Rabbi Sharon Kleinbaum joins Mamdani rally with progressive leaders in Queens

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🎤 A rally in Queens

• Rabbi Sharon Kleinbaum, a longtime advocate of LGBTQ rights and anti-Trump activist, campaigned with Zohran Mamdani for the first time at a huge rally on Sunday.

• Mamdani also stood with Sen. Bernie Sanders and Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez — a trifecta of the country’s Muslim, Jewish and Christian progressive stars — at the Queens Forest Hills Stadium, where nearly all 13,000 seats were filled.

• The generational torch of democratic socialism was on show, with 34-year-old Mamdani crediting 84-year-old Sanders for his meteoric rise. He told the crowd, “I stand before you tonight only because the senator dared to stand alone for so long. I speak the language of democratic socialism only because he spoke it first.”

• Sanders and Ocasio-Cortez also demonstrated a united progressive front around Mamdani’s pro-Palestinian platform, which has been as core to his campaign as affordability.

• “They want us to think we are crazy,” said Ocasio-Cortez. “We are sane to demand affordable and decent housing, a decent wage, the right to health care, that we pay to care for our people instead of the flattening of Palestinians and oppressed people abroad.”

• Gov. Kathy Hochul also appeared in her first time campaigning with Mamdani since she endorsed him in September, showing the support Mamdani has amassed among moderate Democratic leaders.

• Hochul was heckled with a “tax the rich” chant, referencing a key proposal of Mamdani’s that Hochul has opposed. Mamdani joined her on stage and clasped her hand to throw their arms up together, softening the crowd’s reaction.

• Kleinbaum, who retired from the LGBTQ synagogue Congregation Beth Simchat Torah last year, admitted in her speech, “I don’t agree with our leader Zohran Mamdani in everything that he says,” an apparent reference to Mamdani’s pointed rhetoric about Israel. She added, “I don’t agree with anyone on everything.”

• Kleinbaum also said, “One thing I know for sure: that Muslims and Jews must work together for a shared future of all of us, where the humanity of Palestinians and Israelis have a future of shared security, freedom, dignity and justice.” She said she strongly rejected attacks on Mamdani’s faith from his critics and opponents. (Kleinbaum’s wife, Randi Weingarten, helms the American Federation of Teachers, the union whose New York chapter endorsed Mamdani, to some Jewish educators’ chagrin.)

• Brad Lander, who ran against Mamdani in the primary and now campaigns with him, also spoke about a shared future for Israelis and Palestinians and Jews and Muslims in New York City. Citing his own Jewish values, Lander also said that “10s of 1000s of Jewish New Yorkers” were supporting Mamdani and that he was committed to all Jews’ safety.

• “On primary night, Zohran made a commitment to reach out to people who disagree with him, and since then, I have seen him keep that promise in dozens of meetings with rabbis and Jewish leaders, in house parties, in synagogues, at town halls, at Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur services,” Lander said.

• Jewish comedian Sarah Sherman, who has parodied Islamophobic Mamdani critics on SNL, emceed the event. She targeted Cuomo, for whom Hochul was a deputy, in her jokes, saying, “Imagine how bad you have to be if all your former coworkers get together to complain about you to a stadium full of people?”

🏆 A late endorsement and a reversal

• Rep. Hakeem Jeffries, the House minority leader from Brooklyn, gave Mamdani a last-minute endorsement on Friday.

• Jeffries, like Hochul and other moderate Democratic leaders who have lined up behind Mamdani, acknowledged “areas of principled disagreement” with the candidate in a statement to The New York Times.

• Among those is his longstanding pro-Israel stance, including close ties with the pro-Israel lobby AIPAC.

• Jeffries cited Mamdani’s pledge to invite Jewish police commissioner Jessica Tisch to stay on along with conversations about protecting Jewish New Yorkers in his decision.

• “Assemblyman Mamdani has promised to focus on keeping every New Yorker safe, including the Jewish community that has confronted a startling rise in antisemitic incidents as well as Black and Latino neighborhoods that have battled deadly gun violence for years,” said Jeffries.

• Meanwhile, Dov Hikind — one of Republican nominee Curtis Sliwa’s most ardent Jewish supporters and an impassioned Cuomo critic — switched his endorsement to Cuomo on Saturday.

• “Four months ago, I endorsed Curtis Sliwa for mayor,” Hikind said in a video. “But today I am asking you, pleading with you, to vote for Andrew Cuomo. Here’s why: New York City is in a critical moment. If Mamdani wins, the future of our city is on the line.”

🗳 Early voting surges

• About 164,000 New Yorkers went to the polls this weekend for the first two days of early voting. That turnout is close to the entire early voting count from 2021.

• The early record-breaking turnout represents voters mobilizing both for and against Mamdani, according to The City. He has appealed aggressively to new voters, while his democratic socialist platform and views on Israel have animated many moderate, conservative and Jewish voters to vote for Cuomo.

🔯 Pushing for Jewish voters

• Cuomo is centering his pitch to Jewish New Yorkers in the last days of the campaign. On Sunday, he stumped at a “Stand With Israel” rally in Kew Gardens Hills.

• “New York is not New York without the Jewish community,” said Cuomo, before going on to say he would best address affordable housing, public safety and boosting business in New York City.

• The event was hosted by the Bukharian Action Council. Queens is home to some 70,000 Bukharian Jews, who hail from Central Asia. The crowd chanted messages including, “We will not be erased” and “We will stand for our Jewish community.”

• On Friday, Cuomo also met with Orthodox leaders in Flatbush and won an endorsement from the Flatbush Jewish Community Coalition.

• Meanwhile on the Upper West Side, left-wing Jewish groups including Jewish Voice for Peace, Jews for Racial and Economic Justice and Bend the Arc gathered to canvas for Mamdani over the weekend.

🕌 Islamophobia takes the stage

• Mamdani posted a speech decrying attacks on his Muslim identity on Friday in a video that has amassed over 22 million views.

• He argued that Islamophobia is not treated with the same condemnation as other forms of hatred. “For as long as we have lived, we have known that no matter what anyone says, there are still certain forms of hate acceptable in this city today,” he said. “Islamophobia is not seen as inexcusable.”

• Cuomo accused Mamdani of “theatrics” in his own press conference. “Today, he’s playing the victim, but in reality he is the offender. What he has done has so offended the Jewish community in this city,” said Cuomo, according to Politico.

• Vice President JD Vance attacked Mamdani for an emotional recounting of the way his family was affected by Islamophobia, including an aunt who “stopped taking the subway after September 11th because she did not feel safe in her hijab.” Vance said on X, “According to Zohran the real victim of 9/11 was his auntie who got some (allegedly) bad looks.”