Who is Lina Khan, co-chair of Mamdani’s mayoral transition team?
New York City Mayor-elect Zahran Mamdani (D) announced on Wednesday that former Federal Trade Commission (FTC) Chairwoman Lina Khan will co-chair his transition team.
Khan will lead the transition team alongside former New York City First Deputy Mayor Maria Torres Springer (D), former New York City Deputy Mayor for Health and Human Services Melanie Hartzog, United Way of New York City CEO Grace Bonilla, and Ilana Leopold, a Mamdani campaign advisor and aide to former New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio.
By electing the 34-year-old democratic socialist, New Yorkers sent “a clear message this week that it’s time to build a city that working people can actually afford,” Khan said in a statement.
Here are three things to know about Khan.
Before the Federal Trade Commission
After graduating from Williams College in 2010, Khan began her work in antitrust as a fellow with the Open Markets Program at New America, a think tank dedicated to policy solutions in education, economic security, technology, and other fields.
During her four years with New America, Khan researched “the concentration of power in the American political economy and the evolution of antitrust laws,” according to her profile on the think tank’s website. It also reported on consolidation in agriculture, finance, technology, media and commodities.
In 2014, her final year at New America, Khan served as policy director for Zephyr Teachout’s New York gubernatorial campaign.
Teachout, an antitrust lawyer, unsuccessfully challenged incumbent Andrew Cuomo in the Democratic primary, whom Mamdani defeated twice en route to winning the mayoral race. Cuomo received 63 percent of the vote to Teachout’s 33 percent.
Khan then earned her law degree from Yale University in 2017, and worked in the office of former Federal Trade Commission Commissioner Rohit Chopra, an appointee of President Trump and director of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau under former President Biden.
She also served as counsel to the House Judiciary Subcommittee on Antitrust, Commercial, and Administrative Law, and served as an associate professor at Columbia Law School.
Tenure at FTC
In May 2021, Biden nominated Khan to serve as Chairman of the Federal Trade Commission. Her appointment was confirmed by the Senate the following month by a vote of 69 to 28, making her the youngest chair of the committee in its century-plus history.
While in this position, Khan took an aggressive stance towards curbing corporate power. Working with the Justice Department’s Antitrust Division, the FTC under Khan’s leadership blocked dozens of deals and took on the likes of Amazon, Microsoft, Kroger, and Ticketmaster.
Citing the interest of consumers, Khan sought to crack down on unfair business practices such as “unsolicited fees” and mandatory arbitration clauses.
Her work has received praise from progressives, like Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.), and conservative populists, like then-Sen. J.D. Vance (R-Ohio). It also angered Wall Street.
During an interview with The New York Times in June, Khan expanded on her antitrust philosophy, saying that “antitrust as a philosophy and framework actually takes a skeptical stance toward unchecked concentrations of economic power.”
“There was just a recognition that there are all kinds of artificial ways to restrict people’s freedom because of unchecked corporate power, and if the FTC were to take up that, that would be very popular and would materially improve people’s lives,” Khan added.
Time since FTC
Since leaving the FTC after Trump took office, Khan has returned to Columbia Law. According to the school’s website, Khan taught a course in general economic law last spring, and is currently teaching courses in antitrust, trade regulation, and economic law and governance.
She is scheduled to teach general economic law again in the spring.
She is now co-chairing the transition for Mamdani, who will soon become the youngest mayor in New York City’s history.
“What we saw last night was not just New Yorkers electing a new mayor, but clearly a politics in which corporate power and outside money clearly dictate our policies,” Khan said at a news conference on Wednesday.
Khan said Mamdani has a “clear mandate for change,” and said she and the co-chairs “will make sure we build a department that can hit the ground running from day one and deliver for all New Yorkers.”
