New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani refused on Monday to denounce a Brooklyn Democratic leader who promoted Henry Ford’s The International Jew and blamed a property dispute on “Zionists.”

Following an unrelated event in Queens, the mayor refused to answer on three separate occasions when Jewish Insider pressed him about Carmella Charrington, who was elected in June to the unpaid but important role of Democratic district leader in the Mamdani-aligned progressive wave. As first reported by JI, Charrington shared an Instagram video last fall boosting the notorious pamphlet series by the founder of the Ford Motor Company, a clip that blamed Jewish people for a range of societal maladies from slavery to the proliferation of alcohol and drugs.

The refusal to answer came after the mayor ripped into a controversial proposal by Assemblymember Rodneyse Bichotte, a local party boss, to alter the Democratic organization’s internal leadership selection process in a manner that might let her retain power despite the success of Charrington and her runningmates. Several Bichotte supporters lost their district leader races in the June primary, jeopardizing her position. 

“I very much oppose these proposed changes by the current Brooklyn Democratic Party chair,” Mamdani said. “They are an attempt to circumnavigate the will of voters and what we should see is a reflection of what New Yorkers want to see in their home, as opposed to a representation of so much of what has led New Yorkers to become — and Americans to become — disengaged and disaffected in politics at large.”

Charrington won her race with backing from key figures in the Democratic Socialists of America, state Sen. Jabari Brisport and state Assembly nominee Eon Huntley. On her Instagram account last November, Charrington declared the video — which also urged viewers to watch a notorious Swedish neo-Nazi documentary and read Holocaust denial literature — “the truth” and asserted, “This better be the topic at the table.” In a subsequent conversation with JI, she told a reporter to “get your rabbi” for a “roundtable” she planned to hold on a “bullying community.”

However, she later issued an apology for the video in a statement to The New York Times. 

Yet, just weeks later, Charrington appeared in an Egyptian influencer’s video in which she attacked Jewish investors with whom she has been locked in a high-profile fight over control, describing the men as “Zionists.” Charrington has cast herself as a victim of deed theft, but New York State Attorney General Letitia James’ office found that it was simply a complicated dispute over the estate of her Alzheimer’s-stricken father.

“They’re Zionists that basically did this. Same thing that they’re doing in the West Bank, it’s the same thing. There’s a connection,” Charrington said. “But they are connected, the same people that’s doing it in the West Bank. I didn’t believe it at first. I just was like, who? Like, they’re like, it’s the people in Brooklyn, not just anything like in the U.S. It’s the connection straight to Brooklyn. And then they’re so bold, they come here and do it and show it.”

JI’s reporting prompted condemnations of Charrington from James and from New York City Council Speaker Julie Menin, though neither has called for her to step aside from her district leader position. Julio Peña, the favorite to replace Bichotte, has issued only a general condemnation of antisemitism but has refused to directly address the remarks from Charrington, with whom he ran on a slate. 

Meanwhile, a host of Bichotte allies, led by district leader and Assembly candidate Joey Cohen-Saban, have demanded Charrington’s resignation.

“Jewish New Yorkers are being attacked. Synagogues are being targeted. Public officials have a duty to lower the temperature and not amplify rhetoric that endangers their neighbors,” Cohen-Saban wrote last week on X. “Charrington has repeatedly crossed that line without remorse. She is unfit for public office and must resign. Every Brooklyn Democratic leader and anyone seeking to lead this party must say so clearly and unequivocally. No excuses. No equivocation. Period.”

The battle over Charrington’s brownstone in the fast-gentrifying neighborhood of Bedford-Stuyvesant — which saw City Councilmember Chi Osse, another member of the DSA, arrested protesting on her behalf — inspired Mamdani to create a new Office of Deed Theft Prevention in April.