Julie Menin always gets her way

"The newly elected speaker of the New York City Council left her Upper East Side home before dawn, heading to Hell's Kitchen to greet sanitation workers as they prepared to battle the Jan. 25 storm. Clad in a puffer jacket and knit hat, she paced down the streetin West Harlem to see how snow was piling up on the roads."

"At Isaacs Houses back on the Upper East Side, she distributed hot meals to residents of the public housing complex. In the evening, she was in University Heights in the Bronx, visiting New Yorkers who'd been displaced from their apartments by a fire. Later that night, she offered her assessment on the Mamdani administration's efforts to respond to the storm: cleanup was a mixed bag. While city workers deserved credit, there were real gaps in emergency response efforts."

"Menin rivaled Mayor Zohran Mamdani's own blitz across the city, looking more like an executive than a typical legislative leader. Political insiders speculated, inevitably, that she was laying the groundwork for a future mayoral run. Allies and colleagues of Menin described her snowstorm response as Julie being Julie. "I think she has a bias toward action," Assembly Member Keith Powers said. "She's not one to sit on her hands when there is something to do.""

Julie Menin mobilized across New York City during the first major snowfall, leaving her Upper East Side home before dawn to greet sanitation workers in Hell's Kitchen and inspect snow accumulation in West Harlem. She distributed hot meals at Isaacs Houses, visited residents displaced by a Bronx fire, and evaluated the city cleanup as mixed—crediting city workers while noting gaps in emergency response. Her on-the-ground approach paralleled the mayor's blitz and generated speculation about a future mayoral run. Colleagues characterize her as action-oriented, tenacious, and focused on steering the council toward tangible accomplishments.

Read at City & State NY