Impartial mayoral candidate Andrew Cuomo on Saturday accused Zohran Mamdani of mendacity about not realizing a virulently anti-LGBTQ Ugandan official with whom Mamdani not too long ago posed for smiling photographs.
The inflammatory snapshots — and Mamdani’s response to criticism of him about them — has put the Democratic nominee in New York Metropolis’s Nov. 4 mayoral election on the defensive.
The photographs have been taken at an airport in Uganda throughout Mamdani’s journey again to his native nation for his marriage ceremony after his beautiful win within the June 24 Democratic mayoral main.
One picture reveals Mamdani smiling with Rebecca Kadaga, Uganda’s first deputy prime minister and former parliament speaker. One of many nation’s longtime and strongest politicians, Kadaga in 2012 championed a invoice to make homosexuality punishable by dying.
In one other picture taken throughout the identical assembly, the 2 are joined by the candidate’s father, Mahmood Mamdani.
Mamdani, the Huge Apple’s mayoral front-runner, has claimed he didn’t perceive who Kadaga was when he posed for photographs together with her. However Cuomo in a minute-long video assertion posted on X, known as {that a} lie.
“Zohran, you should be ashamed of yourself for posing with a woman who would have had a death penalty for gays with that smile and then lying about it,” the ex-governor stated.
“Zohran said he didn’t know who she was,” he continued. “It turns out, after reporting, that was a lie. His father knew Kadaga very well for many years. She’s a longtime, well-known public official. It was a lie and it was reprehensible especially to New Yorkers,” Cuomo stated, including that the invoice was internationally condemned.
Mamdani on Saturday tried to push again on the continuing controversy at a marketing campaign occasion he held for Nationwide Coming Out Day.
“Had I known that she was the architect of this horrific legislation and attack on queer Ugandans, I would not have taken it,” he advised reporters, based on NY1.
As well as, in reference to the photographs, Cuomo on Monday known as on Mamdani to surrender his twin Ugandan citizenship as a result of African nation’s institutional homophobia.
“Why would you keep a citizenship in Uganda, which is a country that outlaws the LGBTQ community — why? Why be a citizen of that country?” Cuomo stated.
“I believe in the LGBTQ community, and it would be a total act of hypocrisy to be a citizen of a country that abuses LGBTQ people,” Cuomo continued. “It’s pure hypocrisy.”
Mamdani was born in Uganda however moved to the U.S. as a toddler and have become an American citizen in 2018.
Mamdani has stated he didn’t know who Kadaga was when he took the photographs together with her, and known as her excessive anti-gay legislative efforts a “horrific attack on queer Ugandans.”
The Mamdani marketing campaign has countered that Cuomo’s assault over Mamdani’s cheery footage with the homosexual-hating Ugandan pol a distraction from extra necessary points.
“Andrew Cuomo’s recent behavior is increasingly Trumpian — issuing desperate personal attacks to distract from his lack of any vision or plans to address the affordability crisis,” stated Mamdani spokeswoman Dora Pekec. “Does Cuomo want every dual citizen in a city of 3 million immigrants to give up their citizenship?”
Mamdani’s marketing campaign didn’t reply to a request for touch upon Cuomo’s newest X publish slamming the candidate as a liar.
Initially Revealed: October 11, 2025 at 9:53 PM EDT
