Sen. Cory Booker (D-NJ) refused to say whether he supports New York City mayoral candidate Zohran Mamdani in a recent interview and argued that supporters of the “defund the police” movement are “wrong.”
“Democratic leaders are not supporting [Mamdani]. Is that a problem? Do you support him?” the Garden State senator was asked by CNN’s Manu Raju, in an interview that aired Sunday.
Booker avoided directly answering Raju’s question, instead arguing that “the lines that divide us in America are not nearly as strong as the ties that bind us.”
“Big corporations, people want to keep our eyes on the screen, want to pit us against each other and tell us how much we should hate each other. I am sorry. The left-right lens is not the right lens to look at this right now,” he continued. “Right now it is: Can we get back to the pragmatic work of governing?”
Raju tried to pin Booker down and again asked: “Mamdani, are you going to support him?”
The senator declined to endorse the democratic socialist candidate.
“I have learned a long time ago: Let New York politics be New York politics,” Booker responded. “We’ve got enough challenges in Jersey. I got a governor’s race. I’m supporting Mikie Sherrill. I got legislative races. That’s where my energy is going to go going into November.”
“New York City, I love you. You’re my neighbor. You’re about 10 miles from where I live. You guys figure out your elections. I’m going to focus on mine,” he added.
Mamdani, an outspoken critic of Israel who has refused to condemn antisemitic slogans, shocked the country last month when he handily defeated former Gov. Andrew Cuomo and others in New York City’s June Democratic mayoral primary.
The 33-year-old Empire State assemblyman, however, has failed to secure endorsements from key Democratic state leaders, including House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-NY) and Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY).
Critics of Mamdani also point to his past support of defunding the police, which Raju raised during his conversation with Booker.
“What we need is to #DefundTheNYPD,” Mamdani tweeted in June 2020, charging that the NYPD is “racist, anti-queer & a major threat to public safety.”
Days later, Mamdani posted that New York needs “a socialist city council to defund the police.”
“Are statements like that still problematic for your party?” Raju asked Booker.
“I think, again, I’m going to speak for Jersey. Newark, New Jersey, a majority black city, five days after the George Floyd incident, if you had polled my city and said, ‘Do you want more police, less police, or the same amount of police?’ Newark would have overwhelmingly voted for more police,” Booker said.
“We don’t want police violating our rights. We don’t want police endangering our lives, but we want safety and security as the fundamental foundation of Maslow’s pyramid. We want to have security in our community, and the police are part of that. An essential part of that equation,” the senator continued.
“So anybody who’s saying ‘defund the police’ is wrong, and within the Democratic Party or within the nation, I will always fight that.”
Mamdani walked back his past support for defunding the police last week in the wake of a mass shooting in Manhattan that left four dead, including an NYPD officer.
“I am not running to defund the police,” he told reporters.
“My statements in 2020 were made amidst a frustration that many New Yorkers held at the murder of George Floyd,” Mamdani added.
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