Facing growing criticism of his absence overseas, Zohran Mamdani, the Democratic nominee for mayor, returned to New York City on Wednesday from a planned vacation to Uganda and threw himself into the response to the city’s deadliest mass shooting in 25 years.
Mr. Mamdani traveled directly from Kennedy International Airport to the Bronx home of Police Officer Didarul Islam, one of the four victims of the Midtown shooting. He arrived holding flowers and left after an hourlong private meeting, embracing a family member before pulling away.
Hours later, Mr. Mamdani spoke publicly for the first time since his return, holding a news conference in Manhattan alongside a surviving brother of another victim, a security officer named Aland Etienne. They were joined by leaders of the union that represented Mr. Etienne and the Bangladeshi American Police Association, a group that counted Officer Islam as a member.
In his remarks, Mr. Mamdani, 33, expressed anguish for the family of the victims and sought to reassure the New Yorkers who had questioned whether his inexperience and left-leaning policies would endanger the city’s safety if he were elected mayor in November.
He spoke emotionally of embracing Officer Islam’s father, his distress rendering him speechless, and the disappointment of the officer’s children, who had been looking forward to a family trip to a water park. Mr. Mamdani joined Gov. Kathy Hochul in calling for a national assault weapons ban. And pressed by reporters about years-old comments disparaging police officers and calling for their funding to be cut, Mr. Mamdani suggested that his own views had been evolving.
“I am not running to defund the police,” Mr. Mamdani said repeatedly. He called himself “a candidate who is not fixed in time, one that learns and one that leads, and part of that means admitting, as I have grown, and part of that means focusing on the people who deserve to be focused about.”
The candidate took particular umbrage at Mayor Eric Adams and former Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo, two of the independent candidates seeking to halt his rise after June’s Democratic primary, for using a tragedy to attack him politically. They had criticized him for traveling abroad and for social media posts from 2020 calling police officers “racist, anti-queer and a major threat to public safety.”
Though he did not explicitly renounce the posts, Mr. Mamdani said they were “out of step” with his current view of police officers and “the immense work that they do in this city.”
Mr. Mamdani also said he planned to attend Officer Islam’s funeral on Thursday, and told reporters he had spoken with family members and colleagues of the other victims: Wesley LePatner, an executive at the investment firm Blackstone; and Julia Hyman, an employee at Rudin Management.
The stakes are unusually high for Mr. Mamdani. While he is still a state assemblyman, with little operational role in responding to the attack, he is facing a volatile general election and a restive donor class concerned about how the nominee, a democratic socialist with a relatively thin résumé, would lead the nation’s largest city.
Mr. Mamdani’s absence could hardly have been more poorly timed. After he built his primary campaign about his ubiquity on the city streets and a message about affordability, the shooting took place Monday evening in New York when he was at the tail end of a planned 10-day vacation to Uganda, his birth country, where he was celebrating his recent marriage after the June primary.
It played out in one of the densest parts of the city at rush hour, as an assailant, Shane Devon Tamura, entered a building housing offices of the N.F.L. The police later said that Mr. Tamura had claimed he was suffering from a degenerative brain disease that he blamed on playing high school football. Mr. Tamura died from a self-inflicted gunshot wound to the chest.
While in Uganda, Mr. Mamdani released written statements expressing sadness about the shooting and honoring Officer Islam, who was Muslim and an immigrant with South Asian roots, like Mr. Mamdani.
In a social media post on Tuesday, Mr. Mamdani said that Officer Islam had made his family proud: “I pray for him, his family, and honor the legacy of service and sacrifice he leaves behind.”
He was more active behind the scenes. Mr. Mamdani said that as he traveled, he had made phone calls not only to the surviving family members of the victims but to Jessica Tisch, the police commissioner.
But in a city that often demands to see its leaders — or those aspiring to be — in the flesh, Mr. Mamdani’s critics and mayoral rivals wasted little time in trying to capitalize on his circumstances. And he initially left it to aides to respond to his critics.
As Mr. Mamdani spent much of the day stuck in plane seats back from Uganda, Mr. Adams, a former police officer, stepped into the role of crisis manager, visiting the scene of the shooting and the hospital where Officer Islam died. He has provided updates about the investigation in national television interviews and attended a vigil for the victims in Bryant Park on Tuesday night with Ms. Hochul.
Mr. Adams, who is trailing badly in the polls after the Trump administration dismissed federal corruption charges against him, zeroed in on Mr. Mamdani’s past comments that he would eliminate a police unit known as the Strategic Response Group. On CNBC, Mr. Adams said the comments had been “extremely dangerous.”
“A lack of knowledge and understanding of these roles really could harm law enforcement,” the mayor said, adding: “We should never endanger public safety in the city. It’s not an experiment, it’s experience.”
Mr. Cuomo, the runner-up in the June Democratic primary, did a blitz of media interviews on Tuesday attacking Mr. Mamdani and arguing that his past support for the “defund the police” movement was disqualifying. Mr. Mamdani embraced calls to defund the police in 2020 but no longer supports doing so.
Mr. Mamdani has said that if elected, he would maintain the department’s current budget and staffing levels, and has signaled openness to Ms. Tisch, who has been credited with bringing down crime, in her position.
That did not stop Mr. Cuomo from hitting him anyway. “He clearly does not understand what public safety is all about,” Mr. Cuomo said in an interview.
He also claimed he had not taken a vacation as long as Mr. Mamdani’s in years. “I don’t understand why you go to Uganda for two weeks, frankly, in the middle of a campaign,” Mr. Cuomo said
On Wednesday, Mr. Mamdani tried to shift that narrative.
The candidate stayed with Officer Islam’s family for roughly an hour before leaving the home through a side door, appearing solemn as he avoided reporters outside the house in the Parkchester section of the Bronx.
Later, the news conference was held at the Manhattan headquarters of the union, 32BJ SEIU, which endorsed Mr. Mamdani. Mr. Mamdani was also joined by Mr. Etienne’s brother, Smith Etienne, and Shamsul Haque, a founder of the Bangladeshi American Police Association and a retired police lieutenant commander.
Wesley Parnell and Jeffery C. Mays contributed reporting.
Emma G. Fitzsimmons is the City Hall bureau chief for The Times, covering Mayor Eric Adams and his administration.
Nicholas Fandos is a Times reporter covering New York politics and government.
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