Mark Levine, looking at a possible Mamdani administration, wants no drama

Mark Levine thrives in a crisis. As COVID-19 ravaged New York City, Levine – then an Upper Manhattan council member without a background in health care – rose in prominence as the city’s unlikely pandemic political conscience. Some even took to calling him the “Anthony Fauci of the City Council.”

Then the chair of the City Council Health Committee, Levine dove headfirst into a sea of media reports and data with a scholar’s hunger. He became an essential resource for New Yorkers desperate for accurate public health information . He was a regular fixture on the news, often putting his fluent Spanish and Hebrew to use. He advocated for racial disparity data. At times, he publicly debated city practices like closing restaurants and hospitals turning away patients to the chagrin of then-Ma