The Specter of a Mamdani Mayoralty
| June 17, 2025Why would anyone besides an anti-Semite not be done with Mamdani?
What started as an outlandish nightmare scenario for Jewish New Yorkers is becoming frighteningly plausible: Democratic state assemblyman and mayoral candidate Zohran Mamdani is surging in polls, closing the gap with presumed front-runner Andrew Cuomo.
This week’s Public Policy Polling survey of 573 likely voters even shows Mamdani taking a slim lead of 35% to Cuomo’s 31%. It’s a safe bet that none of Mamdani’s growing support is coming from the Orthodox Jewish community.
“Zohran Mamdani is running the most deceptive, divisive, and anti-Semitic campaign in the history of New York City,” says Queens state assemblyman Sam Berger.
Born and raised as a Muslim in Kampala, Uganda, Zohran Kwame Mamdani moved to New York at age seven with his parents, extremist Columbia professor Mahmood Mamdani and filmmaker Mira Nair. They were expelled from Uganda by dictator Idi Amin over their Indian heritage.
Mahmood now indoctrinates Columbia students with his Marxist take on colonialism, openly teaching about “the necessity of violence in anticolonial struggle,” pushing for the “dismantlement” of Israel and comparing it to Nazism, apartheid, and Jim Crow. Nair echoes the rhetoric.
Zohran entered politics in 2017 as a volunteer for the losing campaign of Palestinian Khader El-Yateem for New York City Council. In 2020, he successfully ran for the New York state assembly in the 36th district, covering Astoria and Ditmars in Queens.
A member of AOC’s Democratic Socialists of America, he has used his five years in office to cultivate a strong Muslim, progressive, and Palestinian base; spread anti-Israel and anti-Semitic conspiracy theories; and push hard-left agendas like bail reform and defunding the police.
Now, he’s running for mayor, with a record of making life very unsafe for Jews and Israelis. In the words of cross-cultural activist Marc Schneier: “In over 40 years [of activism]… I have never encountered a political figure as dangerously divisive and indifferent to Jewish concerns as Zohran Mamdani.”
Unfit to Serve, In His Own Words
“If I had dreams of being a politician in this country, I wouldn’t have co-founded a Students for Justice in Palestine chapter at my college.”
—Zohran Mamdani, 2024 interview with Mehdi Hasan
Greatest Hits:
- On October 8,, 2023, Mamdani marched with pro-Hamas supporters who chanted “One solution, intifada revolution” and “Globalize the intifada.” He has repeatedly accused Israel of genocide, going back to as early as October 13; and joined a five-day hunger strike calling for an “immediate, permanent ceasefire.”
- Often chanting “BDS” at rallies, Mamdani has refused to answer clearly whether, as mayor, he would enact BDS policies for the city.
- He refused to support a statehouse resolution condemning the Holocaust or to co-sponsor New York state’s Holocaust Remembrance resolution.
- Mamdani proclaimed he would act on the ICC warrant and arrest Binyamin Netanyahu if he set foot in New York City, comparing him to Vladimir Putin.
- He said he would be the first New York City mayor since 1948 not to visit Israel, falsely claimed that such trips are funded by taxpayers, and blamed the affordability crisis on US military aid to Israel.
- He has refused to affirm Israel’s right to exist. (He later modified his stance to denying its right to exist “as a Jewish state.”)
- He wrote the “Not On Our Dime” Act, a bill that would heavily punish any charity that assists Israeli victims of terror, settler communities, and IDF units. The legislation, condemned as anti-Semitic by 66 fellow Democrats, remains under consideration.
- He promoted a conspiracy theory that the Israel Police had trained the NYPD to be racist against blacks.
- He pushed extensively for the ICE to free Mahmoud Khallil, orchestrator of the Columbia University pro-Hamas rallies and bullying of Jewish students. “I would not have sent the police onto Columbia and CUNY’s campuses.”
- He has deep ties with violent extremist groups like Students for Justice in Palestine and the Hamas-linked Within Our Lifetime.
Giving Out Candy
Why would anyone besides an anti-Semite not be done with Mamdani?
When middle school children hold elections for class president, candidates promise candy to voters. Mamdani’s campaign is much the same, pushing socialist gifts:
- a rent freeze on stabilized apartments, and additional 200,000 units
- free fare on all city buses
- free child care up to age 5
- a $30 minimum wage
- a network of city-owned, socialist nonprofit wholesale grocery stores
- strengthened New York sanctuary city policies
- replacement of traditional police with “Department of Community Safety”
How would he pay for all this? Even higher taxes on businesses and the wealthy, of course.
Acronym Acrimony
In the city’s complicated ranked-choice voting (RCV) system, candidates are offering competing acronyms to help voters remember whom to support.
A.B.Z! (Anybody but Zohran) — campaign mailers sponsored by moderate candidate Whitney Tilson
D.R.E.A.M (Don’t Rank Eric or Andrew for Mayor) — progressives supporting Mamdani and fellow DSA member Brad Lander
Courting the Jews?
Mamdani is obviously hoping to sweep the votes of progressives, Muslims, and anti-Semites. But does he have a play for Jewish votes?
Mamdani met with leaders of the Satmar kehillah in Williamsburg, and seems to have made something of a favorable impression… but not enough to get their endorsement. He also did an interview with Der Blatt.
Leading askan Rabbi Moshe Indig said afterward that Mamdani was “a very nice guy, very humble,” and that “as mayor, we wouldn’t have a problem with him.” Nevertheless, Indig is backing Cuomo: “Because of all the public statements [by Mamdani], it’s a little difficult.”
Mamdani touts endorsements from extreme far-left groups like Jewish Voice for Peace and Jews for Racial and Economic Justice.
Shhhh…
Quietly, Eric Adams’s team is pushing Orthodox Jews to vote for Mamdani, according to a report by the New York Times. Running on the EndAntiSemitism and Safe&Affordable independent party lines, Adams believes it will be easier to defeat Mamdani in the general election than Cuomo. Menashe Shapiro, a close Adams aide, called rabbanim and askanim to convince them not to back Cuomo in the primary. He has also distributed anti-Cuomo information, the Times alleges.
Rabbi Indig’s temperate stance may be more of an indicator of his close relationship with Adams than of approval of Mamdani himself.
Similarly, in a move blasted by Assemblyman Kalman Yeager, one chassidus in New York City endorsed Council Speaker Adrienne Adams — no friend of the Jews. That appears to be a tip of the biber hit to Eric Adams — more of an ABC (Anybody But Cuomo) gambit than an approval of the Speaker.
(Originally featured in Mishpacha, Issue 1066)
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