Mayor Zohran Mamdani and Gov. Kathy Hochul coincidentally both patted themselves on the back for filling in potholes Mondays — drawing scorn for celebrating doing the basics of their jobs.
The sometimes-strained allies independently held overlapping events in the Big Apple and Albany to highlight their respective efforts to tackle the street scourges after the brutal winter’s freeze-thaw cycle left roads more pockmarked than usual.
Mamdani even donned a hardhat on Staten Island to help fill the city’s 100,000th pothole since he took office Jan. 1 — but his self-congratulatory photo op left many unimpressed, especially Forgotten Borough pols who didn’t get an invite to the event.
“Taking credit for filling potholes is like taking credit for changing a lightbulb. It’s what you’re supposed to do,” scoffed Councilman Frank Morano (R-Staten Island).
Morano said Staten Island’s West Shore Expressway was particularly savaged by the winter — and noted local and state officials have yet to find a more permanent solution to the perennial problem.
“The problem is we’re patching the same roads over and over instead of fixing them properly,” he said.
“I wrote to the state DOT [Department of Transportation] asking for a full repaving of that lane and didn’t even get the courtesy of a reply.”
The worst winter to hit New York in years — including back-to-back winter storms that dumped feet of snow over the Big Apple — left motorists on edge having to contend with chewed up roads.
New York City denizens made roughly 32,000 pothole complaints since the New Year, according to 311 data – about three times as many as the same span in 2025 and a record spike.
Mamdani, under fire for his mixed-bag response to the winter storms, presided over three weekend “pothole blitzes” during March that had city transportation workers rising early to smooth out the streets.
“For weeks, DOT crews have been out before sunrise, filling potholes and making our streets safer and more accessible,” Mamdani said in a statement.
“This is the often-invisible work that keeps our city moving, and it’s exactly what New Yorkers deserve: a government that not only hears their concerns, but delivers solutions big and small.”
Likewise, Hochul announced that a state effort will fill in 44,000 potholes this week out of a planned 175,000 during April.
The governor said by the end of 2026 she hopes to beat the state’s record of 1.3 million potholes filled in a year.
Her press team spotlighted the lofty goal by releasing a cheeky, grindhouse movie-style poster depicting a crazed-looking Hochul steamrolling a road with the title: “Kathy Hochul: Pothole Killer.”
Even Alfonse D’Amato, the Republican politician dubbed “Senator Pothole” for focusing on small matters while in the US Senate, said the dual pothole announcements by Mamdani and Hochul were ridiculous.
D’Amato, who was the Town of Hempstead supervisor before becoming a senator, claimed he never held a pothole press conference, despite earning his nickname.
“It’s all BS. It’s a waste of time,” D’Amato told The Post. “And this is coming from ‘Senator Pothole’ himself!”
The focus on repaving potholes is only a short-term fix — and rebuilding roads is the only way to keep up with maintenance in the long run, said Brian Sampson, president of the Empire State chapter of the Associated Builders and Contractors.
But that comes with unique problems in New York City because of its extensive underground infrastructure, he said.
“Filling a pothole is just a temporary solution that never does anything to address the core structural issues that are existing in our current infrastructure,” he said.
“To really fix New York City roads, people would have to get very comfortable with long sustained disruptions and traffic patterns. And to a politician, I just don’t know if you’re willing to take on those headaches.”
Staten Island Borough President Vito Fossella agreed the better, long-term solution is more funds to repave miles of roads.
Until then, “There are still a bunch of potholes that have to be filled,” he said.
— Additional reporting by Nicole Rosenthal
