A video shows Mamdani, accompanied by a bodyguard, walking past a voter towards a booth, prompting the man to object and confront the mayor’s security detail.
New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani was accused of cutting in line at an early voting site on Saturday morning, October 24, after a voter complained that the mayor had moved ahead of him to reach a voting booth.
A video of the incident shows a man waiting in line as Mamdani, accompanied by a bodyguard, walks in front of him towards a voting booth. The man can be heard objecting to the apparent bypassing of the queue, leading to a tense exchange with the mayor’s security detail.
“Why's he gotta cut me?” the man shouted as Mamdani proceeded to vote.
While the mayor cast his ballot, his bodyguard stood beside the voter, who continued to complain about the incident.
“The mayor just cut me, you saw it,” the man told the bodyguard.
“He cut me, you all saw it,” he added, turning towards other voters waiting in line.
The footage does not establish whether Mamdani was formally directed to a particular voting booth or whether the incident involved a dispute over which booth was available.
(Video courtesy: hereswhykevin/Instagram)
What Zohran Mamdani said after voting
Mamdani appeared to brush off the incident when he spoke to reporters after voting, making a joke about his experience at the polling station.
“I voted early. I was only called a communist once. I got in and out,” he said.
A reporter then asked the mayor directly whether he had cut the line.
“Did you cut him though? That was the question,” the reporter asked.
Laughing, Mamdani replied that the voter had wanted to use a particular booth.
“He wanted to wait for ... there were two open, he wanted this one,” the mayor said.
His response appeared to suggest that the disagreement was related to the availability of voting booths rather than simply the order in which voters were waiting. However, the exchange, as described, does not independently establish what happened before Mamdani entered the booth.
(With Fox News inputs)