New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani and his wife Rama Duwaji brought home roughly $145,000 last year, and Duwaji's share of that total, from her visual design business, amounted to a net income of just $8,860. The figures, drawn from the couple's 2025 tax return, landed as Duwaji was already facing sustained scrutiny over resurfaced social media posts containing racial slurs and anti-Israel rhetoric.
The tax return shows Mamdani earned $131,926 before taxes from his Assembly salary. He also collected $1,600 in royalty payments from songs he produced under the alias "Mr Cardamom," and the couple reported roughly $1,600 in capital gains. Mamdani spokesperson Dora Pekec said those gains "came from a mutual fund."
Duwaji, a 28-year-old Texas-born Syrian-American visual artist whose work has appeared in The New Yorker, Vogue, and the Tate Modern, reported $10,010 in gross receipts from her design business. After deducting costs, including $500 for "art supplies", her net income fell to $8,860. That figure sits well below the $15,650 federal poverty threshold for individuals.
Perhaps the most politically awkward line on the return: the couple reported no charitable contributions. That detail sits uneasily beside Mamdani's 2025 campaign message, which centered on making New York City more affordable by expanding the social safety net. He has argued that higher earners should contribute more through increased taxes while also encouraging charitable giving.
Pekec pushed back, telling reporters that Mamdani "did donate to charities but did not itemize those contributions because the couple took the standard deduction." She was unable to immediately provide details about the donations she said they made last year.
Taking the standard deduction is common and perfectly legal. But for a mayor who built his political identity on shared sacrifice and redistributive policy, the gap between the rhetoric and the return is worth noting. Voters were told the wealthy should give more. The mayor's own household gave nothing that the IRS can verify, and his office couldn't name a single recipient on the spot.
The financial disclosures arrived against the backdrop of an ongoing scandal over Duwaji's past social media activity. Posts from a since-deleted account were unearthed in March, and the Washington Free Beacon reported it linked the posts to Duwaji using facial recognition software.
Among the resurfaced material was a 2013 tweet in which a then-15-year-old Duwaji apparently used a racial slur in a message to a friend. The posts also included anti-Israel content, including a claim that Israelis should not be allowed to live in Tel Aviv.
The controversy extended well beyond teenage indiscretions. Fox News reported that old posts linked to Duwaji praised Shadia Abu Ghaleh, a member of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, a U.S.-designated terrorist group. Duwaji was also criticized for contributing an illustration to an essay by author Susan Abulhawa, who described the October 7 Hamas attack on Israel as "a spectacular moment that shocked the world."
Mamdani himself addressed Abulhawa's language. As Fox News reported, he said of the author's comments:
"I think that that rhetoric is patently unacceptable. I think it's reprehensible."
Yet the mayor's condemnation of the author did not extend to any public rebuke of his wife's decision to illustrate that author's work, a distinction that has not gone unnoticed by critics. An Oct. 7 survivor publicly confronted Duwaji over her online activity, adding personal weight to the political fallout.
Duwaji addressed the teenage tweets in an interview with the online publication Hyperallergic on Wednesday. Her statement was careful and narrow:
"When a tabloid recently published old tweets I wrote as a teenager, I felt a lot of shame being confronted with language I used that is so harmful to others; being 15 doesn't excuse it. I've read and seen a lot of what others have had to say in response, and I understand the hurt I caused and am truly sorry."
The apology focused on the teenage posts. It did not address the anti-Israel content, the praise for PFLP-linked figures, or the illustration work for Abulhawa. As we previously reported, Duwaji's public contrition carefully sidestepped the most politically charged material.
Breitbart noted that the resurfaced posts also included use of an anti-gay slur, and that scrutiny has extended to Duwaji's broader Israel- and Palestine-related online activity, a politically sensitive front as Mamdani works to address concerns in the Jewish community.
Mamdani, for his part, defended his wife publicly. He told reporters:
"She shared some of her reflections in this interview. I won't add much to them, what I will say, however, is that she is someone of incredible integrity."
The mayor has repeatedly described Duwaji as a private person with no formal role in his campaign or City Hall. Newsmax reported that Mamdani said Friday his wife "has held no formal position on my campaign or in my City Hall." He emphasized that the posts at issue predated their marriage by about a year and a half.
That framing has drawn its own skepticism. Duwaji is a working visual artist with credits in some of the world's most prominent publications. She is New York City's first lady. One social media user captured the tension with a quip cited in reporting on the controversy: "Rama is kind of like if a tradwife was a socialist."
The claim that she is merely a private citizen becomes harder to sustain with each public interview and each magazine credit. As we have previously noted, Mamdani's "private person" defense sits oddly alongside Duwaji's visible public profile.
Set aside the social media controversy for a moment and look at the tax return on its own terms. Mamdani ran for mayor promising to make the city more affordable. He argued that the wealthy should pay more and that charitable giving matters. His own return shows a household that reported zero charitable contributions to the IRS and relied on a spokesperson to insist, without documentation, that donations were made but simply not itemized.
Duwaji's net earnings of $8,860 from her art business are her own affair. But they do raise a practical question: the couple's household income is modest by New York City standards, drawn almost entirely from a government salary. There is nothing wrong with that. What grates is the mismatch between the populist posture and the personal follow-through.
Mamdani took office in January. His tenure has already been defined less by policy wins than by the rolling controversy surrounding his wife's online history. The tax return adds a new chapter, not a scandal in itself, but another data point in a pattern of say-one-thing, show-another.
New Yorkers can read a tax return. They can also read the room. A mayor who lectures the city about generosity and shared sacrifice ought to have a receipt or two of his own.
