Johns for Mam?
Mayoral frontrunner Zohran Mamdani still hasn’t decided whether soliciting prostitutes should be decriminalized, his campaign revealed Tuesday — the latest wishy-washy stance from the Democratic socialist with just six weeks before November’s election.
Mamdani defended his support of decriminalizing prostitution against attacks from his electoral rival Monday, contending he doesn’t want to fully legalize it, but instead wants to return to former Mayor Bill de Blasio’s policy of not arresting or prosecuting sex workers.
But the socialist left it unclear whether his hands-off-hookers approach would also extend to pimps and Johns.
“We haven’t made a decision on that yet,” Mamdani’s campaign spokeswoman Dora Pekec said Tuesday.
Mamdani’s murky sex work stance fits what many political observers say is a growing habit to dodge straightforward questions by serving up mumbly word salad — leaving New Yorkers unsure what he’ll actually do if he wins City Hall.
The vagueness over apologizing for calling the NYPD “racist” and refusing to say what radical policies from the Democratic Socialists of America he rejects also contrasts with Mamdani’s unvarnished frankness over his controversial positions, such as that billionaires shouldn’t exist.
“He’s good at sounding smart enough while saying nothing,” said one Democratic operative who has worked on mayoral campaigns.
“He sounds like a congressional candidate, not the soon-to-be mayor who is going to have to tackle these things in excruciating specificity. They believe they have a clue, but the rest of us could use some reassurance.”
The frustration was particularly acute near the city’s “Market of Sweethearts,” a notorious red light district along Roosevelt Avenue in Queens, where locals have been frustrated by seedy open-air prostitution and shady massage parlors.
Marcela Casteneba, 54, who works at Buenos Aires Bakery, said a high-profile recent NYPD crackdown has scared off some skittish hookers, but many persistent prostitutes remain.
“If it’s the way it is now, I can’t imagine if he wants to do that,” she said about Mamdani’s desire to end police raids and arrests targeting prostitutes.
“He should be more explicit of what he’s going to do.”
Mamdani has long called to decriminalize sex work and, as a state assemblyman, co-sponsored a bill to lift criminal penalties from some prostitution offenses.
He repeated Monday that, if elected, he would mirror the policies of former Mayor Bill de Blasio, who sought to shift the focus on the arrests of traffickers, rather than sex workers.
“As Mayor, Zohran will end sex worker raids and work with District Attorneys to reduce unnecessary prosecutions,” Pekec said. “It’s not just the right thing to do to make our communities safer, it’s also popular, as a plurality of New Yorkers support this approach.”
Pekec added that the young lawmaker would reinvest $40 million into victims services programs, which saw cuts under Mayor Eric Adams.
But Nicole Gelinas, a senior fellow at the Manhattan Institute, said decriminalizing prostitution could have serious unintended consequences, even with a legal framework.
“If you entirely stop arresting the prostitution, you are losing an opportunity of who is in charge of them, finding the rings of sex traffickers and it’s very important to know: are you going to arrest the Johns and the sex traffickers and people driving cars place to place or running the hotels?” she said.
“I think it’s just another complex area where he doesn’t realize how complicated it is.”
One beat cop said sex trafficking will increase under Mamdani’s live-and-let-live approach.
“Pimpin’ ain’t easy, but Mamdani will make it easier,” the cop quipped.
Additional reporting by Hannah Fierick
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