A prominent black Big Apple politician compared Mayor Zohran Mamdani’s cronies in the Democratic Socialists of America to white supremacists as a bitter rift among Democrats spilled out onto social media.
Queens Borough President Donovan Richards went in on the DSA’s longstanding complaint among minority lawmakers of ignoring race in its crusade to grow its ranks and dismantle capitalism.
“White supremacy comes in all forms,” Richards posted on social media late Sunday.
The slap erupted from an debate online after a report in the New York Times that highlighted how the extreme left wing of the Democratic Party focuses on furthering the group’s agenda and largely has blinders on when it comes to black and Latino members and issues important to them in the five boroughs.
A DSA state Assemblymember, Phara Souffrant Forrest, attacked the Times reporter and whined that the story omitted that a black member of the group has repped one of the nabes mentioned — seemingly without fully reading the story.
Richards had responded after another journalist pointed out the article had already addressed her complaint.
He then doubled down on the accusation, sharing a Maclom X quote that called white liberals “dangerous foxes, who also show their teeth to the Negro but pretend that they are smiling.”
“The white liberals are more dangerous than the conservatives; they lure the Negro, and as the Negro runs from the growling wolf, he flees into the open jaws of the “smiling” fox,” the quote said.
The DSA has backed candidates from minority backgrounds, including two of its most prominent members — AOC, who is Latina, and Mamdani, who is Uganda-born — but the group’s makeup is overwhelmingly white.
According to a 2021 survey, 85% of the DSA is white.
The group also has faced accusations that it uses vulnerable districts to parachute in one of its own people instead of recruiting a candidate.
Richards is a liberal Democrat who has represented Queens for more than 13 years after being elected borough president in 2020, following an eight-year stint on the City Council.
His and Mamdani’s beef has emphasized a growing chasm in the party as the mayor and his pals try to drag the party farther left while the progressive folks — once considered the left wing of the city’s Democratic Party — attempt to maintain city institutions and hold onto the reins of the party.
Donovan endorsed Mamdani after he secured the Democratic nomination for mayor last year, but the fellow Queens lawmaker has not hesitated to take the young mayor to task in the days since.
The borough prez first went after Mamdani just weeks into his tenure when his admin cried poverty with city coffers running dry, claiming the only way New York City could survive was a whopping 9.5% property tax increase.
“New Era shouldn’t price out black and brown New Yorkers,” he said, referring to Mamdani’s “inauguration of a new era” tagline for the launch of his mayoralty.
Donovan represents one of the largest blocs of black homeowners in Queens and served as councilman in District 31, a more moderate area of the borough compared to some of the other far-left pockets that have elected the likes of Mamdani and other DSA comrades.
He has long advocated for homeownership in black and brown communities to grow generational wealth.
At the same time, one of Mamdani’s top advisors, Cea Weaver, has referred to homeownership as “a weapon of white supremacy masquerading as ‘wealth building’ public policy.’”
Also earlier this year, Richards was one of a few Dems who called out Mamdani’s admin to force folks off the streets and break down their vagrant shanties during the brutal and deadly cold snap.
“You can’t let the people stay out there. These are people in crisis,” he fumed to The Post at the time.
