New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani sent a deputy to stand in for him at the annual memorial for the 1993 World Trade Center bombing while he pitched a housing project to President Trump, and now more than 80,000 people have signed a petition demanding he stay away from the September 11 anniversary.
The February 26 ceremony at Ground Zero marked the 33rd anniversary of the truck bombing that killed six people and injured more than 1,000 in the parking garage beneath the Twin Towers. Police Commissioner Jessica Tisch, FDNY First Deputy Commissioner Dan Flynn, and City Council Speaker Julie Menin all attended. The mayor did not. He was in Washington, D.C., meeting privately with President Trump to pitch more than $21 billion in federal funding for a proposed 12,000-unit affordable housing development at a Queens railyard. Deputy Mayor for Operations Julia Kerson stood in for him, Newsmax reported.
Mamdani later called the Trump meeting "productive." His office did not respond to the New York Post's requests for comment on his absence from the memorial. The White House has not publicly commented on the meeting either.
Andrew Colabella, a Republican legislator from Westport, Connecticut, lost his cousin John DiGiovanni in the 1993 bombing. He did not hold back about the mayor's no-show.
"Mamdani blew us off and passed on it because he does not give a s***. The only thing he cares about is his ego and his so-called political future."
Colabella also pointed to what he described as a telling contrast: Mamdani skipped the lower-profile February memorial but showed up at Ground Zero in April when King Charles III visited. The implication was plain, a photo opportunity with a foreign monarch ranked higher than honoring six murdered New Yorkers.
Edward Smith, whose wife Monica Rodriguez Smith was killed in the 1993 attack, offered a blunter assessment. Monica was seven months pregnant when she died. Smith, a native New Yorker now living in Arizona, told the New York Post:
"It is best he didn't show up, but it's even crazier that New York would elect him mayor in the first place."
Smith said he plans to attend the upcoming September 11 ceremony himself but will not sign the petition calling on Mamdani to stay away. He said signing it only "empowers" the mayor. His preferred response: attendees should "boo him or turn their backs on him."
An online petition demanding that Mamdani skip the 25th anniversary of the September 11 attacks has now collected more than 80,000 signatures. The organizers of the petition have not been publicly identified, but the scale of the response reflects a level of public anger that goes well beyond the families directly affected by the 1993 bombing.
Mamdani has said he plans to attend the September 11 ceremony regardless. His office has not addressed the petition publicly. Previous mayors, Rudy Giuliani, Michael Bloomberg, and Eric Adams, attended at least some annual ceremonies themselves or sent deputies, but the memorial has historically carried an expectation of mayoral presence, particularly at Ground Zero.
The backlash fits a pattern that has followed Mamdani since he took office. He has faced repeated accusations of prioritizing political positioning over the concerns of the people he governs. His administration claimed credit for $104 million in delivery tips generated by a law that passed before he took office, drawing charges of dishonesty from critics.
Colabella went further than criticizing Mamdani's absence. He pointed to the mayor's associations with controversial figures, including left-wing streamer Hasan Piker, who Colabella said previously claimed "America deserved" the September 11 attacks. The nature of Mamdani's relationship with Piker is not detailed in the reporting, and Piker's remark is relayed through Colabella's accusation rather than independently verified.
But the accusation lands in a context that makes it harder for Mamdani to dismiss. The New York Post separately reported that Mamdani was previously photographed smiling alongside a Brooklyn imam who was an unindicted co-conspirator in the 1993 World Trade Center bombing itself, the same attack whose memorial Mamdani chose to skip.
Mamdani's broader record on issues related to Israel and terrorism has drawn sustained scrutiny. Just The News reported on Mamdani's nearly decade-long affiliation with Palestinian-American activist Linda Sarsour, who stepped down from the Women's March in 2019 over allegations of antisemitism and ties to Louis Farrakhan. The day after the October 7, 2023, Hamas terrorist attacks on Israel, Mamdani made no mention of Hamas in his public statement, instead condemning Israel and "Netanyahu's declaration of war." He later defended his use of the phrase "globalizing the intifada."
Jewish Voice for Peace Action endorsed Mamdani's mayoral campaign, stating that "the fight for Palestinian freedom starts at the local level." Jewish leaders in New York have since demanded Mamdani "stop fanning the flames" after a series of stabbings on the Upper West Side.
Mamdani's stated reason for being in Washington on February 26 was to secure federal money. The housing proposal he brought to Trump, more than $21 billion for 12,000 affordable units at a Queens railyard, is the kind of ask that any mayor might make. But the timing created a choice, and Mamdani chose the meeting over the memorial.
No public response from the Trump administration to the housing pitch has been reported. Whether the meeting produced any commitment, any follow-up, or any concrete progress remains unknown. What is known is that the mayor left Ground Zero to a deputy while the families of the dead stood where the bomb went off 33 years earlier.
Mamdani's tenure has been marked by a string of controversies that share a common thread: a gap between what the mayor says and what he does. His administration exposed the names and addresses of nearly a million New Yorkers through a botched pied-à-terre tax list. He backed down on a pledge to arrest Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu if he set foot in New York, punting the matter to federal authorities after promising voters he would act himself.
Now he says he will show up at the 25th anniversary of September 11, the largest terrorist attack in American history, carried out at the same site where a smaller attack killed six people in 1993. The families who lost loved ones in both attacks will be watching to see whether the mayor treats the ceremony as a solemn obligation or another stage.
More than 80,000 people have already made clear which answer they expect.
When a mayor skips a memorial for murdered Americans to chase a funding pitch, and then insists he'll attend the bigger ceremony a few months later, the families are right to wonder whether the visit is about honoring the dead, or being seen.