Julie Menin Is Elected New York City Council Speaker

Julie Menin, a long time woman-about-government, on Wednesday afternoon assumed the speakership of the New York City Council, where she is poised to serve as a structural counterweight to the democratic socialist mayoralty of Zohran Mamdani.

Around 1:30 p.m., the City Council unanimously elected Ms. Menin, 58, to the position, where she will wield power over a legislative body that describes itself as a coequal branch of government to the mayor. She will oversee a staff of about 800, with her headquarters in City Hall’s East Wing — just across the rotunda from the mayor’s office.

A centrist Democrat, Ms. Menin, 58, has become the first Jewish Council speaker and says she will be the first in the body’s history to use its subpoena power to investigate bad actors in the city’s business community. (In an interview, she mentioned debt collectors and the insurance industry as examples of potential investigatory targets.)

Unlike her immediate predecessor, she said she was also willing to wield that power to investigate city agencies, and said she was particularly interested in looking into some of the no-bid contracts of the prior mayoralty.




https://www.nytimes.com/2026/01/07/nyregion/julie-menin-nyc-council-speaker.html