Zohran Mamdani’s mayoral transition team shelled out a whopping $25,000 to a PR firm after one of his top appointee’s past antisemitic and anti-cop social media posts came to light, new records show.
The transition team paid the company Tappan Research for campaign consulting and research consulting on Dec. 31, 2025, according to the latest transition fund filings, which were first reported by City & State.
It came in the aftermath of Catherine Almonte Da Costa‘s resignation Dec. 18 — just the day after she was appointed to be Mamdani’s incoming City Hall director of appointments — when her decade-old posts about “money hungry Jews” and NYPD “piggies” were revealed.
Da Costa had been vetted by Ali Najmi, before she resigned and the transition switched to a professional outside firm.
But the change still apparently came too little too late as Mamdani faces a fresh firestorm over his appointment of fellow Democratic Socialists of America member Cea Weaver to head the Mayor’s Office to Protect Tenants.
Weaver previously posted about how homeownership was a “weapon of white supremacy” and that she wanted to “Impoverish the *white* middle class.”
She has since called her comments “regretful,” and the mayor has stuck behind his pick when pressed on the controversy over her radical views this week.
Najmi, meanwhile, was appointed last week as chair of the Mayor’s Advisory Committee on the Judiciary, which helps select judges for family, civil and criminal courts.
Records show that the mayoral transition raised nearly $4 million and spent just under $3 million, leaving the fund with around $845,000 on hand.
Mamdani raked in cash from some big names, with fashion designer Steven Madden and Soros family scion Robert Soros donating the maximum amount of $3,700.
A rep for Mamdani did not respond to a request for comment Friday.
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