Mamdani eyeing MTA exec Jamie Torres-Springer for key role; wife helps lead mayoral transition team in New York

Chris Sommerfeldt, New York Daily News on Dec 3, 2025

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NEW YORK — Jamie Torres-Springer, a senior MTA official and the husband of one of Zohran Mamdani’s transition team heads, is under consideration to become the incoming mayor’s top operations deputy at City Hall, the Daily News has learned.

Torres-Springer is currently the president of construction and development at the MTA, a role he has served in since 2021 and in which he’s tasked with overseeing the Transportation Authority’s sprawling capital budget.

Sources with knowledge of the matter told The News this week that Mamdani’s team is looking into poaching Torres-Springer from the MTA to make him the deputy mayor for operations, one of the most powerful posts in City Hall with oversight of key agencies like the Departments of Transportation, Buildings, Parks and Environmental Protection. Before joining the MTA, Torres-Springer was commissioner of the city’s Department of Design and Construction, another agency in the deputy mayor for operations portfolio.

Torres-Springer’s wife is Maria Torres-Springer, one of Mamdani’s three transition team co-chairs.

Asked Wednesday if Maria Torres-Springer has had any hand in advancing her husband as a deputy mayor candidate, Mamdani spokeswoman Monica Klein only said: “When we have personnel announcements to make, we will announce them.”

Maria Torres-Springer was Eric Adams’ first deputy mayor until she resigned in early 2025 over concerns about the outgoing mayor’s federal corruption indictment. Currently the president of the Charles H. Revson Foundation, Maria Torres-Springer is not expected to join Mamdani’s administration after he’s sworn in on Jan. 1.

But with his wife co-leading the transition, Jamie Torres-Springer’s appointment could make for bad optics, one source close to the Mamdani team argued. Still, that source and several others close to the Mamdani transition argued Jamie Torres-Springer is highly qualified for the deputy mayor gig and said he would, on the merits, be a solid appointment.

Maria Torres-Springer didn’t immediately return a request for comment. Neither did her husband nor MTA reps.

According to sources familiar with the matter, Mamdani’s team has also been eyeing Veronica Vanterpool and Midori Valdivia, both of whom also hail from the public transit world, for the deputy mayor for operations job.

Valdivia, the MTA’s former chief of staff, is currently a member of the Transportation Authority’s board, appointed by Adams, assigned to focus on New York City’s bus systems as well as the LIRR and Metro-North, among a few other focuses. Currently a transit construction lead at development firm AECOM, Vanterpool used to be a deputy administrator at the Federal Transit Administration under President Biden and was before that an MTA board member as well.

The Mamdani team’s apparent focus on picking someone with public transit experience for the City Hall operations post is notable.

While the operations perch comes with oversight of a variety of non-transit agencies, the city Department of Transportation is expected to be especially important for Mamdani, who made it a central promise of his campaign to make the city’s public buses fast and free. The state-run MTA runs the buses themselves, but the DOT oversees the city’s roadways and development of busway networks, which Mamdani has pledged to as mayor expand.

Mamdani also could benefit from staffing his administration with transit veterans as he could face obstacles to his agenda from the Trump administration, which recently sought to derail the DOT’s development of the 34th St. busway in Manhattan, citing a need for federal input, as previously reported by The News.

Also as previously reported by The News, Mamdani’s team has been looking into appointing someone to the DOT commissioner role who has deep experience in street redesign projects.

With less than a month to go until he’s sworn in, Mamdani has so far only officially appointed three top members of his administration: Dean Fuleihan as first deputy mayor, Elle Bisgaard-Church as City Hall chief of staff and Jessica Tisch as NYPD commissioner.

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— With Evan Simko-Bednarski