NYC Mayor Zohran Mamdani defends tenant official facing backlash for 'white supremacy' posts

NEW YORK (AP) — New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani is standing behind a newly-appointed housing official as she faces backlash for years-old social media posts, including messages that called for the seizure of private property and linked homeownership to white supremacy.

Cea Weaver, a longtime tenant activist, was tapped by the Democrat last week to serve as executive director of the Mayor’s Office to Protect Tenants. The mayor has vowed to expand and empower the office to take “unprecedented” steps against negligent landlords.

But in a sign of the high-level scrutiny on Mamdani's administration, Weaver’s since-deleted posts have sparked condemnations from officials in the U.S. Department of Justice and the editorial board of The Washington Post.

The posts, which were circulated on social media in recent days by critics of Mamdani, included calls to treat private property as a “collective good” and to “impoverish the (asterisk)white(asterisk) middle class.” A tweet sent in 2017 described homeownership as “a weapon of white supremacy masquerading as ‘wealth building public policy.’”

Eric Adams, the city’s former mayor and a fellow Democrat, said the remarks showed “extreme privilege and total detachment from reality.”

Asked about the controversy on Wednesday, Mamdani did not address the substance of Weaver’s posts but defended her record of “standing up for tenants across the city and state.”

Weaver said in an interview with a local TV station that some of the messages were “regretful” and “not something I would say today.”

“I want to make sure that everybody has a safe and affordable place to live, whether they rent or own, and that is something I’m laser-focused on in this new role,” she added.

The discussion comes after Mamdani last month accepted the resignation of another official, Catherine Almonte Da Costa, after the Anti-Defamation League shared social media posts she made over a decade ago that featured antisemitic tropes.

While Mamdani had said he was unaware of Da Costa's messages, Weaver’s past social media posts were known to the administration, according to a mayoral spokesperson, Dora Pekec.

Weaver previously led the Housing Justice for All coalition, which was widely credited with helping to convince state lawmakers to pass a sweeping package of tenant protections in 2019.

As leader of the city's tenant protection office, she would play a key role in achieving one of Mamdani’s most polarizing campaign pledges: identifying negligent landlords and forcing them to negotiate the sale of their properties to the city if they are unable to pay fines for violations.

The “public stewardship” proposal has drawn consternation from landlord groups and skepticism from others in city government.

But the early days of his administration have brought signs that the new mayor is not backing off on the idea.

In a press conference immediately following his inauguration last week, Mamdani said the city would take “precedent-setting” action against the owner of a Brooklyn apartment building that owed the city money and was currently in bankruptcy proceedings.

He then announced Weaver’s appointment, drawing loud cheers from the members of a tenants union gathered in the building's lobby.

“It is going to be challenging,” Weaver acknowledged. “New York is home to some of the most valuable real estate in the world. Everything about New York politics is about that fact.”