With just days left before New York City elects a new mayor, independent candidate Andrew Cuomo has faced widespread criticism for remarks many have deemed Islamophobic.
On Thursday, Cuomo was heard laughing, chuckling on a podcast with conservative host Sid Rosenberg, and saying: “That’s another problem,” after Rosenberg suggested rival Zohran Mamdani would be cheering if there were another 9/11.
The comment, which Mamdani called “Islamophobic” and “racist,” follows Cuomo’s latest bid last week to woo immigrant New Yorkers from India, Pakistan, Bangladesh, and Nepal by launching “South Asians for Cuomo.” In September, Cuomo also launched “Hindus for Cuomo” after visiting temples during the Hindu festive season.
However, despite his visits to temples, mosques, and community halls, many South Asians who spoke with Documented see Cuomo’s efforts as last-ditch, divisive and ill-informed, making them feel more alienated than represented.
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When Cuomo launched the group “South Asians for Cuomo” on Oct. 19, he chose a community hall in Flushing Meadows as the venue. The hall, however, belonged to Gujarati Samaj of New York — a registered nonprofit group that has platformed the far-right anti-Muslim speaker Kajal Shingala who called Democratic mayoral nominee Zohran Mamdani a “jihadi zombie.”
A known peddler of anti-Muslim hate speech, Kajal Shingala, who also goes by “Kajal Hindusthani,” spoke this July at the venue in front of more than 200 people, railing against Mamdani.
“In order to bring about Ram Rajya [God’s kingdom], it is necessary to execute monsters,” Shingala said in her speech. She continued: “Here, too, a monster has come around. That Zohran Mamdani, a jihadi zombie.”
The day of his launch, Cuomo also met with several members of the Gujarati Samaj group, who claim to represent immigrants from the Indian state of Gujarat. One of those members was the president of the group, Harshad Patel, who was quoted praising Cuomo in the campaign’s press release for the launch of “South Asians for Cuomo.”
“Governor Cuomo has always stood up for all New Yorkers — especially immigrant and working-class communities like ours,” Patel said in the press release. Yet days before the Gujarat Samaj event in July, Patel had spoken with New York Focus and said Shingala “is a good speaker for Hinduism” and “as a Hindu” he should “promote her.”
The Gujarati Samaj is not the first Hindu right-wing group whose support Andrew Cuomo has bragged about.
In June, days before the Democratic primary, a banner was seen flying across the New York City skyline: “Save NYC from Global Intifada. Reject Mamdani,” the banner read.
It was flown by a New Jersey-based group called Indian Americans for Andrew Cuomo, which is run by Satyanarayana Dosapati, an individual who had organized a pro-Trump rally earlier.
Cuomo particularly ramped up his outreach to the community after the mayoral primary, which he lost handsomely to Democratic nominee Zohran Mamdani, since it became clear that South Asians were a consequential voting bloc.
Last month, when Cuomo visited a mosque in Jamaica, Queens, Kazi Fouzia, a 56–year-old Bangladeshi and a local of the neighborhood, came to protest the candidate’s presence.
“Cuomo has volunteered to protect Israel, at a time when a genocide has been committed in Palestine. He has also harassed so many women. I believe he shouldn’t be allowed in our mosques,” she said.
Fouzia’s frustration with Cuomo was further exacerbated when she heard about his Islamophobic taunt at Mamdani.
“When Andrew Cuomo was a governor, he never visited our mosques,” said Fouzia. “Now he is showing up since he needs our vote.”
A statement released by DRUMBeats, a rights group that represents South Asian and Indo-Carribean New Yorkers, said the attacks “are not just political smears.”
“They are dangerous racist dog whistles that put Black and Brown communities across this city at risk,” DRUMBeats said in the statement, referring to Cuomo’s recent Islamophobic taunts at Mamdani. “The vilification of Zohran Mamdani reflects a long and violent history of portraying Muslim, Sikh, Arab, South Asian, and Black New Yorkers, as outsiders and threats,” the statement further added.
The use of such tone by Cuomo and his courting of individuals like Patel, comes at a time when studies suggest an increase in anti-Muslim hate speech in recent months. An analysis by the Centre for the Study of Organized Hate found that anti-Muslim posts on the internet, particularly aimed at Mamdani or surrounding his Democratic nomination, surged by several thousands posts after the primary election.
During a visit to a Hindu temple earlier this month, Documented spoke with candidate Zohran Mamdani about Cuomo’s recent alliances with Hindu right-wingers.
“Andrew Cuomo has a politics of division.” Mamdani told Documented. “And, he will find people to practice that politics wherever he goes.”
Muslim South Asians are not the only ones feeling alienated by Cuomo. Posting on social media about the launch of South Asians for Cuomo, he mislabeled the entire community in the captions by referring to them as “Southeast Asian,” a distinct regional identity, broadly referring to people from the eleven ASEAN countries.
“Calling South Asians ‘Southeast Asians’ shows his ignorance and lack of effort to understand our community. Someone who refuses to even learn won’t fight for us,” said Lavanya DJ, a member of Hindus for Zohran, an affinity group canvassing for Mamdani particularly among the Hindu community.
Still, some of Cuomo’s South Asian supporters vow to stand by him despite being at odds with people in their own community.
“Mamdani’s election [campaign] is based on race and ethnicity,” said Fahad Soleiman, a businessman from Queens. “When he’s in a mosque he claims to be a Muslim, when he’s in a mandir he claims to be a Hindu, when he’s in an African-American community he says he’s born in Uganda so he’s African.”
Soleiman used to be a supporter of Mamdani, but switched his support for what he, without elaborating, called Mamdani’s arrogance. Part of his opposition is the candidate’s promise to decriminalize prostitution, which he claims is “anti-Islam.” (In the second mayoral debate on Wednesday, Cuomo accused Mamdani of hurting the sentiments of Sunni Muslims due to his promise to decriminalize prostitution. According to his campaign platform, Mamdani will go after sex traffickers instead of targeting sex workers.)
More recently, however, Soleiman has been frustrated that Cuomo has not been allowed to visit or campaign in any mosques. “Most of the mosques in the city support Mamdani,” Soleiman admitted, adding, “and now these mosques are not allowing Cuomo to go to the mosques.”
“If you believe in religion, you cannot be a socialist,” said Soleiman.
Latest election polls have found Mamdani to be leading comfortably ahead of Cuomo, with Republican candidate Curtis Sliwa well behind both.
Part of the resistance to Cuomo’s outreach among South Asians is also rooted in the career-politician’s own history of governance.
“As a survivor of sexual harassment, I get the creeps from Cuomo,” said Sherry Padilla, an Indo-Carribean woman from Guyana, who resides in Richmond, Queens. “He was also responsible for the deaths of thousands of elderly New Yorkers during COVID,” she claimed.
你知道吗？非公民办理驾照时的这个错误可能会导致选民欺诈
If Mamdani wins on Nov. 4, he will become the city’s first South Asian and Muslim Mayor. But for some South Asians, his identity is merely a subset of the reasons they support him.
“I support Mamdani not because he is Muslim, nor because he is South Asian. I support him because he stands for working class people and his policies will make New York City more affordable to live in,” said Fouzia.
The Cuomo campaign did not respond to Documented’s questions about whether Cuomo endorses Patel’s promotion of anti-Muslim hate speech or to additional requests for comment.
Patel also did not respond to Documented’s request for comments.
