Dispatches from the (erstwhile) Mayoral Trail - Staten Island
The race for the Democratic Mayoral Primary might be over but the road to the General Election for New York City's Mayor in November is just heating up
It’s been three weeks since Zohran Mamdani won the NYC Mayoral Democratic Primary in a decisive and landslide win against former New York Governor Andrew Cuomo. If you’re paying attention to the news cycle it might seem like entire lifetimes have passed since that happened on June 24, just hours after the voting closed on 9 pm that Tuesday. Even as the historic specificity of that moment has simultaneously maintained the ‘feel-good’ vibes from Zohran’s win that most of New York City seems to be coasting on currently. The mainstream Democratic establishment has gone from being unsure about how to react to the unprecedented win of a 33-year-old Democratic Socialist Asssemblymember from Queens to slowly but surely consolidating behind him (even though heavyweights like Kathy Hochul, Hakeem Jeffries and Chuck Schumer have yet to endorse Mamdani).
The sharply concerning and bitter rise in Islamophobia against Mamdani that pointedly emerged in the wake of the election results has been stymied, if not entirely abated, over the last few days. Like Democrat and New York State Senator Kirstin Gillibrand who had falsely accused Mamdani of making ‘references to global jihad’ in a WNYC interview, recently apologizing for her remarks. Local Billionaires who had allegedly not considered Mamdani a serious candidate until the night the results were announced are overcoming their stunned shock by throwing even more money at the upcoming general election in November. Andrew Cuomo who faced a stupefying defeat in what has been declared in the largest voter turnout in the history of New York City (Mamdani won by 565,639 votes surpassing the voter turnout record for David Dinkins who was elected as New York’s first Black Mayor in 1989) has decided to once again mount a challenge to now Democratic nominee on a third-party ticket for the final race. (Cuomo launched his campaign yesterday with a Mamdani-style man-on-the-street video which was quickly and heavily overwhelmed by a campaign donation tweet Mamdani posted in his mentions). Meanwhile, current Mayor Eric Adams too has announced his third-party run for Mayor and is locked in a ‘no-you-drop-out-first’ game of thrones with Cuomo, each insisting the other candidate to make room for them in the race.
Updates about the general election where the NYC Mayor will be elected have dominated New York’s news cycle, and will likely continue to do so until November. But while elections (even historic ones) come and go once every four years, the people whom they affect most remain. In an effort to center the narratives of those voters that are often overlooked in major news cycles, I would like to take you to Staten Island, where I had visited and interviewed people in early June, just as the election cycle was beginning to reach its peak.
While it remains majority white, Staten Island is home to the largest Sri Lankan community in the city (over 49% of the total Sri Lankan population lives in the borough) and has a sizable Asian Indian and Pakistani population. Known for its largely conservative electorate, Cuomo was expected to make a windfall in the borough where he had done a few closed door meetings at the start of his campaign in March. Yet, with Mamdani’s canvass operation of more 50,000 volunteers arriving there in the last few weeks of the election cycle, the current Democratic nominee managed to win several districts in the Staten Island, and Cuomo’s lead was reduced to its smallest share anywhere in the city.
This might come across as a surprise to most but Afzal Ali Ansari, the President of the Staten Island District Association (SID) and the Executive director of Asian American Labor Community Organization (ALCO), whom I met at his home in Staten Island, saw it coming. “Anything can happen but the way Mamdani is running and the way is his graph is showing, he’s gonna beat Cuomo, definitely,” he had told me three weeks before the election. As an Indian American Muslim New Yorker, Ansari spoke about how several Muslim Staten Island residents were eager to vote for Mamdani as they saw them as one of their own. “He is from [an] India[n background], and he is young. That’s why many people have voted for him,” said Ansari, who also added that the total South Asian and Muslim population of the borough was close to 25%.
