Many years ago, I gave strong consideration to running for local office. I met with local politicians to discuss a run for city council or maybe the school board. I do still believe all politics is local, but I ended up not running for office because, even then, politics was a blood sport that I didn't want my family exposed to that.
Because when your family member, be it a spouse, parent, or sibling, you are in the spotlight too. You may not like it, but that's a choice you make when you marry, give birth to, or are the adult child of a politician.
That's a lesson that Rama Duwaji, the wife of Zohran Mamdani, is going to learn, one way or the other. She's been in the headlines frequently as of late with her troubling history of liking social media posts that celebrated the slaughter of Jews, glorified terrorism, and even used the N-word. She was also caught lying about her connections to an antisemitic author, Susan Abulhawa, for whom Duwaji illustrated a book.
Here's yet another example of her problematic social media presence. This time, Duwaji used a gay slur.
Hey @NYCMayor — what does your wife mean by "fgts" here? pic.twitter.com/3CBuMLgAZk
— Jon Levine (@LevineJonathan) March 19, 2026
Now, normally, coarse language really doesn't offend me. Say what you want; I'm an adult with thick skin.
But I'm also a big believer that the rules that apply to Republicans should apply to Democrats, too. Imagine if the wife of a prominent Republican posted "fgts" on social media? The meltdown would last for a week. Every Republican from San Francisco to Pittsburgh would be asked about it and asked to condemn such a vile, homophobic slur.
As I noted when the first stories about Duwaji broke, and Mamdani defended her as a "private citizen" who had no influence over his administration, such deference was not given to the spouses of Justices Alito and Thomas, nor to the disabled husband of Nebraska Senator Deb Fischer. Democrats wanted Justices Alito and Thomas impeached for the things their wives, who are actual private citizens, did.
Yet this problem goes deeper than simply holding the Democrats to their own standards. Mamdani and his family have ties to some very anti-gay individuals. This includes Ugandan politician Rebecca Kadaga, who supported legislation that would have imprisoned gays for life. Much like they did with Abulhawa, Mamdani denied knowing Kadaga beyond snapping a picture with her, but that was a lie, too. His family had ties to Kadaga that went far beyond a photo op.
Mamdani's imam, Siraj Wahhaj, is also anti-gay, referring to gays as the "disease of society" and Mamdani's own father, Mahmood Mamdani, targeted a gay professor named Stella Nyanzi at Uganda's Makerere University. The elder Mamdani reportedly padlocked Nyanzi's office, withheld her pay, and pushed her out of his department.
And then there's Mamdani's plan to provide tens of millions of dollars to New York's "gender affirming care" programs, a move that writer Ben Appel, himself a gay man, said was straight out of Iran, and a way to "treat homosexuality as a defect to be surgically erased." Appel is right, of course. Islamic nations "treat" homosexuality by mutilating the genitals of gays and lesbians so they are no longer considered gay or lesbian.
Public life isn’t just about policies. It’s about judgment, character, and the people you surround yourself with. Mamdani wants New Yorkers to believe his wife is a “private citizen” whose words and actions don’t matter, and someone who has no influence over his administration. But that’s not how this works, and Democrats have spent years making sure of that. And gay New Yorkers, just like Jewish ones, deserve to know exactly how their mayor and his wife
If the rules they applied to Republicans mean anything, they apply here too. And if they don’t, then this was never about standards at all: just power and rank hypocrisy.
