New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani wants to erase former Mayor Ed Koch's name from the Queensboro Bridge, a landmark spanning the East River that has carried Koch's name since 2011. The push, first reported by the New York Post, has drawn sharp pushback from political consultants, ordinary New Yorkers, and at least one City Council member who flatly refused to go along.
Mamdani's position came to light through a questionnaire distributed by the Jim Owles Liberal LGBT Democratic Club, a political organization that has pressed candidates for years on whether they support stripping Koch's name from the 59th Street Bridge. On the campaign trail last year, Mamdani answered plainly: "Yes, I support renaming."
He was not alone. The Post found that sixteen other council members either supported or would "strongly consider" passing legislation to remove Koch's name, based on a review of the club's questionnaires. Only one council member, Virginia Maloney, gave a terse "No." The Jim Owles Club did not endorse Maloney.
Koch served three terms as mayor, from 1978 to 1989. The World War II veteran and second Jewish mayor of New York became famous for greeting constituents with a simple question: "How'm I doing?" He once filmed a promotional video at the foot of the Queensboro Bridge, declaring, "Welcome to my bridge!"
In 2011, the City Council and then-Mayor Michael Bloomberg officially renamed the span in Koch's honor, just two years before Koch died at age 88.
Now, a coalition of progressive politicians wants that honor revoked. The stated reason: Koch's alleged mishandling of the 1980s AIDS crisis. Allen Roskoff, president of the Jim Owles Club, has been the driving force behind the campaign. Roskoff claimed Koch did little while thousands of gay New Yorkers died of AIDS, including his own partner and the club's namesake, Jim Owles.
Roskoff called the bridge's current name "disrespectful to thousands of people who died of AIDS at the hands of Ed Koch." He added: "Of course I want the bridge renaming to happen."
The club's questionnaire framed the issue in loaded terms, asking candidates: "In view of the fact that Ed Koch has been documented to have caused the deaths of scores of people with AIDS, excused city council members who voted against the gay rights bill and was blatantly racist, would you support renaming the former Queensboro Bridge?"
That is not a neutral survey question. It is an argument dressed up as an inquiry, and most of the politicians who received it answered exactly the way the club wanted.
City Council Speaker Julie Menin, whose district includes the bridge, told the Jim Owles Club in her own questionnaire that she favored renaming the span simply "the 59th Street Bridge." But when the Post contacted her office on Sunday, a spokesperson delivered a different message.
"Speaker Menin does not support efforts to rename the Ed Koch Bridge, and would not support any legislation to do so. She was approached in 2025 to add her name as a co-sponsor to such a bill and declined to do so."
So Menin told the activist club one thing on paper and said the opposite when a reporter called. That gap between the questionnaire answer and the public statement tells you something about how the game works: say what the interest group wants to hear, then walk it back when sunlight hits.
Mamdani, for his part, has not walked anything back. The democratic socialist mayor has already drawn scrutiny for a string of controversial decisions during his young tenure, from broken promises on housing and homelessness to spending fights that have raised questions about his governing priorities.
The Post identified a long roster of New York politicians lining up behind the renaming push. City Comptroller Mark Levine is described as being on the "anti-Koch bandwagon." Public Advocate Jumaane Williams, a former council member, has pointed to his vote against the 2011 Koch Bridge renaming as a point of pride.
Former City Council Speaker Adrienne Adams, now a Democratic candidate for lieutenant governor alongside Gov. Kathy Hochul, is listed among supporters of the effort. So are Rep. Dan Goldman, his House District 10 rival Brad Lander, City Councilwoman Julie Won, and House 12 candidates Alex Bores and Jack Schlossberg.
Even Brooklyn Councilwoman Sandy Nurse, who called the issue something other than a burning priority, left the door open. "It's not my hill to die on, but if people want support, I am OK with that," Nurse said.
That kind of passive acquiescence is how progressive litmus tests become policy. Nobody wants to be the one who says no to an activist group that controls endorsements, except, apparently, Virginia Maloney, who paid for her honesty by losing the club's backing.
This pattern, where activist organizations use endorsement questionnaires to extract policy commitments, then leverage those commitments into legislation, has become a familiar feature of New York's progressive machinery. It is worth noting that Mamdani has faced questions about the political company he keeps, including a DSA-backed House challenger whose social media trail raised its own set of problems.
Not everyone in the city is on board with the renaming crusade. The Post spoke with residents near the bridge, and their reactions were blunt.
Margarita Thomas, a 40-year-old native of Romania who lives several blocks from the Koch Bridge, called the effort what many New Yorkers are thinking:
"It would be a crime! They should repair the subway, they should clean the city. They should get rid of the rats, not rename bridges. That's absolutely imbecilic."
Wilson Crow, a New Yorker who grew up under Koch's leadership, said activists and politicians should leave the bridge alone. "They shouldn't [rename it]. It's no big deal. I don't know why they are making a big deal about it. It doesn't bother anybody," Crow said. He added that the AIDS crisis was "nobody's power and control" and that Koch "couldn't stop" it.
Mike Herlihy, a 38-year-old resident, put it simply: "There's a lot bigger fish to fry in New York or the world." He added: "It's wild that people have all this energy on things like that."
That frustration captures something real. New York faces a subway system in disrepair, a persistent rat problem, rising costs, and public safety concerns that dominate the daily lives of working residents. The energy being poured into erasing a dead man's name from a bridge is energy not being spent on any of those problems.
Veteran political consultant Hank Sheinkopf did not mince words about the renaming campaign. He called it cancel culture run amok.
"This is insane. It's nuts. Koch is dead. Leave him alone!"
Sheinkopf said Roskoff "doesn't like Koch and won't let go." That assessment may be uncharitable, but it points to something worth examining: the Jim Owles Club has been pressing this issue for years, cycling through election after election, extracting pledges from candidates who need the group's endorsement to survive competitive primaries.
The result is a political environment where a single-issue activist organization can, over time, assemble a supermajority of elected officials willing to strip a former mayor's name from a public landmark, not because voters demanded it, but because the endorsement math required it.
Mamdani's willingness to join that effort fits a pattern. The mayor has already broken a 61-year mayoral tradition by skipping the Israel Day Parade, signaling that he is willing to discard longstanding civic norms when they conflict with his political base's preferences.
And the spending priorities of his administration have drawn their own scrutiny. Mamdani has pushed for tens of millions in additional taxpayer commitments for pet projects even as basic city services struggle.
Ed Koch was a complicated figure who governed New York through a difficult era. Reasonable people can disagree about his record on AIDS, on policing, on race. But the renaming push is not really a good-faith reckoning with history. It is a political loyalty test administered by an activist club, enforced through endorsement leverage, and embraced by politicians who need progressive credentials more than they need to fix the subway.
Koch served the city for twelve years. The bridge bore his name for over a decade before anyone with real political power tried to take it down. The push gained traction not because public opinion shifted, but because the composition of New York's political class did.
The ordinary New Yorkers interviewed near the bridge, Thomas, Crow, Herlihy, did not ask for this fight. They asked for clean streets, working trains, and leaders who spend their time on problems that actually affect daily life.
When your city has rats the size of house cats and a mayor focused on renaming bridges, you do not have a leadership problem. You have a priorities problem, and the people who live with the consequences know it, even if the people in office do not.
