Editor’s note: A previous version of this story appeared under the title, “Researcher Confirms Zohran Mamdani Won’t Be NYC’s 111th Mayor,” which is technically a true and accurate headline, but, as many of you have noted, feels a little confusing. It’s been changed for the sake of clarity.
When Queens assemblyman Zohran Mamdani is sworn in as the next mayor of New York City on New Year’s Day, he apparently won’t be, as the official count suggests, the 111th man to hold the city’s highest office.
You may reasonably ask yourself how that works—Mamdani, is, after all, succeeding Eric Adams, a man who proudly refers to himself as “110” because he was, through an official and sacred governmental process, appointed the 110th mayor of New York during his inauguration ceremony on January, 1, 2022, which was a materially observable and thoroughly documented event.
But the numbers didn’t seem right, presumably not even then, to at least one history snob in D.C. According to Gothamist, historian Paul Hortenstine had been researching the ties between colonial-era New York City mayors and slavery when he noticed in the papers of Governor Edmund Andros a reference to Mayor Mattias Nicholls. But the documents were from 1675, and Nicolls had served his term between 1671 and 1672, suggesting a second term, and the city’s records never acknowledged it. Hortenstine claimed to have found additional evidence for a non-consecutive term in other documents, as well.
From there, the baton went to Michael Lorenzini, a researcher at the city’s Department of Records, who, after reading about Hortenstine’s contention, managed to dig up a note from a 1674 hearing Nicolls presided over in the “Mayor’s Court Minute Book,” which confirmed he served another term between 1674 and 1675, and that he was, in fact, both the city’s sixth and eighth mayor. And if you’re keeping count (the way you’d hope official records might), the addition of Nicoll’s non-consecutive term, which are numbered separately on the official record, would make Mamdani mayor 112, not 111.
What’s wilder than a miscount on the official record heading into its fifth century is that Hortenstine isn’t the first, second, or even third person to call out a second Nicolls term and the need to adjust the math. “It’s been pointed out, at least going back to 1935, that Nicolls had the second term and somehow nobody really paid attention,” Lorenzini told Gothamist, hat-tipping to Queens College history professor Kenneth Scott. State librarian Peter R. Christoph also campaigned for a correction in his 1989 book, Record of the New York Genealogical and Biographical Society.
It’s unclear which number Mamdani will actually be sworn in as, how he’ll prefer to be referred to, or if anyone other than academics and obsessives actually care, but it does seem like there’s an opportunity here to set the record straight from the jump. We’ll have to wait and see if he takes it.
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