New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani refused three times to address whether a Brooklyn Democratic district leader who promoted Henry Ford's antisemitic writings should resign, and his office's eventual written statement still avoided the question.
A Jewish Insider reporter pressed Mamdani on Monday following an unrelated event in Queens about Carmella Charrington, an elected Brooklyn Democratic district leader who shared an Instagram video last fall promoting Ford's The International Jew, a pamphlet series that blamed Jewish people for slavery, alcohol proliferation, drug distribution, and other societal problems. Charrington declared the video "the truth" on her Instagram account last November and wrote, "This better be the topic at the table." The video also urged viewers to watch a Swedish neo-Nazi documentary and read Holocaust denial literature.
Mamdani said nothing. Three separate times, Jewish Insider reported, the mayor declined to answer. Only after the outlet published its story did Mamdani's team reach out with a written statement.
That statement condemned antisemitism in general terms. It did not call for Charrington to step down. And when Jewish Insider followed up to ask whether the mayor believed she should resign, the administration did not respond.
Charrington's antisemitic social media posts were not a one-off. Beyond the Ford pamphlet video, she appeared in a video with an Egyptian podcaster and attacked Jewish investors involved in a dispute over her family's brownstone in Bedford-Stuyvesant, Brooklyn. She called them "Zionists" and drew a direct line between her situation and Israeli settlement activity in the West Bank. Breitbart reported that Charrington said, "They're Zionists that basically did this. Same thing that they're doing in the West Bank, it's the same thing."
Charrington described herself as a victim of deed theft. The New York State Attorney General's office disagreed. Letitia James' office found the battle over Charrington's brownstone was "simply a complicated dispute over the estate of her Alzheimer's-stricken father", not a conspiracy, not theft, not a Zionist plot. A family inheritance matter.
When a Jewish Insider reporter later spoke with Charrington directly, she told the reporter to "get your rabbi" for a "roundtable" she planned to hold on a "bullying community." She issued an apology for the Ford video in a statement to The New York Times in late June, but the pattern of remarks continued.
Charrington won her unpaid district leader seat in the June 2026 primary as part of a progressive wave aligned with Mamdani's political coalition. State Senator Jabari Brisport, a key figure in the Democratic Socialists of America, and state Assembly nominee Eon Huntley both backed her candidacy. Several candidates supported by Brooklyn Democratic Party chair Rodneyse Bichotte lost district leader races that same month.
The internal power struggle matters because Bichotte has proposed changes to the Brooklyn Democratic organization's internal leadership selection process, changes Mamdani himself opposes. He told reporters Monday that the proposed changes were "an attempt to circumnavigate the will of voters."
"They are an attempt to circumnavigate the will of voters and what we should see is a reflection of what New Yorkers want to see in their home, as opposed to a representation of so much of what has led New Yorkers to become, and Americans to become, disengaged and disaffected in politics at large."
Mamdani was willing to weigh in on Brooklyn Democratic Party governance. He was not willing to say whether a district leader who promoted Henry Ford's antisemitic tracts and blamed "Zionists" for a routine estate dispute belongs in party leadership.
Joey Cohen-Saban, a district leader and Assembly candidate aligned with Democrats supporting Bichotte, wrote on X last week calling for Charrington to step down:
"Jewish New Yorkers are being attacked. Synagogues are being targeted. Public officials have a duty to lower the temperature and not amplify rhetoric that endangers their neighbors. Charrington has repeatedly crossed that line without remorse. She is unfit for public office and must resign. Every Brooklyn Democratic leader and anyone seeking to lead this party must say so clearly and unequivocally. No excuses. No equivocation. Period."
Mark Treyger, CEO of the Jewish Community Relations Council, was equally direct. The New York Post reported Treyger said Charrington's conduct "traffics in some of the oldest and most dangerous forms of antisemitic scapegoating" and that "repeatedly invoking Zionists as a collective villain, particularly after previously promoting Henry Ford's The International Jew, is not legitimate policy criticism."
State Sen. Sam Sutton also called for her resignation.
But higher-ranking Democrats hedged. Attorney General Letitia James issued a condemnation of Charrington's antisemitic posts but did not call for her to resign. City Council Speaker Julie Menin did the same, condemnation without consequence. Julio Peña, described as the favorite to replace Bichotte as Brooklyn Democratic chair, issued only a general condemnation of antisemitism and refused to address Charrington's remarks directly. Peña had run on a slate with Charrington.
When Mamdani's office finally issued its written response, the language was strong enough on paper. Spokesman Sam Raskin said: "Suggesting that an alleged deed theft in Brooklyn is part of a global conspiracy involving Jewish people is blatant, reprehensible antisemitism." The statement added that "trafficking in these dangerous antisemitic tropes is vile and inexcusable."
Strong words. But the statement came only after Jewish Insider published its report on the mayor's silence. And it pointedly avoided the one question that mattered: should Charrington resign?
The gap between Mamdani's rhetoric and his refusal to act tells its own story. He called the remarks "blatant, reprehensible antisemitism" and "vile and inexcusable", but would not say the person who made them is unfit for party leadership. He opposed Bichotte's party rule changes in detail but could not muster a single sentence about whether a promoter of Henry Ford's antisemitic pamphlets should hold an elected Democratic post.
Charrington rode into office on a slate backed by Mamdani's progressive allies. Calling for her resignation would mean acknowledging that his coalition elevated someone with a documented record of antisemitic posts, posts that predate her June election. It would mean breaking with allies like Brisport and Huntley who backed her candidacy. And it would hand ammunition to Bichotte's faction in the ongoing fight over Brooklyn's Democratic machinery.
So instead, Mamdani condemned the antisemitism in the abstract and left the antisemite in place.
When politicians condemn bigotry in press releases but refuse to demand accountability from their own allies, the condemnation is not a principle, it is a press strategy. New York's Jewish residents deserve better than a mayor who finds antisemitism "vile and inexcusable" right up until holding someone accountable might cost him a vote on the county committee.
