Zohran Mamdani hires security, citing 'new level' of threats in NYC mayor's race

Zohran Mamdani’s meteoric rise from progressive state assemblymember to a leading candidate for mayor of New York City has been accompanied by an alarming rise in threats, his campaign said.

Mamdani’s campaign paid nearly $8,000 this month to Advance Security & Investigations, Inc., a New York-based security firm, campaign finance disclosures show. Other candidates for mayor in the Democratic primary — in the current race and 2021 contest — spent little or no money on security, according to interviews and reviews of campaign disclosures.

Mamdani said his concern has only been heightened by the killings of a Democratic Minnesota lawmaker and her husband in their home this past weekend. The alleged assassin shot and wounded another lawmaker and his wife in their home as well.

In an interview, Mamdani said racist and Islamophobic threats are not new for him but they recently reached a “new level of specificity.”

“I woke up yesterday to a message that said, ‘The only good Muslim is a dead Muslim,’” he told Gothamist on Monday. “This is what I see and read quite regularly.”

He said his friends and family had been urging him to retain security. If elected, the democratic socialist would be the city’s first Muslim and Asian American mayor.

Mayoral candidates typically receive protection from the NYPD after the primary. But this year’s Democratic primary is taking place in a particularly heated political environment across the country and in the Middle East. President Donald Trump’s aggressive immigration raids and deployment of the National Guard and U.S. Marines in Los Angeles sparked nationwide protests on Saturday. Israel continues to bombard Gaza and has launched air strikes on Iran, which has retaliated.

The city's Democratic primary has been unusually contentious, with the front-runner, former Gov. Andrew Cuomo, and second-place challenger Mamdani representing ideological opposites. Cuomo has said electing Mamdani would be “reckless and dangerous.” Mamdani, in turn, has criticized Cuomo’s leadership and revisited the former governor’s resignation amid sexual harassment allegations from around a dozen women.

“I have never sued for their gynecological records and I have never done those things because I am not you, Mr. Cuomo,” Mamdani said in last week’s mayoral debate, referencing Cuomo’s aggressive legal tactics against some of his accusers.

Over the last four months, Mamdani’s campaign has tracked and compiled death threats he has received over the phone, email and social media.

“Hey Zohran, you should go back to f—ing Uganda, before I shoot you in the head and your whole family too,” a caller said in a voicemail left last week at Mamdani’s legislative district office, which was shared with Gothamist by the campaign. “You piece of s— Muslims don’t belong here.”

Andrew Epstein, a spokesperson for Mamdani, said the campaign has hired both personal and event security. He declined to go into detail to avoid compromising Mamdani’s safety.

City & State previously reported that Mamdani’s Albany and district offices were flooded with threats and hate speech following his March confrontation with Trump’s "border czar" Tom Homan, inside the state capitol.

“You could see this coming,” said Trip Yang, a Democratic strategist who is not working on any mayoral campaign. He added that although racism against candidates of underrepresented groups is not new, Trump’s violent rhetoric has “given segments of the population a permission slip that it’s OK to be mean and threaten political violence.”

But Mamdani said Trump was not only to blame. He pointed to a recent political flyer proposed by a pro-Cuomo super PAC that darkened and lengthened Mamdani's beard, and a social media post by City Councilmember Vickie Paladino calling for Mamdani to be deported even though he is a U.S. citizen.

“It’s the notion of othering that is at the core of all of this language, these threats,” the assemblymember said. “They are bound together by a notion that these are outsiders and they do not deserve to be here and definitely do not belong here.”

Rich Azzopardi, Cuomo’s spokesperson, rejected any suggestion that the former governor has contributed to the charged political environment.

“He’s called the governor every dirty name in the book and we’ve never complained about it,” Azzopardi said. “To conflate that with the actual threat of political violence that we’ve across the country is craven and disingenuous.”

He declined to say whether Cuomo has personal security.

The Cuomo campaign has previously denied any involvement with the super PAC flyer, which the group said surfaced on social media without its approval.

All of the leading Democratic candidates, including Cuomo, condemned Paladino’s remarks. She responded that her office had also received death threats, which she blamed on Mamdani’s “poisonous ideology.”

Although nasty attacks are not new in city politics, none of the leading 2021 mayoral candidates hired personal security during their campaigns, according to campaign finance disclosures as well as interviews with people who worked on the campaigns.

Candidates who hold citywide elected office, like city Comptroller Brad Lander, have a security detail provided by the NYPD.

Mamdani said a flier produced by a pro-Cuomo super PAC was an example of "othering" that fuels the threats against him.

The NYPD, however, did provide security for six major mayoral candidates after the 9/11 terrorist attacks, which interrupted the primary and forced it to be rescheduled, according to Stu Loeser, a longtime adviser to Michael Bloomberg. Bloomberg went on to win the general election.

Kathryn Garcia, the runner-up in the 2021 Democratic primary, said she received death threats from a Queens man and reported them to the NYPD, but did not hire any security.

Chris Coffey, a co-campaign manager for Andrew Yang's 2021 campaign, said it also received threats, but he declined to describe them. The campaign spent a little more than $1,000 on security services. Coffey said the spending was for managing crowds and potentially unruly behavior at large events.

“He was harangued all the time by protesters, usually on Gaza,” Coffey recalled, referring to fighting that erupted between Israel and Hamas that year.

Yang did not respond to a request for an interview.

Jon Paul Lupo, who ran Maya Wiley’s campaign that same year, said her campaign also received threats, but did not feel they warranted personal security.

Evan Thies, a spokesperson for Eric Adams’ 2021 campaign, did not respond to a request for comment. Campaign finance disclosures did not list any spending on event or personal security services.

During the race, Adams, a former police officer, said if elected he would carry a gun and eliminate the need for taxpayers to pay for his NYPD security detail. He later changed his mind.

Rev. Al Sharpton, who had security when he ran for mayor in 1997, said he understood why Mamdani would be concerned for his safety.

“It’s not like someone is being paranoid,” said Sharpton, who was the victim of a politically motivated stabbing in 1991. “They’re being realistic. We’re in a climate where anybody at any point could be inspired to do anything.”

Mamdani said the recent threats made him more sad than frightened.

“It's this very reality that has kept so many who share my background from engaging in public life,” he said.

This story has been updated to clarify Stu Loeser's job history.