Former Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo laughed along with a conservative radio host on Thursday who said that Zohran Mamdani, a Muslim mayoral candidate, would celebrate another Sept. 11-style terrorist attack on New York City.
Within hours, the exchange ricocheted across the campaign trail, where Mr. Mamdani and a cross-section of Democrats denounced the conversation as Islamophobic and outside the bounds of even a heated campaign.
The episode began as part of a friendly interview between the radio host, Sid Rosenberg, and Mr. Cuomo, who is openly courting Republican votes as he attempts to catch Mr. Mamdani in the polls before Nov. 4.
Mr. Cuomo, 67, had been arguing that Mr. Mamdani, a 34-year-old state lawmaker and Democratic nominee, was dangerously unprepared to lead a city as large as New York through events like natural disasters or the deadly Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attack.
“God forbid another 9/11,” he said. “Can you imagine Mamdani in the seat?”
Mr. Rosenberg, who had already referred to Mr. Mamdani as a “terrorist,” interjected. “Yeah, I could,” he said. “He’d be cheering.”
After a brief pause, Mr. Cuomo chuckled. “That’s another problem,” he said.
At a news conference in Manhattan, Mr. Mamdani called the exchange “disgusting” and an affront to the city’s sizable Muslim population, which was subject to surveillance and Islamophobia in the aftermath of the Sept. 11 attacks.
“We’re talking about a radio show host who’s described me as an animal, who’s called me a terrorist,” he said. “We’re speaking about a former governor who, in his final moments in public life is engaging in rhetoric that is not only Islamophobic, not only racist, is also disgusting, and is his final closing argument with less than two weeks before Election Day.”
Other New York Democrats joined in, including Gov. Kathy Hochul and some lawmakers who have criticized Mr. Mamdani’s own rhetoric about Israel.
Representative Daniel S. Goldman, who just this week said he was “very concerned” about Mr. Mamdani’s language about Israel, called the suggestion that the candidate would cheer on a terrorist attack “naked Islamophobia.”
Representative Gregory W. Meeks, the moderate head of the Queens Democratic Party, sounded pained after listening to the exchange. He said it called to mind a moment in the 2008 presidential campaign when John McCain, the Republican candidate, publicly disagreed with supporters portraying his Democratic rival, Barack Obama, as a threat to American security, including one who said she had heard Mr. Obama was “an Arab.”
Mr. Cuomo, Mr. Meeks said in an interview, should have followed that model.
“It’s easy to be silent, but the right thing would have been to say something,” he said. “You might not agree with Mamdani on other things, but he is a citizen of this country and he wouldn’t be smiling or laughing at that kind of attack.”
And Representative Ritchie Torres, a Bronx Democrat who has had his own sharp disagreements with Mr. Mamdani over Israel, wrote on X that “to insinuate that a mayoral candidate would celebrate a second 9/11 is beyond disgusting and disgraceful.”
A spokesman, Rich Azzopardi, said the governor did not believe Mr. Mamdani would celebrate a terrorist attack.
But when asked about the episode at a news conference hours later, Mr. Cuomo did not denounce Mr. Rosenberg’s comments. Instead, he stressed that they were not his words.
“That’s the host. Go talk to the host,” he said, referring to Mr. Rosenberg, an outspoken ally of President Trump who has hosted Mr. Cuomo on his show three times in recent days.
Mr. Cuomo said that when he replied to Mr. Rosenberg, he had been thinking about how Mr. Mamdani “pals around” with Hasan Piker, a popular streamer who once said America “deserved 9/11.” He said Mr. Mamdani would not condemn those remarks.
But in fact, Mr. Mamdani said last week that he found Mr. Piker’s comment “objectionable and reprehensible.”
The backlash came at a time when Mr. Cuomo and others trying to stop Mr. Mamdani are adopting ever more dire language and racialized imagery to describe Mr. Mamdani, a democratic socialist, and his potential mayoralty.
Late Wednesday, Mr. Cuomo’s campaign posted, and then took down, an A.I.-generated video depicting Mr. Mamdani’s supporters as trespassers, domestic abusers, pimps, drug dealers and drunken drivers, and showing a Black shoplifter in a kaffiyeh.
The video called Mr. Mamdani an “inexperienced radical” and portrayed him eating rice with his hands, a common practice among South Asians that has been frequently invoked by the right to mock Mr. Mamdani. Mr. Azzopardi said the video was posted “in error” by a junior staff member.
Curtis Sliwa, the Republican nominee, accused Mr. Mamdani in the race’s final debate of supporting “global jihad.” Mr. Mamdani bristled. “I have never, not once” supported jihad or other forms of violence, he said, suggesting that the term was a smear connected to his Muslim faith.
And on Thursday, a super PAC supporting Mr. Cuomo’s candidacy began running an advertisement featuring a photo of Mr. Mamdani smiling with a Brooklyn imam as the words “Jihad on NYC” passed on the screen. The words were said two decades ago by the imam, but appeared in the ad over Mr. Mamdani’s face.
Mr. Mamdani, who was born in Uganda to parents of Indian descent, would be New York’s first South Asian and Muslim mayor. He has described his experience of the 2001 terrorist attacks as a young boy in New York City, when he said, many Muslims were “marked an ‘other.’”
It was not the first time the campaign has been consumed by accusations of hate and bigotry. Mr. Mamdani faced overwhelming criticism before the primary when he declined to denounce the phrase ”globalize the intifada,” which many Jews consider a call to violence. He has since said he would discourage its use and denounced antisemitism.
Mr. Mamdani on Thursday accused Mr. Cuomo of hypocrisy, saying that Thursday’s radio interview showed “both how hollow his commitments are and how he is, in fact, the illustration of the very division he says that he would fight.”
Mr. Cuomo, who is running as a third-party candidate, received some backup from a new ally.
Standing alongside him on Thursday to endorse his candidacy, Mayor Eric Adams said he was motivated to stop Mr. Mamdani for a variety of reasons, including that he had not outright condemned the phrase “globalize the intifada.”
Then he veered into a tangent. “You see what’s playing out in other countries because Islamic extremism,” he said. “Not Muslims. Let’s not mix this up. But those Islamic extremists that are burning churches in Nigeria.”
Mr. Rosenberg, the radio host, responded separately to people criticizing Mr. Cuomo on X, saying “Andrew didn’t say @ZohranKMamdani would be cheering if God Forbid we experienced another 9/11 I said it!!!”
“I’ll be sure to invite all of you to ‘Hug a Terrorist Day’ hosted by @ZohranKMamdani,” he wrote in another.
Debra Kamin contributed reporting.
Nicholas Fandos is a Times reporter covering New York politics and government.
Michael Gold covers Congress for The Times, with a focus on immigration policy and congressional oversight.
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