A staffer paid on Zohran Mamdani’s first campaign later pleaded guilty to a hate crime threat against Jewish students.
Iman Abdul was paid $540 to canvass for journalist Ross Barkan’s 2018 Democratic State Senate campaign. Mamdani ran that operation, starting as field director before being promoted to campaign manager. The connection comes from campaign-finance records surfaced by the Washington Free Beacon.
Barkan has confirmed Mamdani’s central role. During a January 2026 interview with Current Affairs, Barkan said he hired Mamdani after being impressed by his prior organizing experience. Political writer Michael Lange told the Free Beacon that Mamdani “assembled Barkan’s field program from the ground up.” Abdul was a paid part of that program.
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Seven years after the campaign ended, Abdul became the subject of a criminal investigation in Brooklyn. She posted a message on social media that included a Google Maps image pinpointing Leon M. Goldstein High School, a public school on the Kingsborough Community College campus. The post appeared to encourage an attack on the school and singled out students she called “Israel-loving Zionists.”
“If anyone needs a public school in NYC to attack for whatever reason,” Abdul wrote, before referring disparagingly to students she described as Zionists.
As originally reported, the NYPD characterized the post as a “terroristic threat.” Police arrested Abdul the following day. She was initially charged with making a terroristic threat, aggravated harassment, making a threat of mass harm, and acting in a manner injurious to a child.
Abdul later pleaded guilty to aggravated harassment as a hate crime. Under the reported agreement, she avoided prison time. Completing counseling could allow the conviction to eventually be reduced to a misdemeanor.
The campaign itself ended in defeat. Barkan ran in New York’s 22nd State Senate District, challenging Andrew Gounardes for the Democratic nomination. Gounardes won the primary and went on to defeat longtime Republican Sen. Marty Golden in the general election.
For Mamdani, the Barkan race was an early foothold in a political career that would later carry him to the New York State Assembly and eventually City Hall. Barkan has described Mamdani as relatively unknown at the time of hiring but already a seasoned organizer. He credited Mamdani with building out the campaign’s field operation and volunteer network from scratch.
The connection between Mamdani and Abdul is limited to that 2018 campaign. The records confirm she was a paid canvasser during the months he managed field operations. There is no suggestion in the available reporting that Mamdani had any knowledge of or connection to Abdul’s conduct seven years later.
The Free Beacon’s reporting highlights the link as Mamdani’s public profile continues to grow in New York politics.
