- Major city mayors like Zohran Mamdani earn more than their state governors.
- Mayoral salaries vary widely, with some small towns paying more than large cities.
- San Francisco mayor, Daniel Lurie, forgoes his $383,760 salary, the highest in the nation.
Zohran Mamdani, the newly inaugurated mayor of New York City, is joining the exclusive ranks of mayors who outearn their governors' salaries.
Mayor salaries range widely across the nation, with some in smaller towns earning as little as a couple of thousand dollars a year, to the six-figure salaries that many major city leaders earn.
Since mayors' salaries are set at the local level by city councils and local legislatures, there are no centralized reports on what mayors earn across all cities and towns.
And a larger city doesn't always mean a bigger payday for its mayor. Some high-earning enclaves with as few as 1,000 residents pay their mayors higher salaries than those in some of the nation's largest cities.
We compiled recent reports on local mayor salaries to identify mayors who earn more than $200,000 a year. We also identified the size of the cities they lead using the latest US Census population estimates.
Here are 19 of the highest-paid mayors in the country.
