Mara Gay is a member of the New York Times editorial board and a political analyst at MSNBC, where she appears regularly on Morning Joe and Deadline: White House. Mara’s award-winning journalism focuses on politics, national affairs and New York. She has written extensively about many of the events that have gripped the nation in recent years, from the 2024 election, to the pandemic and rising threats to American democracy.

Before joining The Times in 2018, Mara was a political reporter at the Wall Street Journal, where she covered City Hall, and reported on major national news events like the 2015 church shooting in Charleston, S.C. Mara has also worked for The New York Daily News, The Atlantic and The Daily, an all-digital newspaper owned by News Corp. She has a degree in political science from the University of Michigan at Ann Arbor, and she is a proud graduate of White Plains High School.