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New York City Mayor-elect Zohran Mamdani is backing a candidate for a state assembly seat who once described 9/11 as a terror attack that a “couple of people did.”
News that the incoming mayor was backing Aber Kawas, a longtime Palestinian American activist, was revealed by a member of his mayoral transition team during a closed-door Democratic Socialists of America meeting in Manhattan last week, according to a NY Daily News report.
“[Mamdani] told me that while he has tremendous respect for everyone in this race, he has said that he will support Aber in whatever she pursues,” top political advisor to the Mamdani transition, Sam McCann, said during the meeting, according to the newspaper.
Fox News Digital has reached out to Mamdani and has attempted to reach out to Kawas.
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New York City Mayor-elect Zohran Mamdani speaks to supporters during an election night gathering. (Getty Images/Michael M. Santiago)
Since 2010, Kawas has been an organizer in the city’s Arab and Muslim communities, the New York Post reported. She is reportedly trying to garner support from the DSA for a run in the 34th Assembly District in Queens.
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Zohran Mamdani accepts an endorsement from the United Bodegas of America in the Bronx, New York City, on Oct. 29, 2025. (Deirdre Heavey/Fox News Digital)
That seat is being vacated by Assemblywoman Jessica Gonzalez-Rojas, who will challenge Queens state Sen. Jessica Ramos, the Post reported.
Kawas has been linked to the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR), which has been accused of having ties to Hamas. On Tuesday, Texas Gov. Greg Abbott issued a proclamation designating CAIR as a foreign terrorist and transnational criminal organization.
“The system of capitalism and racism and white supremacy… and Islamophobia, have all been used to colonize lands, to take resources from other people and so this is a long trajectory and were just seeing the manifestations of that continuation with 9/11,” she said in one unearthed clip posted on social media.
New York City Mayor-elect Zohran Mamdani and outgoing Mayor Eric Adams (Stephanie Keith/Getty Images; Adam Gray/Bloomberg via Getty Images)
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“The idea we have to apologize for a terror attack that a couple of people did and then there is no apology or reparations for genocides and for slavery… is something I find reprehensible,” she added.
