AP Photo/Heather Khalifa
New York City mayor-elect Zohran Mamdani speaks during a news conference in the Queens borough of New York, Wednesday, Nov. 5, 2025.
As Zohran Mamdani gave his victory speech Tuesday night after being elected as mayor of New York City, the Houston Police Officers’ Union took to social media to make a recruiting pitch.
“NYPD, are you disgusted with the election of Zohran Mamdani?” the Houston police union asked in a series of graphics posted on its X account.
Mamdani, 34, is the youngest person to be elected as New York mayor in more than a century. He’s also the first Muslim and first person of South Asian descent to be elected to the position.
A Democratic socialist, Mamdani expressed criticism of the New York Police Department in 2020, calling it a “rogue agency” that should be defunded, according to The Associated Press, which reported that he subsequently apologized and has said he plans to retain the NYPD commissioner.
Houston Police Officers’ Union via X
Still, the Houston Police Officers’ Union is asking NYPD officers to consider moving more than 1,000 miles away to southeast Texas.
In a flyer posted on social media, the union touted the Houston Police Department’s competitive pay, with officers recently receiving an $832 million contract that will give them pay raises of 36.5% over a 5-year period, along with support from local elected officials.
“If you’re disgruntled where you are, there’s nothing worse than having a disgruntled police officer on your force. We’re about 1,500 officers short,” Ray Hunt, executive director of the Houston Police Officers’ Union, told Houston Public Media. “Come on down to Houston, where we have a very supportive city council, very supportive mayor, and a governor, lieutenant governor, and legislature that supports the cops, and the calls are starting to come in.”
Hunt said a number of former NYPD officers are already at HPD.
“One of them was our former president, who’s now the vice president of the Fraternal Order of Police, who he and his wife are both police officers here,” Hunt said. “And he has been a good recruiter for us from New York because this has just been life-changing for him.”