Mamdani’s Primary Coalition Made Inroads With Voters at NYCHA

Among the usually moderate citizens housing voters who helped power Eric Adams to the mayoralty Zohran Mamdani outperformed expectations in last month s Democratic primary The poll site at NYCHA s Pelham Parkway Houses in Photo by Adi Talwar Looking at maps of mayoral primary poll results NYCHA campuses aren t hard to spot Especially in fast-gentrifying areas of Manhattan Brooklyn and Queens they stand out as patches of moderate votes in seas of progressivism Zohran Mamdani the assemblymember from Astoria Queens won his home district handily In various Astoria and Long Island City districts he won as much as percent of first-round ballots But at two of the city s largest society housing developments Queensbridge and Ravenswood Andrew Cuomo still carried the vote The difficulty is Cuomo can t win them as handily on the final ranked-choice ballot as Mayor Eric Adams did four years ago Where Adams ended up winning Queensbridge and Ravenswood with and percent of the vote respectively Mamdani made such margins impossible by winning and percent of votes just in the first round function d u ac var s d createElement 'script' s type 'text javascript' s src 'https a omappapi com app js api min js' s async true s dataset user u s dataset campaign ac d getElementsByTagName 'head' appendChild s document 'zwcugqstyjmfwec wgkn' Under ranked-choice voting candidates with the least number of votes are eliminated with those ballots flowing to voters second choice candidates and so on until one candidate clears percent Most of pre-election polls displayed Mamdani behind on the first ballot citywide but a few gave him a chance of overtaking Cuomo in the successive rounds Instead Mamdani won the first round handily to Mamdani expanded the electorate dramatically with younger voters and made inroads with Latino and Asian voters Sherry Richards was one of the young voters She lives in the Queensbridge houses the city s largest populace housing expansion She didn t vote in the primary but voted in last year s presidential electoral process and for Mamdani last month because of his focus on making New York more livable I want a candidate that cares about New Yorkers and New York City she revealed While changing voting process district lines make a perfect comparison of results across primary years at NYCHA campuses impossible statistics analysis from City Limits shows signs that Mamdani made critical inroads in traditionally moderate precincts enveloping the largest populace housing developments where City Limits examined evidence Outperforming expectations at NYCHA This time around Mamdani took up Kathryn Garcia and Maya Wiley s mantle as the more progressive challengers to a moderate candidate in the eventual winner Eric Adams Combined Garcia and Wiley won percent of the first round vote in Three weeks ago Mamdani won percent on his own But in selected precincts home to the city s largest NYCHA campuses he performed even better than previous contenders function use strict window addEventListener message function a if void a figures datawrapper-height var e document querySelectorAll iframe for var t in a information datawrapper-height for var r i r e i i if r contentWindow a source var d a input datawrapper-height t px r style height d Mamdani s mastery was not just characterized by his success turning out younger voters but his ability to remain competitive in parts of the city multiple wrote off for Andrew Cuomo places like NYCHA campuses Those inroads didn t unfailingly show up on the map but played a notable role City Limits analyzed information from large NYCHA developments because their boundaries are often contiguous with electoral contest precincts At smaller NYCHA campuses where precincts include adjacent blocks the facts is more noisy City Limits mapped all NYCHA developments with the first-ballot referendum results so you can find your own Mamdani s performance in those NYCHA precincts mirrored larger trends in the electorate He lost Black neighborhoods and a great number of NYCHA campuses But he won heavily Latino neighborhoods over Cuomo to according to an analysis by the New York Times He won districts with more Asian voters to His campaign did not reply to a request for comment before publication At the precincts enveloping the majority-Hispanic Washington Houses in East Harlem Zohran Mamdani put up his best performance among the NYCHA campuses City Limits examined winning percent of the first round ballots outperforming his citywide numbers Charisse James who lives at the Washington Houses voted for Eric Adams last primary but says she stayed home this time around because she didn t feel like she knew enough about the candidates She would have leaned towards Cuomo because of his focus on cops and populace safety but reported she still wants to learn more before November Eric Adams won by big margins at NYCHA campuses in winning the developments City Limits examined by an average of points on the final ballot Mamdani just on first round votes beat runner-up Kathryn Garcia s final tally at of those An early afternoon A view of NYCHA s Jacob Riis Houses from Franklin D Roosevelt East River Drive at East th Street Photo by Adi Talwar Traditionally moderate NYCHA precincts still went for Cuomo Andrew Cuomo s base of sponsorship came from the same parts of the city that Adams carried four years ago outer borough districts with more homeowners and lower incomes Those areas tended to have fewer residents with college degrees and more Black and Latino residents While there is tremendous diversity within the New Yorkers who live in NYCHA that moderate lane has traditionally resonated with constituents housing residents who are lower income and disproportionately Black Latino and older than primary voters on the whole Older voters across ethnic groups Democrat or not tend to be more conservative ideologically declared Eli Valentin a City Limits contributor who right now serves as assistant