Mayoral frontrunner Zohran Mamdani returned to New York City on Wednesday—straight into a political storm of his own making.

Just two days after the deadliest mass shooting in New York City in 25 years, Mamdani, a self-described democratic socialist and longtime supporter of defunding the police, faced intense backlash over his absence during the crisis—and over the radical anti-police rhetoric that defined much of his political rise.

While New Yorkers mourned the deaths of four people, including NYPD Officer Didarul Islam, building security guard Aland Etienne, and two Jewish women, Mamdani was finishing an 11-day vacation in Uganda. It wasn’t until Wednesday morning that he returned to the city he hopes to lead—only to be met with sharp questions about both his absence and his record.

“I am not defunding the police,” Mamdani declared at a hastily arranged news conference, attempting to distance himself from a long trail of inflammatory comments calling for the dismantling of the NYPD.

In 2020, amid peak tensions over police conduct, Mamdani didn’t just call for budget cuts—he labeled the NYPD “racist,” “anti-queer,” and “a major threat to public safety,” and urged: “Defund it. Dismantle it. End the cycle of violence.” Those statements remained online throughout his mayoral campaign, even as Mamdani tried to soften his stance.

Mamdani tried to rewrite the narrative Wednesday, claiming his 2020 remarks were made “amidst a frustration that many New Yorkers held” following the killing of George Floyd. He now insists he supports maintaining current police staffing levels—though he still wants to slash NYPD overtime spending and reallocate funds to a proposed $1 billion Department of Community Safety.

But even as he professed support for the NYPD in broad terms, Mamdani stood by his demand to disband the NYPD’s Strategic Response Group—ironically, the very unit that responded to Monday’s massacre.

That contradiction didn’t go unnoticed. “Mamdani wants to lead the NYPD while calling to dismantle the unit that stopped an active shooter,” one law enforcement official said. “That’s not leadership. That’s hypocrisy.”

Critics were also incensed by the timing of Mamdani’s vacation, which kept him out of the country while New Yorkers reeled from the attack. Though he claimed to have gone directly from JFK Airport to the home of Officer Islam’s widow, many saw the gesture as too little, too late.

“He abandoned the city when it needed leadership,” said Councilmember Melissa Salazar. “Then he came back and acted like showing up to a vigil erases years of hostility toward the very people who put their lives on the line.”

Even Governor Kathy Hochul, who has remained neutral in the mayoral race, voiced skepticism over Mamdani’s record.

“That kind of ‘defund the police’ attitude—it’s nothing I could ever support,” Hochul said in a radio interview. “I want to see a plan for making our city safer, and that has to involve the NYPD and increasing the ranks, not decreasing them.”

Former Governor Andrew Cuomo also weighed in, accusing Mamdani of trying to whitewash his past now that it’s politically inconvenient. Mamdani hit back, calling Cuomo’s criticism “cynical,” but offered no real rebuttal to the substance of the charge.

(YWN World Headquarters – NYC)