A top figure in New York City’s influential bodega network resigned Wednesday in open protest after the group’s president endorsed democratic socialist Zohran Mamdani for mayor, escalating a public fracture within one of the city’s most politically sensitive small-business blocs, the New York Post reported.
Fernando Mateo, co-founder of the United Bodegas of America, said he was resigning immediately after President Radhames Rodriguez announced the organization’s support for Mamdani, calling the decision a violation of the nonprofit’s legal neutrality and a direct betrayal of its members.
“I did not agree with what was done today,” Mateo told the New York Post. “This was a betrayal.”
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