Gothamist: Zohran Mamdani’s meteoric rise from progressive state assemblymember to a leading candidate for mayor of New York City has been accompanied by an alarming rise in threats, his campaign said.
Mamdani’s campaign paid nearly $8,000 this month to Advance Security & Investigations, Inc., a New York-based security firm, campaign finance disclosures show. Other candidates for mayor in the Democratic primary — in the current race and 2021 contest — spent little or no money on security, according to interviews and reviews of campaign disclosures. Mamdani said his concern has only been heightened by the killings of a Democratic Minnesota lawmaker and her husband in their home this past weekend. The alleged assassin shot and wounded another lawmaker and his wife in their home as well.
In an interview, Mamdani said racist and Islamophobic threats are not new for him but they recently reached a “new level of specificity.” “I woke up yesterday to a message that said, ‘The only good Muslim is a dead Muslim,’” he told Gothamist on Monday. “This is what I see and read quite regularly.”
He said his friends and family had been urging him to retain security. If elected, the democratic socialist would be the city’s first Muslim and Asian mayor.
Mayoral candidates typically receive protection from the NYPD after the primary. But this year’s Democratic primary is taking place in a particularly heated political environment across the country and in the Middle East. President Donald Trump’s aggressive immigration raids and deployment of the National Guard and U.S. Marines in Los Angeles sparked nationwide protests on Saturday. Israel continues to bombard Gaza and has launched air strikes on Iran, which has retaliated.
