Zohran Mamdani, the champion of affordability, failed to win over the very New Yorkers who are struggling the most with money and who also happen to know him best, showing that they don’t buy what he is peddling.
The largest public housing development in the entire country is Queensbridge Houses, with 7,242 residents in 3,147 apartments among 96 buildings, which happens to be in Mamdani’s Assembly district. While he beat Andrew Cuomo overwhelmingly across the western Queens district, 81%-19% (it was his second best showing among NYC’s 65 districts, he got 83% in Bushwick) in Queensbridge Mamdani was overwhelmingly rejected, as the final numbers certified by the Board of Elections on Tuesday reveal.
Mamdani’s two and half terms serving in Albany hasn’t won him many fans in this corner of his own backyard. In the first round of the ranked choice results, Mamdani got 29% to Cuomo’s 59% in Queensbridge; after the ranked choice rounds to distribute the remaining 12%, the balance of the votes went 2 to 1 for Cuomo for a final tally of 33% to 67%.
The results were similar in two other NYCHA complexes Mamdani currently represents, Ravenswood Houses and Astoria Houses: Cuomo won both convincingly in an area where among the non-NYCHA voters Mamdani won with 80% or more.
Why did Mamdani’s own constituents turn against him?
According to the U.S. Census Bureau, Queensbridge is 43% Black and 41% Hispanic. Their incomes are low, with 25% below the poverty line. But Mamdani’s promises to freeze stabilized rents (which would help himself) would do nothing for NYCHA tenants and it would do nothing for anyone not living in a stabilized apartment (and it would cause long term damage by starving those properties of funds needed for upkeep). His other planks of no fares on the MTA’s buses and city-paid child care didn’t convince the residents of Queensbridge and Ravenswood and Astoria Houses.
These New Yorkers are among the 312,422 authorized residents in 156,865 NYCHA apartments spread across 251 housing developments. They have heard lots of promises over the years by lots of politicians and are rightly skeptical. The mayor is essentially the landlord for NYCHA and these tenants are saying that they would rather have Cuomo, a former governor and former federal HUD secretary, as their landlord than the democratic socialist with snappy videos.
They are also turned off by politics: While citywide, the turnout was 35% of enrolled Democrats, in Queensbridge it was about half of that.
We can’t blame them. On Mamdani’s campaign website he has but four scant sentences on public housing which we quote in full: “Federal, state, and city disinvestment have left NYCHA tenants with crumbling buildings and uncertain futures. Zohran will double the City’s capital investment in major renovations of NYCHA housing, activate underutilized storage areas like parking lots for affordable housing development, and use tools like City subsidies to invest money directly in upgrading our public housing. Some of the City capital for new construction will be used to build new affordable, publicly-controlled housing on NYCHA’s City-owned land. Zohran will also push Albany to make a similar commitment to NYCHA’s capital needs on an annual basis.”
Pretty weak tea.
Mamdani claims he wants to be a mayor for all New Yorkers, including those living in NYCHA. So far he is falling short on that promise.
