New York had a Mayor like that in the 1960s - John Vliet Lindsay. As WASPy blue-blood as the come. A Yale man and family friend of GHW Bush and pappy Prescott Bush
His predecessor (Robert Wagner) was another WASP, Yale-man and liberal (who converted to Catholicism in mid-life), who granted collective bargaining status to NYC workers, and who gifted Lindsay, on his first day in office, a Transit Workers strike which shut down transport in the whole the City.
So to your point - unfortunately, these people do not cut back on overgrown leftist jungles. They compromise so they can merely sit atop them.