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Feelings ran high at a colorful protest outside the Assembly district office of Zohran Mamdani, the Democratic mayoral nominee.
July 21, 2025, 8:00 p.m. ET
For a political protest, especially in the dead of July in New York City, the colorful demonstration on Monday outside of Zohran Mamdani’s Assembly district office in Queens had it all.
On one side, some members of an Italian American affinity group — which had taken offense at a recently resurfaced social media photo from 2020 showing Mr. Mamdani giving the middle finger to a Columbus statue — spoke of their umbrage, often in colorful terms.
They vowed to fight Mr. Mamdani’s bid to become mayor. Some pledged their allegiance to Curtis Sliwa, the Republican candidate in November’s general election. One held a sign that was less committal, but just as dismissive. “Anyone but Communist Mamdani,” it said.
Across the street, counterprotesters, many also Italian Americans, amassed. Some wore pins from Mr. Mamdani’s successful Democratic primary campaign (one woman wore a “Hot Italians for Zohran” shirt), and held up signs like “Fast + Free Buses for Nonna!”, “Paisans for Zohran!” and “You Eat Jar Sauce!”
The two groups steadily held their ground, about a dozen cops between them, until the arrival of an infamous interloper — a performance artist known as Crackhead Barney — seemed to reignite the fury of the anti-Mamdani group.
Yet for all of the event’s circuslike pageantry, it made no direct impression on Mr. Mamdani. He was more than 7,000 miles away, taking a vacation from the campaign trail in Uganda, where he was born.
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In New York City mayoral contests, the winner of the Democratic primary is often assured victory in November, given the Democrats’ six-to-one voter advantage over Republicans. But while Mr. Mamdani is still considered the favorite, he faces a highly contested race against Mr. Sliwa and several major rivals running on third-party lines, including Mayor Eric Adams; former Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo; and Jim Walden, a lawyer and former prosecutor.
The protest on Monday gave voice to some of the more virulent lines of attack against Mr. Mamdani, including some that seemed xenophobic and anti-immigrant.
When counterprotesters began chanting, “We want Zohran! We want Zohran!” they were met with louder shouts of “USA! USA! USA!” and “Go to Cuba!” and “Stop Communism!”
One speaker talked about an older generation of Italian and Jewish immigrants who “made the city what it is.” Their legacy needed to be protected from Mr. Mamdani, “a radical” who wants to tear down a city with “Marxist socialist communist ideology.”
The protesters, who seemed more aligned in their support of President Trump, were ostensibly led by the Italian American Civil Rights League, a group that took its name from but had no apparent ties to a defunct organization founded by Joseph A. Colombo Sr., a reputed Mafia boss.
“This is about not being erased, and not being the butt of jokes anymore. Zohran Mamdani cannot give the middle finger to the Columbus statue,” Gerard Marrone, the league’s vice president, said through a bullhorn.
“No, he cannot!” an attendee shouted.
“And he cannot be elected!” screamed another.
“Because that is an affront to every Italian American out there,” Mr. Marrone, 51, continued. “We built this country. Don’t forget it. We are the special breed that left the old country. The breed of courage. The breed of perseverance. Of never giving up,” he said. “And we don’t want Zohran.”
There was less unanimity among the protesters on how best to keep Mr. Mamdani from becoming mayor.
David Rem, 61, a right-wing activist and a former MAGA candidate for mayor, told the crowd that Mr. Mamdani would win as long as the field remained crowded.
“The only winning solution here is a one-on-one match against Mamdani,” he said. “I don’t care who it is. Come September, around Labor Day, when the election starts turning up, you have to get behind the one candidate who is polling up.”
When he finished, the crowd was mostly quiet until Mr. Rem — wearing a MAGA hat and a U.S.A. baseball jersey with a Trump pin — led them into a chant calling Mr. Mamdani a “moron.”
The counterprotesters sought to dispel the notion that all Italian Americans were politically aligned.
Frank Marino, 34, an eighth grade U.S. history teacher from the Kensington section of Brooklyn, said that many of Mr. Mamdani’s policy proposals “are really not as extreme as the right wing would make it out to be.”
“They’re actually pretty sensible and reasonable, and there are things that would dramatically change the lives of many, many New Yorkers, including my own family,” he said. “I would benefit from a rent freeze, so I could stay in the neighborhood where I teach.” He added, “All the children and the families of my students, they would drastically benefit from free buses and universal child care.”
