Zohran Mamdani, the next mayor of New York City, has decided to pay an outside company to look deeper into the backgrounds of the people he wants to hire, because one of his first big choices quit after old, hateful tweets she wrote were found. The mayor-elect does not want any more surprises like that, so his team is adding a new layer of review before anyone else is given a job.
The trouble started when Cat Da Costa, the woman Mamdani picked to run the Office of Appointments, stepped down only one day after her new role was announced. Posts from 2011 showed her using ugly words about Jewish people, calling them “money hungry” and giving a subway line a cruel nickname. The Anti-Defamation League shared the tweets, and within hours the story spread. Da Costa said she was sorry, then offered to quit, and Mamdani agreed.
Mamdani told the press that the comments were “reprehensible” and that he would never have chosen her if he had seen the tweets first. He also admitted that his own old messages, once dug up during the campaign, had caused problems, so he knows how quickly past words can explode. Still, the fact that no one on his transition team found the 2011 posts before announcing the hire worried many observers, especially since Da Costa had already worked in City Hall under former Mayor de Blasio without the issue surfacing.
To fix the gap, the transition office has hired an independent firm to help with background checks, although they have not yet said which firm or exactly what new steps will be taken. The only promise so far is that the outside group will work alongside the current staff to make the process tougher. No details were given about how long the extra reviews will take or how much they will cost, but the team says the goal is simple: every future hire must be looked at “from every angle” before the public learns their name.
Several major jobs are still open, including the heads of the Education, Sanitation and Transportation departments, so the new vetting process will be tested right away. Mamdani’s aides say they will not rush; they would rather announce good people later than deal with another resignation. For now, the lesson is clear in the mayor-elect’s circle: old tweets, photos or comments can reappear at any moment, and it is better to find them first than to be caught off guard again.
