Editor’s Note: For full disclosure, during this election cycle, Norwood News has broadly covered campaign events which were brought to our attention by candidates who campaigned in our local reporting area of Bronx Community District 7, which broadly covers the neighborhoods of Norwood, Bedford Park, Fordham, Jerome Park, Kingsbridge Heights, Mosholu Parkway, and University Heights. Additionally, we also covered Rev. Michael Blake‘s campaign launch in the South Bronx last year as we had a bit more time then, and former Gov. Andrew Cuomo’s campaign launch given he is so high-profile and because we had previously reported on his testing of the Bronx waters in 2022.

 

Zohran Mamdani, one of the top contenders to win the Democratic mayoral primary on June 24, campaigned in the Norwood section of The Bronx last month alongside State Sen. Gustavo Rivera (S.D. 33), members of the Democratic Socialists of America (DSA), Youth Impact Bronx, and other volunteers.

 

The Queens assemblyman was endorsed on June 18 by former Democratic mayoral candidate Maya Wiley, and this followed prior endorsements by former U.S. presidential candidate and Independent U.S. Sen. Bernie Sanders of Vermont and Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (NY-14). Mamdani and fellow Democratic mayoral candidate, City Comptroller Brad Lander, have cross endorsed each other in the race, as have Mamdani and fellow Democratic mayoral candidate, Rev. Michael Blake.

 

On June 19, it was reported that Mamdani, a Muslim born in Uganda who grew up in New York City, had received some threats amid his mayoral campaign which the NYPD was investigating. When contacted, an NYPD spokesperson said that on June 18 at 9.45 a.m., the reporter of the threat told police they had received four phone voicemails from an unknown individual on various dates making threatening anti-Muslim statements. “There are no arrests and the investigation remains ongoing by the Hate Crime Task Force,” the spokesperson said.

 

Addressing volunteers at the Norwood rally, progressive Democrat Rivera who, in April, formally endorsed Mamdani, said he believed Bronxites had forgotten who the assemblyman’s top Democratic rival, former NY Gov. Andrew Cuomo, is or was as governor. “Whether you care about education, whether you care about transportation, whether you care about parks, whether you care about health, while he was governor, he did things that actively hurt New Yorkers, things that we’re still trying to recover from,” the senator said.

 

As reported, the Independent Democratic Conference (IDC) was a former group of centrist Democrats in Albany who typically voted with Republicans to block various pieces of progressive legislation. According to City & State, the IDC was blamed for a number of the State Senate’s legislative failures including the inability to codify Roe v. Wade into law, and the State’s failure to pass stricter gun control measures.

 

Politico reported that multiple sources confirmed that Cuomo was “deeply involved” and had been a key player after the IDC launched, “privately offering advice about tactics and messaging.” The IDC disbanded in 2018 after the majority of its members were voted out of office in favor of progressive Democrats.

 

Meanwhile, among his supporters, Cuomo has been widely criticized by his detractors after a 2021 investigation by the New York Attorney General’s office concluded he sexually harassed eleven current and former New York State employees by, among other things, “engaging in unwelcome and nonconsensual touching, as well as making numerous offensive comments of a suggestive and sexual nature that created a hostile work environment for women.”

 

The investigation also found that the culture in the State’s executive chamber (governor’s office) at the time was one “filled with fear and intimidation.” Cuomo apologized, denied any intentional wrongdoing, but resigned amid the scandal. Less than a year later, during an event held in The Bronx in April 2022 with socially conservative Democrat and former city council member for District 18, Ruben Díaz Sr., Cuomo vowed he was “not going anywhere.”

 

The former councilman’s son, former Bronx Borough President Ruben Díaz Jr., released an ad in recent days also in support of Cuomo. Meanwhile, Bronx Assemblyman George Alvarez (A.D. 78) endorsed Mamdani in May.

