Mamdani Eyes a McKinsey Partner to Lead Economic Development Team

Mayor Zohran Mamdani is leaning heavily toward choosing a government veteran to become New York City’s next economic development leader, filling a glaring vacancy at an agency whose mission is somewhat at odds with the leftist leader’s ideology.

The likely appointee is Anthony E. Shorris, a former deputy mayor under Bill de Blasio who is now a partner at the global consulting firm McKinsey & Company, according to five people familiar with the hiring discussions.

The potential appointment of Mr. Shorris as president of the agency, the Economic Development Corporation, would be likely to appease business leaders who had been concerned that Mr. Mamdani would subvert the E.D.C.’s traditional role of leveraging real estate and tax incentives to lure private capital, add jobs and attract new types of industry to the five boroughs.

The mayor believes in democratic socialism, an ideology that admonishes capitalism as “designed by the owning class to exploit the rest of us for their own profit” and promotes “a system where ordinary people have a real voice in our workplaces, neighborhoods and society,” according to the Democratic Socialists of America’s website. Mr. Mamdani is a member of the organization and won the mayoralty with its backing.

That the mission of the E.D.C. is not neatly aligned with the mayor’s political philosophy is evidenced by how drawn out and complicated the search for a president has been.

On Jan. 2, one day after Mr. Mamdani took office, the city’s incoming deputy mayor for economic justice, Julie Su, circulated a memo demanding that every E.D.C. program be re-evaluated to ensure the organization was not focused solely on economic growth, but also on justice.

Under former Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg, the agency was involved in the creation of Hudson Yards, a large-scale project which, with the help of tax breaks, brought luxury homes and shops to the West Side of Manhattan. Under Mr. de Blasio, the agency oversaw an ultimately failed effort to persuade Amazon to set up a headquarters in Queens, stirring widespread anger on the left.

Over the past six months, Mr. Mamdani has grappled with the choice of who should lead the nonprofit corporation. City Hall leaders considered at least 10 candidates for E.D.C. president. Some were traditional, pro-business types; others were more skeptical of corporations, including a consumer protection advocate.

With the city’s job growth sluggish — a concern that Democratic leaders in New York have been raising — the mayor’s team has been stuck. An internal split over who to pick ensued, leaving the agency without a permanent leader for more than half the year. In the interim, Jeanny Pak, an official at the agency, has been filling in as temporary president.

But Mr. Mamdani and other city officials have recently signaled that they were close to naming a new president.

“We are in the final processes of interviews for that role,” the mayor said in an interview with The New York Times published on Saturday. “I want them to bring a set of skills that can deliver on economic development in a way that goes beyond what we’ve seen in recent years,” he said. He added that the agency is overseeing his goal of developing city-run grocery stores.

In choosing Mr. Shorris, the mayor would have someone versed in government, politics and business running the agency.

He was first deputy to Mr. de Blasio, having managed more than two dozen city agencies, including the sprawling Department of Education. He was in a leadership role for some of Mr. de Blasio’s top achievements, such as the expansion of prekindergarten, as well as one of that administration’s largest early missteps that resulted in a former nursing home being sold to a luxury condo developer.

He also ran the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey, worked as a commissioner under Mayor Edward I. Koch and was a consultant to a union health fund.

Mr. Shorris, 69, could not be reached for comment. Mr. Mamdani’s press team did not immediately return a request for comment.

The uncertainty around the agency’s leadership has led to persistent concern from real estate and business leaders in the city that Mr. Mamdani was not adequately focused on expanding and diversifying the local economy.

Gregory Morris, the chief executive of the New York City Employment and Training Coalition, has criticized City Hall’s seeming inattention toward E.D.C., and said in an interview that a new leader should refocus the agency singularly around job growth.

“It’s my hope that a new executive that comes in is committed to economic growth and development,” Mr. Morris said. “This is a moment where we need to be very specific about what economic mobility and equity look like and how New Yorkers are benefiting from our city’s investments.”

The co-head of the city chapter of the D.S.A., Gustavo Gordillo, critiqued the E.D.C. in a previous interview with The New York Times, saying had “become a concierge service for a small number of wealthy New Yorkers,” and suggested the administration shift its focus to “a pro-worker local economy.”