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On October 29, 2025, Fernando Mateo, co-founder of the United Bodegas of America, publicly resigned in protest after the organization’s president, Radhames Rodriguez, announced an endorsement of Zohran Mamdani for mayor. Mateo called the decision a betrayal of the group’s mission and warned it violated the nonprofit’s neutral obligations to its members. This eruption exposes a rotten rot at the heart of civic institutions when leaders put politics ahead of the people they’re supposed to represent.
Mateo told reporters that hundreds of bodega owners were already furious, and he said he would hold a press conference to condemn the move, arguing the endorsement jeopardizes the credibility and legal standing of the organization. His resignation is not a tantrum; it’s a wake-up call from an immigrant businessman who built his community on hard work and law and order, not political theater. The founder’s complaint about broken trust should alarm every small-business owner watching from Main Street to the Bronx.
What makes this betrayal worse is Mamdani’s record and proposals — including pilot city-run grocery stores — that bodegas rightly fear would be an existential threat to mom-and-pop shops operating on the thinnest of margins. Bodega owners who spoke out this summer warned that subsidized, tax-exempt municipal stores would undercut family enterprises and drive working immigrants out of business. Endorsing a candidate who openly flirts with municipal competition for private livelihoods is not solidarity with small business; it’s economic self-sabotage.
The endorsement also came even as many shopkeepers raise real concerns about crime and safety that eat into their ability to operate and feed their families. Mamdani has discussed expanding programs like panic-button systems in stores, but words about safety won’t fix a philosophy that treats private property and entrepreneurial risk as expendable under the guise of “affordability.” Bodegas live at the intersection of public safety and personal sacrifice; they need policies that stop looters and predators, not experiments in political grandstanding.
This episode is a case study in the broader collapse of common sense on the left: organizations that should protect workers and owners instead hitch themselves to radical candidates based on identity politics or perceived momentum. The endorsement smells less like a thoughtful policy alignment and more like a cynical bet on electoral winds, leaving the people who actually run stores paying the price. Conservative voters should see this for what it is — an ideological sellout to socialism dressed up as compassion.
Hardworking Americans know the difference between real help and empty political promises. We don’t want government-run corner stores replacing the immigrant bakers, grocers, and entrepreneurs who have kept our neighborhoods functioning through thick and thin. If New York’s future belongs to the people who show up each morning before dawn to stock shelves and sweep sidewalks, then civic groups must stand with them, not abandon them for a PR headline.
Fernando Mateo’s stand deserves respect and support from anyone who believes in free enterprise, public safety, and honest leadership. The United Bodegas of America should reverse course, restore neutrality, and remember its duty to its members rather than to any political fad. Voters in New York and across this country should take note: when institutions betray small business, it’s a signal to double down on candidates who defend prosperity, property, and the rule of law.
