Mamdani attends Staten Island 9/11 event, over GOP rancor

Over the chorus of Republican elected officials demanding that New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani skip the city’s annual 9/11 memorial ceremony at ground zero, Staten Island Borough President Vito Fossella appears to have put politics aside and hosted the mayor at his office’s remembrance event at the Postcards memorial. 

The mayor arrived with Gov. Kathy Hochul, shaking hands with nearby police officers before taking his seat. None of the elected officials in attendance spoke, other than Fossella. After the ceremony, Mamdani spoke with victims’ families, and briefly greeted Fossella.

Mamdani’s presence at the Friday evening Staten Island event came following a slew of vitriol over his attendance at the main 25th anniversary ceremony at the World Trade Center. While the annual event has long been one in which politicians put partisan fighting aside to center victims and their families, Mamdani had faced calls – many based on blatant Islamophobia – in recent weeks to steer clear.

Republicans including former Mayor Rudy Giuliani, Rep. Mike Lawler, Rep. Nicole Malliotakis, former Gov. George Pataki and Council Members Vickie Paladino and Inna Vernikov all made such demands, arguing that they were speaking on behalf of victims’ families. And while gubernatorial candidate Bruce Blakeman stopped short of personally calling on Mamdani to skip the ceremony, he’d encouraged attendees to protest by turning their back on him.

Mamdani hasn’t played into the fury, and has kept his attention squarely focused on the victims and their families while attending commemoration events this week. As the commemoration ceremony began in lower Manhattan early Friday morning, he took his place beside fellow elected officials, some of whom had called on him to skip the ceremony. There he listened for hours, solemn, as family members read out the names of the nearly 3,000 people who’d died in the terrorist attacks. At one point, he even approached Giuliani and shook his hand. 

Still, Mamdani’s every move was highly scrutinized. One story from the New York Post for example said that he and Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez had been “caught yukking it up during the somber reading of 9/11 victims' names.” (Amid a wave of online bashing, a Giuliani aide wrote on social media that the videos of the two leaders laughing lacked context, and that the camera had caught them greeting each other.)

The remembrance event at Postcards memorial, which honors Staten Islanders who lost their lives on 9/11 and from 9/11-related illnesses, is the lone major city event hosted by a Republican elected official, making Mamdani’s presence notable. Fossella appears to have publicly steered clear of the rancor that many of his fellow Republicans have engaged in. But the day before the ceremony, his office had been vague about whether the mayor would or wouldn’t attend – even saying that they invited no elected officials this year. 

“We only invited families of the people who’ve passed away,” Nicholas Thompson, a spokesperson for the borough president, told City & State. “We didn’t send out any invitations to elected officials. It’s a public ceremony, so anybody is welcome to come and pay their respects … But just to reemphasize, we keep the focus on the families. We’re very close with the families of those who have fallen and so they’re the ones we sent invitations to.” Several hundred Staten Islanders died on 9/11 and have passed from 9/11-related illnesses in the years since. 

Thompson declined to answer questions about why or if this differed from previous years, when at least some elected officials received invitations. And as they have in the past, a number of elected officials did attend Friday evening, including the mayor, Gov. Kathy Hochul, Attorney General Letitia James, Malliotakis and state Sens. Jessica Scarcella-Spanton and Andrew Lanza.

Mamdani’s attendance at the event was left off his public schedule, which was released Thursday evening.

The caution was likely tied at least in part to concerns about protests. One of the last times Mamdani was on Staten Island, attending the borough’s annual night out against crime celebration in early August, he’d been met with loud boos, which some coverage claimed made him leave the event early. Conservative activist Scott LoBaido reportedly suffered cardiac arrest after attempting to confront the mayor at that event – and the Staten Islander has been at the forefront of attacking the mayor over 9/11. LoBaido and Fossella have frequently appeared in photos together, with the borough president sharing one on social media as recently as two weeks ago.

Unlike the World Trade Center event, where families alone speak, politicians have historically had speaking slots at the Postcards ceremony. While attending, former Mayor Eric Adams spoke at the event every year of his tenure with the exception of 2022. The same went for former-mayor Bill de Blasio when James Oddo was Staten Island borough president. Hochul also spoke in previous years. That wasn’t the case this time. Fossella was the lone elected official to speak. 

While doing so, he thanked families, first responders, neighbors and “elected officials at all levels of government” for attending. 

“One of the reasons we come together and never forget is that there are those who have forgotten, or worse, who have said truly brazen things, like the claim that the United States somehow deserved 9/11,” Fossella said in an apparent shot at Hasan Piker. The leftist streamer made such a satirical remark during a livestream in 2019, and recently said he could have phrased the comment better.

“To those people,” Fossella added, “I say, come here, stand before us, these Postcards, look us in the eye and tell us that our friends and neighbors deserved to die.”