Congressional hopeful and former New York City Comptroller Brad Lander — Mayor Zohran Mamdani’s favored candidate to dislodge sitting Rep. Dan Goldman (D-NY) — refused to comment on Mamdani’s veto of a bill that would set NYPD policy around security perimeters at educational facilities during protests, even as a Jewish group Lander co-founded denounced the mayor’s move. 

Lander has not issued a public statement on the move and failed to respond to calls or text messages on his personal cell phone from Jewish Insider, while his campaign did not answer queries sent via phone and email regarding Mamdani’s controversial Friday veto, the first of his mayoralty. 

Meanwhile, New York Jewish Agenda, a progressive group Lander co-founded, declared itself “disappointed” in the democratic socialist mayor’s decision to block the measure from becoming law.

“We strongly believe in the right to protest and the importance of free expression. But those rights must be balanced with the equally important right  to access educational spaces safely and freely,” NYJA said in a Friday statement. “This bill represented a good faith effort to provide solutions during a tense moment in our city. We had hoped Mayor Mamdani would recognize that protecting these spaces and preserving civil liberties are not opposing values.”

NYJA’s former executive director, Phylisa Wisdom, currently leads the Mayor’s Office to Combat Antisemitism. 

The bill Mamdani struck down was part of a package with a similar measure that would formalize NYPD policy for guaranteeing access and egress at houses of worship — both were a response to recent pro-Hamas protests targeting synagogues and yeshivas in the five boroughs. Both measures contained language compelling the police commissioner to establish official protocol for the use of security perimeters near doorways and driveways, and neither imposed significant conditions on what that procedure would look like.

The bill on houses of worship passed with a veto-proof majority after the police department, which falls under Mamdani’s office, said it had “no objections” to the measure. But the educational facilities proposal passed with a far smaller margin, and the mayor asserted that it defined educational facilities too broadly and might conflict with union activity, even though the language of the proposal contains a carveout for organized labor.

The city bills are both distinct from state legislation Gov. Kathy Hochul has endorsed that would make it a felony to come within 25 feet of the entry points to a house of worship or an abortion clinic. They also differ from new congressional legislation that would impose federal fines and even prison time on any person engaged in intimidation, obstruction, or harassment within 100 feet of a religious institution.

For his part, a spokesperson for Goldman told JI that the sitting congressman supports both the city and state proposals but withheld an opinion on Suozzi’s bill, which he promised to “thoroughly review.”