Mayor Eric Adams on Wednesday falsely labeled socialist Democratic mayoral nominee Zohran Mamdani “a communist,” echoing one of Republican President Donald Trump’s frequent lines of attack against the City Hall frontrunner.

Hizzoner launched the broadside during an unrelated Wednesday news conference when asked why he thinks Democratic House Leader Hakeem Jeffries and Democratic Rep. Yvette Clarke — both of whom represent swaths of Brooklyn — did not endorse Mamdani after meeting with him on Tuesday.

“Number one, he’s not a Democrat, you know, he’s a communist,” said Adams — misstating the democratic socialist Mamdani’s political ideology as communist. Democratic socialists and communists are not one in the same.

Mamdani is the Democratic nominee, who won the party’s primary over former Gov. Andrew Cuomo by nearly 13%. While Adams is also a Democrat, he is running for reelection as an independent after skipping the primary due to his now-dismissed federal bribery case.

By calling Mamdani a communist, the mayor was employing one of Trump’s most frequent attacks on the nominee. Since Mamdani’s upset primary win, Trump has railed against him as a “pure communist” and a “100% communist lunatic,” while threatening to strip him of his citizenship and federally take over the Big Apple if he becomes mayor.

Mamdani campaign spokesperson Dora Pekec, in a statement, charged that Adams is trying to distract from new corruption scandals that have plagued his administration and reelection campaign over the past week.

“It speaks volumes that Eric Adams would rather recycle Cold War insults than deal with the exhausting list of corruption and crises consuming his City Hall,” Pekec said. “While he’s busy dodging indictments, delivering for his billionaire Trump donors, and holding a 30-year low approval rating, Zohran’s focused on the issues that matter: making the most expensive city in the world more affordable and restoring trust in government.”

Kayla Mamelak Altus, Adams’ City Hall spokesperson, argued in a social media post that the mayor is not echoing Trump because other figures, including conservative supermarket magnet John Catsimatidis, have also labeled Mamdani a communist. 

Despite the use of the label, a Democratic socialist and a communist are not identical in belief.

Democratic socialism advocates for big government programs, akin to President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s New Deal in the 1930s, designed to improve people’s lives while also respecting capitalist ideals of free enterprise.

Communism, on the other hand, advocates for full state control of the economy. 

Adams questions Mamdani’s ‘working-class’ support
Democratic mayoral nominee and Assembly Member Zohran Mamdani.Photo by Lloyd Mitchell

Adams further charged that Jeffries and Clarke are reluctant to support Mamdani because they represent “working-class communities” that do not support controversial policy items he claims the nominee embraces.

He named legalizing prostitution, defunding the police, and eliminating misdemeanor offenses among those positions — characterizations that Mamdani’s campaign has disputed.

“It would be challenging to endorse his policies that are really anti-what working-class people want,” Adams said.

Although Mamdani, a Queens Assembly member, co-sponsored a bill in the state legislature to decriminalize prostitution, he does not support legalizing it.

Even though decriminalization is not part of Mamdani’s mayoral platform, he has said he wants to “look at the ways” former Mayor Bill de Blasio’s administration, which proposed decriminalization policies, sought to tackle the issue.

When it comes to defunding the police, Mamdani has distanced himself from his fervent past support for the movement, saying he is “not defunding the police” and “not running to defund the police.”

Adams’ third jab attempts to connect Mamdani with an item in the national Democratic Socialists of America’s recently-updated platform that calls to “end all misdemeanor offenses.” However, a Mamdani campaign spokesperson told the New York Post on Tuesday that the candidate does not believe in that proposal and would not pursue it if elected mayor.

Mamdani won the Democratic primary with a campaign focused on lowering costs for those struggling to live in the city. His core proposals include making public buses free, freezing the rent for stabilized tenants, and implementing free universal child care.

The lawmaker is polling far ahead of Adams, who is most often coming in fourth place behind Republican nominee Curtis Sliwa.