 

Back on Jan. 26, 2024, after the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) announced it had settled a legal dispute with the NY governor’s office to resolve the DOJ’s claims that, under Cuomo, it had engaged in a pattern or practice of sexual harassment and retaliation, Cuomo reportedly opposed the settlement but was out of office at that point.

 

He reportedly asked now-former U.S. Attorney General Merrick Garland, a Democrat, to look into the “conflicted” settlement. The former governor reportedly based his request on an alleged conflict of interest and lack of independence by the DOJ, among other factors. We asked the DOJ what the latest status was in this regard; we did not receive an immediate response.

 

Cuomo was also called out for his handling of COVID-19 spread in nursing homes during the pandemic, as well as profiting from a book he wrote about his management of the crisis. The New York Times later reported that a New York State ethics board ordered the former governor to turn over millions of dollars in profits from his pandemic memoir.

 

Earlier this year, on March 31, The New York Law Journal reported that a federal judge dismissed a lawsuit alleging the Cuomo administration was responsible for COVID-19 nursing home deaths. The outlet also reported that [attorneys for the plaintiffs] Napoli & Shkolnik indicated they could appeal the federal judge’s dismissal of the suit.

 

Back at Mamdani’s Bronx rally, Rivera talked about Cuomo’s alleged refusal to allocate “legally mandated foundation aid to the campaign for fiscal equity over many years,” and how Cuomo “oversaw the loss of 66,000 rent-stabilized apartments between 2019 and 2021.” Norwood News reached out to Cuomo’s campaign for comment on all of the above. We did not receive an immediate response.

 

The senator said it was not enough, however, to highlight “just how terrible Cuomo is” adding, “and he is terrible,” but to offer an alternative in the form of Mamdani. “I’m incredibly thankful that unlike many other times, there is a real alternative and an alternative which is somebody who is saying we need to go beyond the things that we’ve been saying that we can do,” he said.

 

Rivera continued, “We have to go beyond that, and we have to really deal with what is impacting people’s lives on a day-to-day basis, somebody who is smart enough to understand that. He has to then surround himself [with] people to make it a reality, but first we have to convince people that it’s a possibility and that’s where y’all come in.”

For his part, addressing the volunteers, Mamdani said in part, “It’s going to be The Bronx that delivers this election because it is The Bronx where we see the greatest mismatch between Mr. Cuomo’s reputation and Mr. Cuomo’s record.” The assemblyman said six weeks prior to May 25, polls had shown Cuomo winning by 40 points (70 to 32) and this was later cut to 20 points. He said there was reason to believe the race was going to get even tighter and down to single digits.

 

As reported, some polls have since shown Mamdani leading Cuomo, while others show Cuomo leading Mamdani. The assemblyman said when it came down to single digits, it wasn’t a margin of error but a margin of effort. He said it was up to the campaign how many doors would be knocked on, adding that as of May 25, they had knocked on around 600,000 across the five boroughs.

 

“It’s the door knocking that can win the race and I tell you this because of a conversation I had with a canvasser just two days ago,” he said, adding the canvasser told him he had knocked on the door of a woman who said she’d never heard of Mamdani. She reportedly said she later turned on her TV, saw an ad, and began to wonder about Mamdani as a candidate. The canvasser said that the same afternoon, the woman ended up speaking to Mamdani’s canvasser and reportedly said, “You know what? You’re here at my door! Now, I’m going to vote for him!”

 

Mamdani reiterated that this was how to win the race. “Andrew Cuomo is a former governor who’s the son of a former governor,” he said. “Everybody knows who he is, and we still have more people to introduce ourselves to and what we are saying to them is that they have a choice greater than just the past versus the present. They also have a choice of the future, a future New Yorkers can afford, that we will deliver by freezing the rent, by making buses fast and free, by delivering universal childcare; that is a future that we are fighting for.”

 

The assemblyman said even his mother was canvassing for him on her “weekly Sunday shift” though she was reportedly complaining she’d been “paired up with a 25-year-old who walks too fast!” He said she told him about one day when she walked up five floors of a six-floor walk-up and out of ten doors knocked, nobody was home. “She finally gets somebody she can talk to,” he said. “They say they’re gonna vote for us. She whispers, ‘He’s my son.'” Amid laughter among the volunteers, he added, “But if they say they’re gonna do their research, she doesn’t tell.”