dean of graduate and leadership studies at Virginia Union University Historically there is a natural affinity for more moderate candidates like Adams and Cuomo he commented They re kind of moderate disclosed Sharon Stergis of NYCHA voters Stergis lives at the Jacob Riis houses in Alphabet City where she is part of tenant leadership It has a lot to do with religion and heritage They need stability they need discipline she added Even so NYCHA campuses don t tend to be deep wells of votes in Democratic primaries turnout this time around was low and relatively stable compared to across the NYCHA campuses City Limits examined Selected residents feel they don t get attention from general leaders NYCHA residents there s a lot of apathy complete apathy No one ever considers campaigning amongst us And that has been going on for generations reported Stergis I know a lot of tenants association presidents who supported Cuomo reported Aixa Torres president of the Alfred Smith Houses tenant association But she disagreed with various of her peers on the candidates records on community housing pointing to failures in getting Urgency Rental Assistance Payments out during the pandemic Cuomo and Adams have not been friends of citizens housing she added Torres ranked City Comptroller Brad Lander first and Mamdani second a vote that ended up flowing to Mamdani through ranked choice voting In she ranked Maya Wiley but left off Kathryn Garcia A resonant message Mamdani was laser focused on affordability with a campaign that touted plans for free childcare free buses and a rent freeze for stabilized units citywide the rent freeze would not apply to NYCHA tenants whose rent and contributions are determined by federal payment standards This may be a repudiation of those establishment candidates that in multiple voters minds have done very little to alleviate the affordability predicament mentioned Valentin That message may have broken through with specific NYCHA voters particularly those frustrated with establishment candidates NYCHA residents understand very well what it is to struggle to survive in a New York City that s becoming more expensive added Valentin I want a candidate that cares about New Yorkers and New York City stated Sherry Richards a Queensbridge Houses resident Photo by Patrick Spauster Richards commented she was encouraged by seeing Mamdani in Queensbridge at local region events just south of his Assembly district in Queens His stance on affordable groceries resonated with her as well This is a food desert There s one grocery store nearby but everything is overpriced she disclosed A general vote battleground November s race five months away features several challengers Various Democratic leaders have coalesced around Mamdani after his stunning conquest in the primary Adams is running as an independent as is former federal prosecutor Jim Walden Curtis Silwa is running on the Republican line and Cuomo re-launched his campaign as an independent last week Mamdani has pledged to recommit to residents housing calling for doubling capital expenditure in NYCHA and building city-owned affordable housing on underutilized space on NYCHA campuses like parking lots Andrew Cuomo led the Department of Housing and Urban Improvement which manages NYCHA alongside the city from to Rich Azzopardi a spokesperson for the campaign advised City Limits that they believe Cuomo s experience and his plan for populace housing made a strong episode to NYCHA residents His NYCHA platform includes capital upgrades infill housing and strategic PACT conversions Under Eric Adams administration the city kicked off the NYCHA trust and made investments in NYCHA s core capital repairs initiative through the deal for City of Yes In November the moderate candidates could be competing for the same votes On first look Cuomo in fact outperformed Adams on the first-choice ballot at a multitude of NYCHA developments compared to last primary but it still wasn t enough That dynamic may reflect a race with two clear front-runners rather than a Cuomo surge function use strict window addEventListener message function a if void a figures datawrapper-height var e document querySelectorAll iframe for var t in a records datawrapper-height for var r i r e i i if r contentWindow a source var d a facts datawrapper-height t px r style height d Where Adams would go on to win thousands of downballot votes through ranked-choice elimination we don t yet know how Cuomo did in these precincts in ranked choice voting Full ranked choice voting results from the Board of Elections will not be available for a sparse more weeks But Mamdani s better-than-expected first round performance capped how much Cuomo s lead among NYCHA voters could grow If Mamdani can build on the inroads he made with NYCHA voters in the general electoral contest it could be a sign he s headed for Gracie Mansion Mayor Adams whose reelection campaign has been weakened by corruption statements polled behind both Mamdani and Cuomo in the first polls for November Replicating his performances at NYCHA campuses would be a good sign for Adams reelection bid He hosted NYCHA leaders at Gracie mansion earlier this month in an event that felt like a campaign rally The Adams campaign did not respond to a request for comment on this story During the primary Cuomo posted a list of NYCHA Tenant Association presidents who endorsed him on his website though THE CITY communicated that six of them never in fact endorsed Stergis is an independent and as a upshot couldn t vote in the primary But she saw enough from Mamdani to convince her to vote in November I ll vote for Mamdani He s a breath of fresh air she reported NYCHA residents are mostly democratic voters they ll be faithful to the democratic nominee predicted Valentin To reach the reporter behind this story contact Patrick citylimits org To reach the editor contact Jeanmarie citylimits org Want to republish this story Find City Limits reprint strategy 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