Republican gubernatorial candidate Bruce Blakeman on Friday accused New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani of intentionally leaving Little Italy off a map of the Big Apple’s immigrant enclaves.
The map, titled “New York City Immigrant Enclaves,” highlights 30 areas across the five boroughs, ranging from Koreatown in Manhattan to Little Pakistan in Brooklyn and Little Yemen in The Bronx
But notably left off the map was the famous Italian-American neighborhood in Manhattan, sparking a steady wave of outrage since early July.
“I think it was intentional that not only the Little Italy here, down in Lower Manhattan on Mulberry Street, was left off as an important immigration point, but also Little Odessa in Brooklyn, and Astoria, where the Greek Americans came from, Hell’s Kitchen, where the Irish Americans came from,” Blakeman told The Post at event in the slighted neighborhood.
Blakeman, who’s currently serving as the elected Nassau County executive, argued the omission was part of a “pattern” by Mamdani of “denigrating the immigrants that came here before and built this city.”
“He has no respect for them. He has no respect for people who have a different opinion than he does,” Blakeman fumed.
The GOP candidate noted that Mamdani also canceled the traditional Puerto Rican Day breakfast at Gracie Mansion last month; skipped the Israel Day parade in May and passed on attending the installation of New York’s new archbishop, Ronald Hicks, in February.
“So you put this all together, and it’s not one thing. It’s a pattern,” Blakeman said.
Mike Crispi, the president of the Italian American Civil Rights League, told the crowd of about 100 people, who were holding up signs that said “Little Italy Forever,” that Italian Americans all over, not just in Little Italy, felt insulted by the map snub.
“On Arthur Avenue, and Staten Island, and Howard Beach, and Queens, Italian Americans aren’t just here in Little Italy. They are all over the tri-state area, and Italian Americans have contributed so much to this great city, and we are not going to let people take our city away from us and rob it of its identity,” Crispi said. “Absolutely not.”
Earlier this month, Mamdani blamed the map flap on his predecessor, former Mayor Eric Adams, but vowed to include Little Italy in a future iteration of it.
“This map was originally created by the prior administration in 2023, and when we inherited it, we added a few additional neighborhoods,” Hizzoner said.
“It’s clearly not an exhaustive list of the more than 200 ethnic enclaves,” Mamdani added.
“We’re going to be making additional changes in the future to reflect that… including Little Italy.”
At the end of the event, which was sponsored by Turning Point USA, Sicilian artist Sergio Furmari unveiled a statue of Charlie Kirk that he plans to display in Times Square on Sept. 10, the one-year anniversary of the conservative activist’s shocking assassination.
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