Although Zohran Mamdani made multiple visits to Staten Island, he was far from the only Mayoral nominee to visit the borough. Scott Stringer, the former NYC Comptroller and Mayoral nominee also made inroads into the South Asian community and promised to focus on issues like community centers, language specific programs for South Asian elders and permits for hosting cricket matches. Mamdani, who was endorsed by the Staten Island Democrats that Ansari headed, was asked the same questions but was unable to promise their desired outcomes. Yet, that had not deterred his support among the community. When I asked Ansari what it would mean to have a South Asian Muslim Mayor of New York City, he remained pragmatic about the challenges Mamdani might face in office. “[Mamdani’s] position is going to be tricky. He’ll have to keep all communities happy. He cannot be biased. But representation still matters,” Ansari had told me.
Even though several South Asian Staten Island residents I met in June either did not know of Mamdani or had favored Cuomo over him, it became clear with the election results that Mamdani’s focus on affordability and economic messaging had resonated significantly in the borough. It is worth mentioning that districts like Port Richmond, St. George and Tompkinsville that Mamdani won in Staten Island have significant pockets of South Asian populations. Port Richmond in particular has a sizable Sri Lankan, Asian Indian and Pakistani population, especially as the Sri Lankan population grew significantly in the North Shore area over the last several years. Even neighborhoods like Silver Lake, where Mamdani won by large numbers have a growing Asian Indian population (listed in the graph) that likely turned out to vote for him, cutting into Cuomo’s lead by significant margins.
As Andrew Cuomo has jumped back into the Mayoral race, despite losing to Zohran Mamdani by nearly 12 points in the Primary, it remains to be seen whether boroughs like the Bronx and Staten Island — where Cuomo managed to retain a lead over Mamdani — will turn out again for him in the General election in November. With Mamdani rapidly consolidating the support from Labor unions behind him, he also has additional opportunities to build a greater voter share in the Bronx and Staten Island.
Even as all signs point towards Zohran Mamdani winning the General Election with comfortable margins in November, as we have seen recently a lot can change in a few months. But if there is one thing that is clear from the Mamdani’s outreach with the South Asian communities it is that South Asian (and overall Asian American) voters have emerged as a powerful voting bloc that can help decisively sway elections. It is now up to the rest of the politicians to pay attention to them.
I also wrote other pieces on the Mayoral Primary
If you have enjoyed my reporting on the South Asian community in New York and the Mayoral race, you might want to read the two pieces that I published in the last few weeks.
Zohran Mamdani’s Stunning Upset Redefines New York Politics, June 26 - New Lines Magazine
“It would be unusual for the watch party of a third-place candidate to be as joyful and celebratory as it was, with genuine euphoria in the room, if Lander had not run the campaign that he had for the past several months. Lander, who cross-endorsed Mamdani on June 13 (a peculiar feature of ranked-choice voting — both candidates asked their voters to rank the other at number two), gained massive visibility late in the race after making national headlines on June 17 when ICE officers arrested him at the federal court in Brooklyn for linking arms with an immigrant who was being arrested, refusing to let go while asking for a judicial warrant.”
Did Democrat Zohran Mamdani struggle with Black and working-class voters?, July 3 - Al Jazeera
“On June 24, Mamdani scored an upset, winning New York City’s Democratic mayoral primary over frontrunner Andrew Cuomo, a former governor. That dominant performance sent ripples around the United States political sphere. But it also led to scrutiny about where Mamdani’s weaknesses may lie.
Preliminary results suggest that Mamdani struggled in lower-income neighborhoods like Brownsville and East Flatbush, where Cuomo took a marked lead. One widely cited analysis from The New York Times found that 49 percent of precincts with a low-income majority tilted towards Cuomo, compared with 38 percent for Mamdani.
In precincts with a majority of Black residents, the pro-Cuomo number rose to 51 percent. Those statistics raised questions about whether Mamdani’s promise to restore affordability in New York failed to resonate — or whether the numbers conceal a more complicated story.”
And I recently updated my website - yashicadutt.com
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Related reading on the NYC Mayoral Election:
Thank you for highlighting Mamdani's performance in Staten Island. That's a great story that I haven't heard much about anywhere else!