 

Thanking the volunteers for showing up, Mamdani said every canvasser had that same power. “It’s not that you need to be fluent in every single policy platform we put out,” he said. “You just need to know why you came today, because that’s the reason that shines through, whether that’s the rent freeze, [….] whatever it may be, it is that sincerity, that belief, that connects with voters, especially those who have been rightfully disappointed in our politics for many, many years and are looking for a reason to believe again, and you are that reason.”

 

On May 22, in the wake of the assassination the previous night of two young Israeli embassy staff members outside the Capital Jewish Museum in Washington D.C., Mamdani said he was horrified by the incident.

“My thoughts are with the victims and their families, as well as all those who must contend with an appalling rise in antisemitic violence,” he said. “We owe it to one another to confront hate with the urgency and solidarity it demands, and to ensure our Jewish neighbors can live safely and free of fear. May the memories of both victims be a blessing.”

After the killing, to the horror of many, a faction within the DSA known as the DSA Liberation Caucus called for the release of Elias Rodriguez, the person arrested for the assassinations. “It is right to rebel against the enemy,” the group wrote along with an image of Rodriguez. “This is Maoist Law.” They also wrote, “Free Elias Rodriguez and all political prisoners.” The post included further context around the struggles in Palestine and “genocidal Zionist imperialism.”

Following online backlash, the DSA Liberation Caucus later broadly wrote on X that their words did not reflect the wider views of the DSA as a whole. Mamdani is a DSA member, as are a number of other progressive Democrats. The group has since dropped “DSA” from their X profile title which now reads as the “Liberation Caucus,” though their X handle still retains it.

 

Local Congressman Ritchie Torres (NY-15) has frequently rebuked Mamdani’s candidacy, most recently for reportedly refusing to condemn calls to “globalize the intifada.” Torres wrote, “Even if we stipulate, for the sake of argument, that ‘Globalize the Intifada’ is not a call to violence (even though it clearly is), what matters is not the speaker’s intent, but how the phrase is received by many in the Jewish community. The far left should try extending to Jews the same empathy and sensitivity it so readily affords others.”

 

When contacted about similar allegations, Mamdani’s spokesperson shared a recent statement by the assemblyman which read, “Time and again over the course of this race, the real crisis of antisemitism has been weaponized as a political talking point. Lost in this discourse is the truth: I have voted every year for the Holocaust Remembrance Day resolution to honor the more than 6 million Jewish people murdered by the Nazis.” 

He continued, “I have repeatedly supported allocating millions of dollars in the State budget for Holocaust survivors. My campaign has also proposed the largest fiscal commitment to combatting antisemitism of any candidate in the race. As the next mayor, I will protect the safety of Jewish New Yorkers.” A recent X post by the Jewish assembly member for New York’s 69th assembly district, Micah Lasher, was also shared with us by Mamdani’s spokesperson. 

 

Later, during a brief Q&A, we asked Mamdani what City programs he would cut to fund his agenda. “Ultimately, we know that Mayor Adams has not been focused on excellence in our public service,” the assemblyman said. “He has, in fact, been focused on patronage many a time, and it is incumbent upon the next mayor to go line by line through our $115 billion budget and ensure that Eric Adams has actually been spending it in the most productive way.”

 

The assemblyman said it was also necessary to raise more money annually; “$10 billion to be specific.” He said this would not only pay for his entire economic agenda but would “Trump-proof” the City. He said the federal government funded about 7% of the City’s budget and if New York City didn’t start to prepare for what he called “the inevitability of Donald Trump using that funding as leverage to hang over our heads in order for us to give up whichever class or category of New Yorkers he so desires,” then the City would be unprepared for what will happen.

