Mayor Zohran Mamdani spent parts of Friday and Sunday campaigning alongside Gov. Kathy Hochul for her reelection. On Monday, two leading figures in his administration argued that tackling the cost-of-living crisis requires more than one-time payments, emphasizing longer-term efforts to bring down costs — just as the governor's $1 billion energy rebate checks are landing in millions of New Yorkers' mailboxes.

Mamdani's chief of staff, Elle Bisgaard-Church , said at a New York City Policy Forum event on affordability that one-time handouts disempower people. Lina Khan, the former Federal Trade Commission chair who now chairs the city's Economic Development Corporation board , a lso played down the role of one-time checks, arguing that Mamdani's agenda is focused on tackling the forces driving up costs in the first place.

Neither official singled out Hochul's rebate checks by name. But their remarks came just three days after Mamdani praised the governor's affordability record while campaigning alongside her in Brooklyn , crediting her with helping make New York "a state that working families can afford."

Hochul has touted the rebate program as a way to help families struggling with rising utility bills and other expenses.

"We're putting money directly back in New Yorkers' pockets by sending energy rebate checks to millions of families as part of our affordability agenda," Hochul said when announcing the program.

Hochul's office pointed to an Oct. 15 statement in which the governor stressed that the checks are only one part of her affordability agenda, citing utility ratepayer protections, expanded child care, an expanded child tax credit and middle-class tax cuts.

Despite their ideological differences, Hochul, a moderate Democrat, and Mamdani, a democratic socialist, have forged a close partnership on expanding free child care , a central campaign promise the mayor is now working to deliver by the end of his first term.

Asked whether Mamdani supports Hochul's energy rebate program, City Hall did not directly address the checks.

"We welcome all solutions that deliver for working families, including our critical partnership with Governor Hochul to lay the ground for universal child care across all five boroughs," a mayoral spokesperson said, adding that the initiative would save families $20,000 per child annually.

In her opening remarks Monday, Bisgaard-Church laid out a broader vision of affordability built around universal public services, stronger unions and collective ownership, arguing that government should do more than provide temporary financial assistance.

"Means-tested programs segregate and encumber people. Private sector capture extracts wealth and tilts programs away from public welfare, and one-time handouts disempower people," she said.

Bisgaard-Church, who helped develop Mamdani's mayoral campaign platform two years ago this month, said the administration's approach grew out of a belief that addressing the city's cost-of-living crisis would require redistributing "money and power."

Bisgaard-Church also suggested that the growing popularity of affordability as a political message has diluted its meaning, calling it “a somewhat anodyne tagline for numerous politicians, many of whom do not share our analysis or our ambitions.”

Later, Khan described Mamdani's affordability agenda as focused on challenging corporate interests and addressing the underlying forces driving up prices, with less emphasis on one-time checks and tax breaks.

"This is not as much about one-time checks. This is not about one-time tax breaks," Khan said. "It's really about how do we address some of the upstream drivers."