New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani chose a Washington lobbying trip over the 33rd annual memorial for the 1993 World Trade Center bombing, and victims' families are furious that he now plans to attend the 25th-anniversary 9/11 ceremony at Ground Zero.
On February 26, the anniversary of the day radical Islamic terrorists detonated a bomb in an underground parking garage beneath the World Trade Center, killing six people and injuring more than 1,000, Mamdani was not at the September 11 Memorial plaza. He was in Washington, DC, meeting privately with President Donald Trump to pitch more than $21 billion in federal funding for a 12,000-unit affordable housing project at a Queens railyard. Deputy Mayor of Operations Julia Kerson stood in for him at the ceremony, the New York Post reported.
Police Commissioner Jessica Tisch, FDNY First Deputy Commissioner Dan Flynn, and City Council Speaker Julie Menin all managed to attend. The mayor did not. His office did not return messages seeking comment, and the White House has not commented on the meeting.
Now Mamdani says he will be at the 25th-anniversary 9/11 ceremony at Ground Zero this September. More than 79,000 people have signed a Change.org petition demanding he stay away. The families of the dead are not interested in his presence, and they have specific reasons for that.
Andrew Colabella, a Republican legislator from Westport, Connecticut, lost his cousin John DiGiovanni in the 1993 attack. DiGiovanni was 41 years old. Another victim, Monica Rodriguez Smith, was 35 and seven months pregnant. They were among the six killed when the bomb tore through the underground garage.
Colabella did not hold back about the mayor's absence. He told the Post that Mamdani:
"blew us off and passed on it because he does not give a s***."
Colabella added that the mayor avoided the February ceremony because it lacked media coverage, and because Mamdani feared being booed over what Colabella described as a "longtime association" with individuals who have defended Islamic terror. He pointed to left-wing influencer Hasan Piker, who once said "America deserved" the September 11, 2001 attacks, as one such figure linked to the mayor.
The broader pattern of Mamdani's associations has drawn scrutiny beyond the 1993 memorial. The mayor was previously photographed grinning alongside a Brooklyn imam described as an unindicted co-conspirator in the 1993 bombing itself. That photograph has become a flashpoint for critics who see a pattern of troubling ties running through Mamdani's public life.
"The only thing he cares about is his ego and his so-called political future."
That was Colabella's summary of the mayor's priorities. He said he is among the 79,000-plus who signed the petition.
Edward Smith, whose wife Monica Rodriguez Smith was killed in the 1993 bombing, took a different approach. Smith, a native New Yorker now living in Scottsdale, Arizona, told the Post he has no plans to sign the petition. He called it something that "empowers" the mayor.
Smith said he preferred that opponents "boo him or turn their backs on him" at the ceremony, a direct, personal rebuke rather than an online campaign Mamdani could ignore.
But Smith was no less blunt about the mayor himself:
"It is best he didn't show up, but it's even crazier that New York would elect him mayor in the first place."
That sentiment captures something the petition numbers alone cannot. The families are not merely angry about one missed ceremony. They question whether Mamdani has the judgment or the values to stand at Ground Zero and represent the city those attacks tried to destroy.
The annual 1993 WTC bombing memorial is not a new tradition. Every New York City mayor since Rudy Giuliani, including Michael Bloomberg and Eric Adams, attended at least some of the annual ceremonies in person or sent a deputy. Mamdani chose neither to attend nor to send a senior official with any visible connection to the event's meaning. Kerson, a deputy mayor of operations, filled the seat.
Mamdani described his meeting with Trump as "productive." The housing proposal, 12,000 affordable units at a massive Queens railyard, funded by more than $21 billion in federal money, is an ambitious ask. Whether it justified skipping a solemn memorial for terror victims is a question the mayor has not answered publicly. His office did not respond to the Post's inquiries.
The mayor did find time for Ground Zero when cameras were rolling. In April, Mamdani visited the memorial plaza to greet King Charles III, an event Colabella noted had "plenty of cameras." The contrast is hard to miss: a royal photo opportunity earned the mayor's presence, but the families of six murdered Americans did not.
Mamdani's fiscal credibility faces its own questions. An independent study found his universal childcare program will cost billions more than he promised, raising doubts about whether a $21-billion housing pitch to the federal government rests on any firmer ground.
Mamdani is not the only Democratic figure facing scrutiny over connections to the 1993 World Trade Center attack. The Washington Examiner reported that New Jersey Democratic congressional candidate Adam Hamawy served as an interpreter for Omar Abdel-Rahman, the convicted terrorist known as "the Blind Sheikh", traveled with him, and testified as a defense witness at his trial for the bombing. In 1994, Hamawy volunteered in Bosnia with the Benevolence International Foundation, a Chicago-based nonprofit later shut down for providing logistical support to al Qaeda.
Fox News columnist Guy Benson put it plainly:
"This man is a leading candidate for Congress in New Jersey, a state that lost more than 700 people on 9/11. Are Democrats really going to make someone like this their nominee for the United States Congress?"
Former federal prosecutor Andrew McCarthy, who prosecuted the Blind Sheikh case, suggested Hamawy's overseas volunteer work may have been motivated by a desire for prestige within jihadist circles. The pattern is consistent: Democratic leaders and candidates whose personal histories intersect with the worst acts of terror committed on American soil face minimal accountability from their own party.
In Mamdani's case, the accumulation is striking. The photograph with the Brooklyn imam. The associations Colabella described. A record that has drawn fire from Israeli leaders across the political spectrum over his rhetoric. And a city where hate crimes have surged under his watch, with Jewish residents bearing the brunt.
The petition demanding Mamdani skip the September 11 ceremony continues to grow. More than 79,000 people have signed it. Whether the mayor heeds it or not, the number represents something his office cannot wave away: a broad, public statement that tens of thousands of people do not trust him to honor the dead with the seriousness the occasion demands.
Mamdani has said he will attend. He has not explained why he skipped the 1993 memorial. He has not addressed the families' objections. He has not responded to Colabella's accusations or Smith's challenge.
The families of the six people killed on February 26, 1993, including a 41-year-old man and a 35-year-old pregnant woman, have spent 33 years honoring their dead. They have watched every mayor from Giuliani to Adams show up or send someone who mattered. They watched Mamdani send an operations deputy and fly to Washington.
A mayor who cannot be bothered to show up for the victims of the first attack on the World Trade Center has no business claiming a place of honor at the ceremony for the second.
