Yes, New York will soon be under new management. But Zohran Mamdani is just the start | Carys Afoko

A relatively unknown thirtysomething parachuted on to the national stage and into high political office. Energising to some of the Democratic base but lacking support from the party establishment. Not Zohran Mamdani but Lina Khan, who Joe Biden appointed to chair the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) in 2021 when she was just 32. Khan, who left her role at the FTC when Trump returned to the White House, is now one of five women appointed to the mayor-elect of New York’s transition team.

Khan is the most exciting pick for a few reasons. She entered the FTC with an ambitious mandate to transform the government agency, broaden its focus to increase scrutiny of corporate mergers and do more to protect consumers – and got results. She brought down the price of inhalers (routinely being sold for hundreds of dollars) by tackling price gouging by pharmaceutical companies. She blocked a huge supermarket merger and returned more than $60m to Amazon drivers in unpaid tips. All of her achievements were delivered in four years, while navigating a bureaucracy that was sometimes hostile to her leadership.

Mamdani has a mandate from New Yorkers, but he can expect opposition from the rich and powerful, as well as many Democrats, to some of his flagship policies. Khan, who made her name calling out big tech monopolies, knows first-hand what it’s like to have influential opponents. After she was confirmed in post at the FTC with bipartisan support, Meta and Amazon tried to get her to recuse herself from investigating them. In the 2024 presidential race, two billionaire Democratic donors publicly called on Kamala Harris to fire Khan if she became president. The Daily Show host Jon Stewart claimed that Apple was resistant to him even interviewing the FTC chair on his podcast because of her views. Big tech and Wall Street execs have already been grumbling about her latest appointment, seeing it as a “shot across the bow”. What better sign that the mayor-elect is on the right track?