Why this Jewish feminist early-voted for Cuomo, and didn’t even hold her nose

I am deeply concerned about the allegations of sexual harassment against former governor Cuomo, and even so, without hesitation, I support his candidacy for mayor.  As a feminist, woman, and Jew, I am much more troubled by the approaches and statements of Assemblymember Zohran Mamdani, which show blatant disregard for women’s safety as a class. The reality of the moment is that we have two imperfect candidates, and I have no qualms about resisting the candidate whose campaign demonstrates that regressive treatment of women is at its core.

Before the #MeToo movement, I worked in the New York City and State good government sector, focusing on civics education, and government accountability, transparency, and ethics, where I often heard about instances of sexual harassment in state government, especially in the State Assembly. Aside from the pain that these incidents caused to those who endured them, we know that when women are routinely harassed in state government, it can lead to fewer women serving in representative roles, and that this gender imbalance can lead to policies that disadvantage and harm women. Repeatedly, I tried to get leaders to take up sexual harassment as a key issue of government ethics; repeatedly these requests were ignored. I met with several assemblymembers to learn more about the issue and advocate for change, but it continued to be an uphill battle. At the time, even despite the prominent case of former assemblymember Vito Lopez, sexual harassment was not widely regarded as a matter of good government ethics. 

I am heartened that, so many years later, New Yorkers view sexual harassment as an impediment to good government, and normally I would share the hesitation to vote for a man who faced serious allegations of sexual harassment from several individuals.  

And yet, Cuomo committed these actions behind closed doors in an abuse of power, whereas Mamdani’s candidacy openly objectifies women in an effort to obscure his personal affiliations with groups and policies that enable gender violence and tacitly embrace the use of rape as a weapon of war – signaling a graver, systemic threat to the hard-won achievements of the feminist movement.

The culture of a campaign reflects the candidate running it. In Mamdani’s case, his campaign leans into gimmicks like “Hot Girls for Zohran.” By the 1970s, major feminists recognized how language like this reduces women to their appearance and instrumentalizes their bodies in the service of a powerful male figure; it uses the language of infantilization, simultaneously diminishing the subjectivity and intellect of women while eroding essential sexual boundaries. 

“Hot Girls for Zohran” might seem playful, but searching for it on Instagram prompts an automatic safety feature warning of the illegality of child sexual abuse. It should be unthinkable that in our day, a major political candidate’s get out the vote effort can be so easily linked to this objectification and potential abuse. We know too well that language shapes culture shapes reality.

We saw a consequence of this during campus protests at Columbia University and Barnard College – led by Mamdani’s associate Mahmoud Khalil and the Columbia chapter of Students for Justice in Palestine.

In February 2024, mixed gender protestors at Barnard, the all-women’s college, took over a building and unlawfully detained staff and faculty inside. Columbia’s SJP shared to their X account that a Barnard dean “just asked for our permission to use the bathroom. Guess who has the upper hand now?” In the video shared on that post, protesters shout “shame, shame,” as the dean is walked to the bathroom. 

What is more chilling? That protestors think it is acceptable to detain women against their will and mock a woman as they sit in judgment of her bodily autonomy? Or that a leading mayoral candidate is allied with, neither denouncing nor decrying these human rights abuses in the city he seeks to lead?

But Mamdani’s support for these tactics is not surprising, given that he has made opposition to Israel’s existence the centerpiece of his political life, stretching back to his college days when he founded the Bowdoin chapter of SJP, the very same organization. 

And the anti-Israel protest movement has an inherent conflict at its core: it claims to stand for intersectionality and social justice for all – that all causes are intertwined with Palestinian liberation – yet it also advances the approach: “by any means necessary.” In actuality, this movement operates by establishing a clear hierarchy of priorities that results in the subordination of women’s rights in service to the cause.

This seems to be why Mamdani can hardly bring himself to even the most tepid of condemnations of Hamas, a governing body that used vicious and systematic rape, sexual assault, and the taking of hostages from civilian populations in Israel as a tactic of war to advance political and/or religious aims. 

The brutal sexual violence perpetratedled by Hamas on October 7th is are well-documented by The Dinah Project’s report, A Quest for Justice: October 7 and Beyond; the work of human rights lawyer Cochav Elkayam-Levy; a Report of the United Nations’ Special Rapporteur Pramila Patten, the Special Representative of the Secretary-General on Sexual Violence in Conflict; and most horrifically, by Hamas’ own footage, which they broadcast on that very day. 

