New York mayoral candidate Zohran Mamdani on Wednesday reinforced his stance on decriminalizing prostitution, the New York Post reported.
In a nod to Bill de Blasio, who was mayor of New York from 2014 to 2021, Mamdani, a State Assembly member and self-proclaimed democratic socialist, said he wants to “look at the ways in which the previous administration addressed this issue.”
“I found that it created far more safety than what the current administration has done,” Mamdani, 33, the Democratic Party nominee for mayor, told reporters at a public event, referring to Mayor Eric Adams, a Democrat who is running against Mamdani as an independent in November, according to the Post.
Since he ran for State Assembly in 2020, Mamdani has voiced his support for legalizing prostitution several times.
“I would like to register my support for [decriminalizing sex work] legislation, my eagerness for that debate and for my fundamental belief that sex work is work,” Mamdani said at a February 2021 assembly meeting.
Mamdani’s religion of Islam prohibits prostitution, a point Adams highlighted again Wednesday.
“I’m a Christian. I’m a person of faith. And nowhere in my religious texts does it say prostitution should be an alternative. And also, I don’t see it in the Quran. He calls himself a Muslim. I don’t see that in the Quran. In fact, it is in contrast to the Islamic belief,” Adams said on Fox 5’s “TMZ Live.”
De Blasio in 2020 proposed reforms to decriminalize prostitution and go after sex traffickers instead, according to the Post, including the use of “community-centered services” for prostitutes.
“So I have said time and again, my focus is on the outcomes of public safety,” Mamdani said Wednesday. “And what we have seen from this current administration is a theater, one that repeats itself every so often and leaves New Yorkers facing the same problems that they did a year prior.”
Adams has previously said that Mamdani doesn’t understand the realities of prostitution and the associated crime it would bring to the city.
“I think he’s lost on the fact that sex trafficking is very much part of prostitution,” Adams said. “We are trying to bring down crime, and he is talking about legalizing sex work.”
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