Twice now, Mayor Zohran Mamdani has suffered public humiliation at events where he was unwanted. Will he go for a third strike at next month’s 9/11 ceremonies?
Last week saw him viciously booed at a National Night Out event on Staten Island.
Nights Out are moments for local law enforcement and first responders to build relationships with the communities they serve; when Mamdani clambered onstage wearing his trademark grin, the 3,500 or so locals erupted so resoundingly that he cut his remarks to a bare minute before fleeing the stage.
He shouldn’t have been surprised: This was a pro-cop crowd, and the mayor is a passionate cop-hater, who has called the Finest “racist” and “a threat to public safety” and even claimed the NYPD is somehow under Israeli control.
He was fresh off a similar humiliation at the Queens funeral for Sgt. Angel Rampersad,killed by an Iranian missile and drone strike: He showed up expecting to speak — only to find the grieving family didn’t want him uttering a word.
Again, that’s no more than he deserves: He’s a staunch defender of America’s enemies around the globe, from Venezuela to Cuba, and effectively backed Tehran after President Donald Trump launched airstrikes against the regime.
Yes, the draft remarks City Hall had released were perfectly anodyne, but Rampersad’s loved ones had no desire to let him use their grieving to score some PR points.
That this took place in multi-ethnic Queens, in a neighborhood he easily carried last November, should teach him some powerful lessons.
Note, too, that he’s already facing blowback for feeding hate and fostering hate crimes.
This is the downside of winning City Hall as a far-lefty factional Democrat who got lucky in having first disgraced ex-Gov. Andrew Cuomo as his chief primary opponent, and then hard-to-take-seriously Curtis Sliwa in the general election: Mamdani has a small base of core supporters, but most New Yorkers never wanted him.
(Even then, he has to worry about disappointing his base, as he backs down on campaign tough talk about everything from arresting Benjamin Netanyahu to eviscerating the NYPD.)
It’s also a test of his political talents beyond the charm, poise and social-media savvy that got him elected.
Reports that he’s far less charmingin private, especially with those who disagree with him, suggest he may not have much more to bring to the table — and his behavior at the funeral and the Staten Island event suggest even his poise can fail him.
And the 9/11 ceremonies loom as a Catch-22: It’s hard to see how any mayor could skip the most solemn civic event of any year, especially on the 25th anniversary, yet this mayor — with his rocky relations with first responders and his . . . let’s call it, his complex approach to Islamist terror — will fit in very uneasily, at best.
Many of the families have made it plain they don’t want Mamdani there, collecting more than 40,000 signatures on a petition to that effect.
Maybe it was a mistake to pal around with the likes of Hasan “America deserved 9/11” Piker, after all.
At least he doesn’t have to speak at Ground Zero, thanks to the blessed precedent that no politicians do.
We’d advise City Hall to play the whole 9/11 week as quietly and humbly as possible — and stomp on the flack who idiotically suggested that the mayor’s presence at the event would somehow “honor” the families.
Much of New York barely tolerates Mamdani as it is; he’ll be wise to step carefully, lest he provoke a disturbance no one can want on a sacred day.
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