Cea Weaver is still adjusting. For one, there is calling Zohran Mamdani “the mayor” instead of his first name. “I just messed up,” the director of the Mayor’s Office to Protect Tenants says after dropping a stray “Zohran” on the first night we meet. It is also weird to have two phones. We are seated at little desks in a classroom at a Queens high school and she shows me her work phone’s backdrop, which is a photo of Mamdani, not out of professional devotion but so she can tell the otherwise identical devices apart by having her boss’s face looking back at her when she picks one up.
Then there’s getting dressed, especially for events like the one she’s about to headline, the second in a series of Rental Ripoff Hearings the administration has organized to hear tenant grievances across the five boroughs: “I am spending so much money on the RealReal.” Tonight, Weaver is wearing a cropped black jacket and gray slacks — a hint of twee in the floral socks peeking out from her mary-jane heels.
