Zohran Mamdani’s mayoral transition team misspelled names of two controversial picks — including ex-con rapper tapped as criminal justice adviser
Zohran Mamdani’s transition has been riddled with mistakes, starting with a series of misspelled names on his official list of appointees. The democratic socialist mayor‑elect’s team went unnoticed for sloppily spelling the names of several key transition‑committee members, including two of his most controversial picks.
One of the most glaring errors involved the rapper and former‑convict Mysonne Linen. Known for serving seven years in state prison after two armed robberies in the late 1990s, his name was accidentally typed as “Mysoone” when his placement on the Committee on the Criminal Legal System was announced last month.
A similar typo appeared for Black Nationalist Lumumba Bandele, whose name was incorrectly rendered as “Lumuumba” in the November 24 press release. He was listed as a new member of Mamdani’s Committee on Community Organizing.
The list of errors didn’t stop there. Sarita Daftary, who heads the Freedom Agenda—a group that says it is “dedicated to organizing people and communities directly impacted by incarceration to achieve decarceration and system transformation”—had her last name written as “Dafarty” in the announcement that placed her on the same 20‑member committee as Linen. Mary Travis Bassett, a noted Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health professor, was mistakenly called “Basset” when she was named to the Committee on Health.
Other misprints included a trailing “n” on Justine Olderman’s name in the Committee on Community Safety, a split version of AnnMarie Scalia’s first name (“Ann Maria”) on the Committee on Social Services, and an extra “r” on Mary Vaccaro’s surname in the Committee on Youth & Education.
Even the transition website was initially riddled with these typography errors until a swift correction was made on Monday.
Both Linen and Bandele have sparked strong backlash. Linen’s criminal record, marked by a 1999 conviction for armed robberies, has made his appointment controversial. Bandele, a prominent member of the Malcolm X Grassroots Movement, has been linked to support for figures such as Assata Shakur, who escaped from prison and later lived in Cuba as an asylum‑seeker.
A spokesperson for Mamdani did not comment on the day the mistakes were publicly highlighted.
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