Before Zohran Mamdani sped off to Washington, D.C., to meet with Donald Trump about securing funds for a massive housing project in Queens, he was taking fire — including from some members of the Democratic Establishment — for not condemning a snowball fight in Washington Square Park. Earlier this week, police were filmed getting pelted with snowballs as they walked through a battle that was being filmed for Sidetalk, a popular YouTube show. Multiple officers were struck in the face, and the NYPD said two were treated for face, head, and neck injuries. The severity of the injuries isn’t known, but at least one man, a 27-year-old, was arrested. NYPD commissioner Jessica Tisch called the incident “disgraceful” and “criminal.”

“I’ll say, as to anyone looking to do harm to the police, my message is very clear: I am a protective Jewish mother. Don’t mess with my cops,” Tisch told the New York Post. Mayor Mamdani was milder in condemning the incident. “I’ve said time and time again that, having seen these videos, to me it was a snowball fight that got out of hand, and it should be treated accordingly,” he told reporters, who have spent the past several days asking him repeatedly about the snow thrown at cops. He also went viral — in a good way, for him — by repelling a straight-faced question about whether he’d consider banning snowball fights.

The Police Benevolent Association, which has bedeviled many New York mayors, declared Mamdani’s  response “a complete failure of leadership.” By allegedly “ignoring their injuries and dismissing the incident, the mayor has sent a disgraceful message to every police officer who serves this city, and a dangerous message to every person who might be looking to attack a police officer in the future,” the union boss said in a statement.

The episode will not leave a mark on Mamdani’s permanent record. This snow will melt, and New Yorkers will move on.

But the tensions on display between Mamdani and the PBA — as well as in the very public disagreement with Tisch — are not going anywhere. If anything, they will become more pronounced. Tisch and Mamdani have fundamentally different politics; they’ve gotten along well so far because Mamdani doesn’t antagonize her, and, unlike some of her predecessors, she is not a swaggering media hound. Were Bill Bratton Mamdani’s police commissioner, the two would be at war. Bratton survived a little over two years under Bill de Blasio. Under the democratic socialist Mamdani, two months would be a stretch. Tisch and Mamdani, for now, can coexist.

But the relationship seems to work only as long as Mamdani doesn’t challenge her too directly. When asked by reporters about areas of disagreement with his police commissioner — including a gang database that Tisch wants maintained — Mamdani refuses to provide a full answer. NYPD commissioners have always tended to behave like rogue operators with the officers serving as their constituency — a city unto itself. Peace is usually found between mayors and police bosses when they leave each other alone. This is how Ray Kelly survived all 12 years of Mike Bloomberg.

One major question hangs over Mamdani right now: How long can he not interfere with Tisch? Mamdani’s NYPD, right now, looks like Eric Adams’s NYPD. The mayor’s progressive base hasn’t agitated about it yet because it’s focused on the potential policy victories of universal child care and a rent freeze. On the issues he campaigned on, Mamdani has mostly stayed true to who he is, and there’s a chance, with Trump’s assistance, he might be able to jump-start Sunnyside Yard, the most ambitious housing project in more than a half-century. For the moment, that is enough to satisfy the left.

What if the PBA grows more assertive? PBA opposition caused tremendous damage to de Blasio’s mayoralty. In 2014, police became enraged when de Blasio said he cautioned his biracial son about dealing with law enforcement. Then, not long after he made those remarks, two NYPD officers were murdered on the job. PBA president Patrick Lynch infamously declared that de Blasio had blood on his hands. De Blasio subsequently edged away from his reform mission. His popularity, in some ways, never recovered.

Lynch’s successor, Patrick Hendry, seems primed for battle with Mamdani. His rank and file would likely support him. There is a major difference between Hendry and Lynch, though, and it works to Mamdani’s advantage: Hendry is basically an unknown; most New Yorkers haven’t even heard of him. Lynch, by contrast, led the PBA for more than two decades and was a TV and tabloid fixture. He was, like Bratton, a master of publicity, functioning as a kind of shadow mayor under multiple administrations. There was also a local media ecosystem that amplified Lynch and either explicitly or implicitly supported his agenda. Today, that ecosystem, including local talk radio and the tabloids, is diminished, and its audience is aging. Their law-and-order worldview is being challenged by the younger demographic that put Mamdani in City Hall.

But Hendry and Tisch are still far less compelling political figures than the mayor. As a newly minted global star, Mamdani now wields powers de Blasio never possessed. A decade ago, Lynch, the New York Post, and Bratton could systematically weaken a progressive mayor. The Post, these days, is trying to do the same with Mamdani. The terrain has shifted, though. It’s not obvious that Mamdani’s political opponents got what they wanted out of the great snowball fight of 2026.

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