NYC Dem reveals how city council rejected Cea Weaver—now Mamdani is handing her power without confirmation
Zohran Mamdani faced scrutiny after unilaterally appointing radical housing activist Cea Weaver, whose appointment to a city commission in 2021 was blocked by city council.
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A few years before Mayor Zohran Mamdani appointed Cea Weaver to run his Office to Protect Tenants, Democratic Assemblyman Kalman Yeger says the NYC Council signaled it would not confirm her for an influential city planning commission because she was too radical.
Mamdani has not pulled Weaver's appointment amid some of the same concerns city council members had back in 2021, including resurfaced comments she made calling homeownership a "weapon of white supremacy" and arguments that property should be treated as a "collective good."
"Guess it's easier to name a communist to a position that doesn't require confirmation," Yeger said amid the controversy surrounding Weaver. "Four years ago, her name was submitted for City Council confirmation to the City Planning Commission. Enough of us made clear we would not confirm her nomination and forced its withdrawal."
Cea Weaver walks home in the Crown Heights neighborhood of Brooklyn, NY, Wednesday, January 7, 2026. Weaver has been tapped by New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani to be his new director of the city Office to Protect Tenants. (Gregory P. Mango)
The New York Democrat noted in an interview with Fox News Digital that Weaver's appointment to the city's planning commission, which was made by New York City's Public Advocate, would typically not be controversial, but in light of Weaver's past comments from between 2017 and 2021, which had been made much more recently at the time, the city council pressured the Public Advocate to drop Weaver's nomination, which she claims she withdrew herself.
"We learned a little more about this person and I guess from my perspective, it was some of the more out-there comments, not just a political philosophy per se, but the things she's actually said verbatim," Yeger told Fox News Digital as he recalled the discontent that led to Weaver's nomination being withdrawn. "Things like homeownership is white supremacy – I think that's just ridiculous and, to be quite frank, I think it would surprise a lot of my Black, Latino and Caribbean-American constituents who have struggled their entire lives to buy a piece of New York and are raising middle-class families in my community to find out that they're participating in white supremacy by doing so."
