Mayor Eric Adams on Wednesday falsely labeled socialist Democratic mayoral nominee Zohran Mamdani “a communist,” echoing one of Republican President Donald Trump’s frequent lines of attack against the City Hall frontrunner.
Hizzoner launched the broadside during an unrelated Wednesday news conference when asked why he thinks Democratic House Leader Hakeem Jeffries and Democratic Rep. Yvette Clarke — both of whom represent swaths of Brooklyn — did not endorse Mamdani after meeting with him on Tuesday.
“Number one, he’s not a Democrat, you know, he’s a communist,” said Adams — misstating the democratic socialist Mamdani’s political ideology as communist. Democratic socialists and communists are not one in the same.
Mamdani is the Democratic nominee, who won the party’s primary over former Gov. Andrew Cuomo by nearly 13%. While Adams is also a Democrat, he is running for reelection as an independent after skipping the primary due to his now-dismissed federal bribery case.
By calling Mamdani a communist, the mayor was employing one of Trump’s most frequent attacks on the nominee. Since Mamdani’s upset primary win, Trump has railed against him as a “pure communist” and a “100% communist lunatic,” while threatening to strip him of his citizenship and federally take over the Big Apple if he becomes mayor.
Mamdani campaign spokesperson Dora Pekec, in a statement, charged that Adams is trying to distract from new corruption scandals that have plagued his administration and reelection campaign over the past week.
“It speaks volumes that Eric Adams would rather recycle Cold War insults than deal with the exhausting list of corruption and crises consuming his City Hall,” Pekec said. “While he’s busy dodging indictments, delivering for his billionaire Trump donors, and holding a 30-year low approval rating, Zohran’s focused on the issues that matter: making the most expensive city in the world more affordable and restoring trust in government.”
Kayla Mamelak Altus, Adams’ City Hall spokesperson, argued in a social media post that the mayor is not echoing Trump because other figures have also labeled Mamdani a communist. She pointed to an amNewYork report on bodega advocates and conservative super market magnet John Catsimatidis using the label for Mamdani and a New York Post story citing former GOP City Council Member, and Soviet Union refugee, Ari Kagan, doing the same.
Despite the use of the label, a Democratic socialist and a communist are not identical in belief.
Democratic socialism advocates for big government programs, akin to President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s New Deal in the 1930s, designed to improve people’s lives while also respecting capitalist ideals of free enterprise.
Broadly, Mamdani’s platform supports increasing government spending on making essential services more accessible to lower-income New Yorkers, such as through universal child care and government-owned grocery stores.
Mamdani has been criticized for his close ties to the Democratic Socialists of America. The DSA national branch just put out a platform which includes policies seen as radical — such as public ownership of utilities and regulating food prices.
Communism, on the other hand, advocates for full state control of the economy.
Adams questions Mamdani’s ‘working-class’ support
Adams further charged that Jeffries and Clarke are reluctant to support Mamdani because they represent “working-class communities” that do not support controversial policy items he claims the nominee embraces.
He named legalizing prostitution, defunding the police, and eliminating misdemeanor offenses among those positions — characterizations that Mamdani’s campaign has disputed.
“It would be challenging to endorse his policies that are really anti-what working-class people want,” Adams said.
Although Mamdani, a Queens Assembly member, co-sponsored a bill in the state legislature to decriminalize prostitution, he does not support legalizing it.
Even though decriminalization is not part of Mamdani’s mayoral platform, he has said he wants to “look at the ways” former Mayor Bill de Blasio’s administration, which proposed decriminalization policies, sought to tackle the issue.
When it comes to defunding the police, Mamdani has distanced himself from his fervent past support for the movement, saying he is “not defunding the police” and “not running to defund the police.”
Adams’ third jab attempts to connect Mamdani with an item in the national Democratic Socialists of America’s recently-updated platform that calls to “end all misdemeanor offenses.” However, a Mamdani campaign spokesperson told the New York Post on Tuesday that the candidate does not believe in that proposal and would not pursue it if elected mayor.
Cuomo, during his own Wednesday afternoon press event, also sought to paint Mamdani’s platform and that of the national DSA as one in the same. He called it “Zohran Project 2025” — in reference to the far-right policy platform authored by The Heritage Foundation, a conservative think tank, ahead of Trump’s second term.
“Trump’s Project 2025 was an extreme right agenda that is frightening,” Cuomo said. “Zohran Project 2025 is an extreme left agenda that is also frightening and dangerous.”
Mamdani won the Democratic primary with a campaign focused on lowering costs for those struggling to live in the city. His core proposals include making public buses free and freezing the rent for stabilized tenants, among others.
The lawmaker is polling far ahead of Adams, who is most often coming in fourth place behind Republican nominee Curtis Sliwa.