 

“That’s why, part of having the ability to fight is ensuring we also have the fiscal independence that gives us that flexibility, and that’s why we’ve proposed matching the State’s top corporate tax rate to that of New Jersey at 11.5%, and raising income taxes on New Yorkers who are the top 1% of income earners, New Yorkers who make a million dollars or more on an annual basis, by a flat 2% increase,” he said. “Those two things together raise $9 billion and then good government reform raises the final $1 billion. All of this is laid out in our website.”

 

We brought up the Manhattan commercial buildings which reportedly became empty amid the pandemic and asked if Mamdani had thought about them as a potential source of City revenue. “Housing is the number one crisis in our city,” he said. “Ultimately, our job is to keep New Yorkers in their homes. That’s why, since we’ve started this campaign, we began with the commitment to freeze the rent for more than 2 million New Yorkers living in rent-stabilized housing.”

 

He said there were real concerns about the issue of off-the-market warehousing apartments and said the City currently allows landlords to self-report those units. “So we do not have a fully accurate picture of the scale of this issue,” he said. “By that metric, however, it’s about 24 / 25 / 26,000 units.”

 

The assemblyman added, “We need to know the true number, the cost of bringing those units back online and the reason that they are not currently online. Those will be some of the priorities of our administration, so that we have a more clear and accurate picture of the state of housing today across New York City.”

We also asked Mamdani how he would differentiate himself from the other candidates in the race who are also left of center within the Democratic Party. “This is a progressive campaign fighting to make this city affordable,” he said in part. “We have had a relentless focus on an economic agenda, and it’s part of the reason that we are in second place [and now sometimes, first] in the polls today and for the last two months.”

 

He continued, “New Yorkers are hungry for a different kind of politics, a politics that puts working people first, and it is a momentum that we have generated, that has earned the support of leaders like State Sen. Gustavo Rivera, that has been buoyed by us through our volunteers doing 500 canvassing shifts across The Bronx so far, and seeing our support in The Bronx quadruple over the last few months.”

 

He added, “That is all a testament to both this hunger and this desire for change in this City where, for so long in our politics, we’re telling New Yorkers their choice is between the past and the present, and we’re finally offering them the future.”

 

Many Western democracies offer varying levels of social protection to their citizens and yet are not labeled “communist” for doing so, as often happens in the U.S. We put it to Mamdani that even though it’s clear there is support for a progressive agenda in New York City, it’s been a long time coming. We asked him why he thinks that is, and why there’s resistance by some to it. “I think part of it has been that politicians have betrayed the working class New Yorkers that have put their faith in them,” he said.

 

He continued, “It’s easy to caricature Eric Adams now, but we have to remember four years ago, he ran on a message to New Yorkers that they need not choose between safety and justice. He had a message that he would empower working class New Yorkers from the outer boroughs, and then he got to City Hall and called himself the candidate of real estate, and that betrayal is one of the reasons why so many have lost faith in local politics. We want to actually live up to those commitments, and I believe that we will on June 24.”

Primary Election Day in New York is Tuesday, June 24. Polls are open from 6 a.m. to 9 p.m. Early Voting runs from June 14- 22. To be eligible to register to vote, a person must be a U.S. citizen; be 18 years old on June 24; a New York State resident for at least 30 days before the election; not be in prison for a felony conviction; not be adjudged mentally incompetent by a court; and not claim the right to vote elsewhere. The last day to register to vote in person was June 14. Applications to register to vote by mail should also have been received by June 14. For more information, click here.

 

Editor’s Note: In a previous version of this story, our photo captions incorrectly referenced Mamdani as representing parts of Brooklyn in his capacity as an assemblyman. In fact, he represents parts of Queens. The captions have since been corrected and we apologize for this error. An earlier version of this story also referred to the threats received by Mamdani as death threats. In fact, we don’t know if they were death threats or not. The police described them broadly as threats. We asked the NYPD if they could confirm if they were actual death threats or threats of harm. We did not receive a response but other media outlets have since reported that they referred to a car bomb.