Anti-Jewish row hits Mamdani

The day after Mayor-elect Zohran Mamdani tapped Catherine Almonte Da Costa to be his director of appointments, she resigned amid an uproar over antisemitic social media posts from her youth.

- STORY: DANA RUBINSTEIN / NYT

The Mamdani transition announced her resignation hours after the Anti-Defamation League resurfaced the comments by Ms Da Costa, posted more than a decade ago, in which she denigrated Jews.

"I spoke with the mayor-elect this afternoon, apologised, and expressed my deep regret for my past statements," Ms Da Costa said.

"These statements are not indicative of who I am. As the mother of Jewish children, I feel a profound sense of sadness and remorse at the harm these words have caused. As this has become a distraction from the work at hand, I have offered my resignation."

In a separate statement, Mr Mamdani said, "Catherine expressed her deep remorse over her past statements and tendered her resignation, and I accepted." As the director of appointments, Ms Da Costa would have been responsible for recruiting people to work at City Hall.

The social media posts, which were reported by the Judge Street Journal newsletter after the Anti-Defamation League publicised them, date back to her teenage years.

"Money hungry Jews smh," she wrote in one 2011 post, when she was 18, using an abbreviation for "shaking my head."

"Far Rockaway train is the Jew train," she wrote in another post the next year.