Zohran Mamdani’s choice for a key foreign policy position in his administration shows the power of a progressive Tammany Hall.
Zohran Mamdani’s choice for a key foreign policy position in his administration shows the power of a progressive Tammany Hall.
F rom the heyday of Tammany Hall to today, political machines have understood that with victory come spoils. Like Tammany, the far-left machine responsible for Zohran Mamdani’s win in last year’s New York City mayoral race is eagerly reaping the rewards of its key support for the new socialist mayor.
Last month, Mayor Mamdani announced the appointment of a leading figure of this increasingly influential left-wing machine to a high-level position in city government. Ana María Archila, a co-leader of the Working Families Party (WFP), was appointed by the mayor to be the commissioner of the Mayor’s Office of International Affairs. With political support during the campaign comes political patronage under the new administration.
While political ties to the new administration shouldn’t disqualify someone from serving in city government, there is little in the former WFP leader’s background that would suggest she is a good fit for or up to the task of leading the international affairs office. Archila’s work experience, after all, is as a professional political organizer and apparatchik in the far-left political ecosphere.
Starting in 2023, Archila led the Working Families Party as one of two co-directors. Under her leadership, the WFP scored key electoral victories — most notably, Mamdani’s mayoral election in 2025 — and continued its push to move the Democratic Party to the left. Impressive? Sure, but hardly a qualification to lead an office tasked with interacting with the city’s many foreign diplomats and serving as the Big Apple’s envoy to foreign states.
Before taking the helm at the WFP and working to elect progressives to office, Archila was herself a candidate. In 2022, Archila ran for lieutenant governor on a ticket with gubernatorial candidate Jumaane Williams, the New York City public advocate. As the most progressive candidates in these primaries, Williams and Archila received the backing of the WFP. But their candidacies failed miserably. In their Democratic primaries, both Williams and Archila were trounced by Kathy Hochul and Antonio Delgado, respectively. (Until 2026, candidates for governor and lieutenant governor ran in separate primary elections.)
Archila’s 2022 run for office came after years of working her way through the vast network of far-left nonprofits and progressive causes. She worked for the Latin American Integration Center before it merged with the progressive immigration advocacy organization Make the Road by Walking. In the new entity — Make the Road New York — Archila served as co–executive director. From there, Archila went on to lead and serve as co–executive director of another ideologically aligned progressive nonprofit, the Center for Popular Democracy.
As she rose through the ranks of the far-left nonprofit universe, Archila, thanks to one brief encounter caught on camera, became something of a star among progressives. During the fight over the U.S. Supreme Court nomination of Brett Kavanaugh, Archila and a fellow progressive activist were caught on camera aggressively confronting Senator Jeff Flake over his support for Kavanaugh’s nomination. Video of the women verbally attacking Flake in a Capitol Hill elevator went viral among progressives opposed to Kavanaugh’s nomination; Archila became an instant folk hero of the left.
Archila has certainly made a remarkable climb to the top of this new, far-left machine, but it’s hard to see how it prepares her to manage New York City’s relationships with the world’s diplomats.
And Archila’s lack of qualifications isn’t the only problematic aspect of her appointment. The new commissioner’s ardent and entrenched progressive ideology, as well as the far-left positions taken by the organizations with which she has been affiliated, make Archila a less than ideal person to serve as one of Gotham’s key representatives and public faces to the wider world.
For instance, the political party Archila once led, the WFP, has taken extreme, out-of-the-mainstream positions on America’s foreign policy. Most notably, the WFP, like so many of its allies on the hard left, has been consistently and forcefully anti-Israel. Within weeks of the October 7, 2023, massacre and before the major fighting in the Gaza War had begun, the WFP, under Archila’s leadership, was already calling for an immediate cease-fire. In early November of that year, the WFP called on Congress to defeat a bill to provide critical military assistance to Israel.
The WFP has even pushed this anti-Israel agenda at the state level. Under Archila, the WFP endorsed the passage of the so-called Not On Our Dime Act in the New York State legislature. The bill — which was sponsored by then-Assemblyman Zohran Mamdani — would prohibit New York nonprofits from providing funds and services to certain Israeli activities. While the bill gained support from many far-left advocates, it proved to be too radical for many centrist Democrats in the state legislature and has yet to be voted on by either the assembly or the state senate.
During her tenure as head of the WFP, Archila made opposition to Israel a major component of the party’s electoral campaigns. In 2024, the WFP joined a coalition of far-left organizations, which included the Justice Democrats and the Democratic Socialists of America, that was formed to support anti-Israel members of Congress in primaries against moderate, pro-Israel Democrats. That same year, the WFP endorsed the “Leave It Blank” campaign, an effort to encourage Democratic presidential primary voters to leave their ballots blank as a protest of President Joe Biden’s purported support for Israel’s military campaign in Gaza.
Hostility toward Israel is even dictating the WFP’s decisions regarding elections that are still years away. Under Archila’s leadership, the party announced in November 2025 that it would, in 2028, recruit and support a primary challenger to John Fetterman, Pennsylvania’s enthusiastically pro-Israel Democratic senator. It’s hard to believe that the maverick Democrat’s frequent criticisms of the pro-Hamas far left weren’t the main reason behind Archila’s and the WFP’s decision to back a challenger to Fetterman more than two years before he faces primary voters.
It shouldn’t come as a surprise that Mayor Mamdani would name Archila to such a key role in his administration. Her party’s support was key to his win in the Democratic mayoral primary, and the two could not be more in sync ideologically. But none of that means she will be an effective servant of New York City or a capable representative on a larger, international stage. Archila’s appointment does, however, confirm one thing: The radicals of today’s left have wholly embraced the means and methods of the political machines of a bygone era.