | Draft v0.1: independence statement, evidence standard with register statistics, data-lab rules, neutrality rules, phases, reading guide, corrections and license (proposed) | Editor |
| 2026-11-11 | Register statistics updated to 278 rows; all 8 remaining UNVERIFIED rows resolved (EV-032 recast as an absence check) | Editor |