Patten’s report was released just a few days after that Barnard detainment. I remember the anticipation of Israeli and Jewish women in the weeks leading up to. We were praying that we wouldn’t have to keep saying “Me Too, unless you’re a Jew.” We were grateful that Patten recognized the brutal reality of sexual violence perpetrated by Hamas on October 7th, because it was one small step to healing.

But also in the lead-up to that report’s publication, a public letter “was initiated by U.S.-based anti-zionist Jewish feminists” (and signed by others as well) that accused Israel – not Hamas! Israel! – of weaponizing rape, because after October 7th, after Hamas raped and murdered and took people hostage and said they would continue to perpetrate more October 7ths, Israel went into Gaza.

I understand the discussion in contemporary feminisms, about the interrelatedness of all forms of violence and the fervent hope for a world beyond aggression. But the reality is that Hamas is an opponent that uses rape and other atrocities to advance political and religious objectives. My feminism demands that I stand opposed to this, and that I vote for candidates who do too.

Some New Yorkers – even some vaunted feminists and Jews – brush aside this concern about whether Mamdani supports Hamas, because finally, on The View, he offered the weakest condemnation two years after October 7th, while he was seeking endorsements of more mainstream Democrats who needed political cover. 

But what accounts for Mamdani’s silence and avoidance for two full years beforehand? 

This city and its Jews have been tying ourselves in knots trying to parse every last nuance of every last comment that he makes about Hamas, Gaza, and Israel.

Why should we have to work so hard to know where he stands on Hamas in the first place? Why should we overlook that he pledged his “love to the Holy Land 5,” or protests next to signs praising intifada?

It should have been immediately clear that a leading candidate for mayor of New York City does not support the terrorist group governing Gaza with brutality against both Palestinians and Israelis. 

Perhaps too many of us do not want to see that he has, actually, indicated his support for Hamas. This is a concern that cannot be brushed away, given that Mamdani built his political career on anti-Zionism since SJP, and given the “any means necessary” rhetoric that includes sexual violence.

And based on this alone, Jewish women in New York have every right to feel worried about a Mamdani mayoralty, without being made to feel gaslit or guilty or ashamed.

In recent weeks I have heard Jewish leaders, many of whom I deeply respect, raise how “complicated” this election is. What is surely complicated are the fissures in the liberal American Jewish world, and that many Jews feel betrayed and that we are politically homeless, and how our leaders will handle all of this. But these leaders invoked sexual harassment as the reason for the complexity in this election, without raising the more dire post-October 7th concerns of many Jewish women.

It is frustrating to hear men telling me that my concerns are too simple or aren’t big enough or defining what they should be for me. I know what my fears are, and I know that they are legitimate, because I have a perspective that spans space and time – a perspective born of being Jewish, part of an ancient people, and being a woman, whose histories have often been hidden, obscured, or written out. I know that rape is an assertion of power, and that opponents and oppressors of Jews have used it against Jewish women for centuries – as have also happened to other women and people by people and forces seeking to dominate them. I know that cycles of history and anti-Jewish subjugation repeat themselves in different places and times, and we are in a lower point in that cycle, and it is getting lower.

There is so much in Jewish history about systematic rape that has gone undiscussed, from the brothels in Nazi concentration camps to the sexual violence in anti-Jewish pogroms across Europe and MENA over centuries. The silence comes from the shame that exacerbates the personal pain and torment of systematic oppression.

And these cycles of violence are not only alive in the tactics that Hamas uses, but also in those of their benefactor-state, Iran. We have heard our Iranian sisters cry out for years now about the repressive regime that arrests and beats women for merely showing their hair! This is absolutely unthinkable to us in the freedom of New York City. 

I hear all these anti-Zionists calling for liberation but refusing to see how truly free they are – we are. How grateful we should be for the freedoms we have today, for the work of our feminist forebears, and to hold on tightly to the rights they have secured for us. Even while there is more work to do. No matter who wins this election, there will be plenty of work to do – for Jews and for feminists, both.

For me, as a Jewish feminist, I have no shame in facing the reality of this election, voting for Former Governor Cuomo, and voting for the safety and survival of women and of Jews as classes of people.

For me this election is simple, and I did not need to hold my nose to vote.