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Supporters are on hand as New York mayoral candidate Zohran Mamdani speaks to a crowd during a campaign event in the Bedford-Stuyvesant neighborhood in Brooklyn, New York, May 31, 2025.
For Nour A., New York City mayoral candidate Zohran Mamdani represents the promise of upending politics as usual.
“It makes me hopeful that things don’t have to go the way they have,” she said, standing in Tompkins Square Park on Manhattan’s Lower East Side before starting on her list of voters to canvass.
For Jonah Pfeifer, Mamdani’s populist message not only drew him in, but his least politically active friend as well. “My friend who doesn’t vote at all, he just texted me out of the blue and said this is the first time he’s seen a real man of the people” run for office.
Other volunteers gave Mamdani similar plaudits. They liked his platform of free city buses, universal free child care, and freezing rent on rent-stabilized apartments. They liked his hopeful message and his habit of speaking to voters like fellow adults, rather than scolding them like children. It’s refreshing when Mamdani goes on the attack, they said, because political bullies these days get away with ugly behavior and punishing policies. Several recounted the debate moment when Mamdani scorched billionaire-backed Andrew Cuomo, his main rival, by simply listing Cuomo’s recent biography of sexual harassment and a COVID-death cover-up.
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Sophie Morrison, who was volunteering for the third time, said voters she’s encountered overwhelmingly shared the same outlook.
“People are generally very receptive,” especially those she’s talked to who live in rent-stabilized apartments. But everyone is “generally angry about the current political situation” and wants a positive change, Morrison said as she prepared to head to her turf.
The group of 50-some volunteers who met at the park last Wednesday were part of an overall group of 700 knocking on doors across boroughs that evening. The canvass was led by members of Democratic Socialists of America, which counts Mamdani as a member and has endorsed his candidacy.
By last week, Mamdani’s campaign had already surpassed its goal of knocking on one million doors. Even so, and even in the final days before tomorrow’s election, the effort was still drawing first-time volunteers. One of them, Dylan van Breda, was paired with a longtime volunteer who’s knocked on doors for more than 30 canvass campaigns, Jeremy Cohan. On their Lower East Side turf were about 70 people to speak with. Cohan, who calls himself a “slow canvasser” and uses a jaunty knock, took time with everyone who wanted to talk politics.
Voters met the two with warmth, and most were enthused about Mamdani. Just one superintendent asked them to leave; even he took a flyer and asked about Mamdani. “What he’s about,” said Cohan, “is that you can’t live in New York unless you’re a billionaire.” The super shook his head. “That’s a fact.”
In one building, a man broke into a big smile when he saw who was at his door, leaned against the frame, and described how he and his two roommates were excited to rank Mamdani first. His neighbor, a woman whose orange cat stood guard, said she was doing the same. Another woman whom van Breda and Cohan passed on the stairs said the same and took a flyer even though her arms were full with laundry.
At one door, they encountered a man, Eddie Chen, who was himself planning to canvass for Mamdani. The most pressing challenges Mamdani faces are name recognition, Chen said, as well as the media’s skewed portrayal of his positions. That’s why the grassroots effort to talk with people was so important, he added. Organizers said Friday that the total number of canvassers campaign-wide came to over 27,000.
Mamdani’s economic populism resonated with voters for the simple reason that they experience firsthand the daily stress of an increasingly expensive world, Chen added. “I think his message is what’s needed right now, especially with rising costs of every aspect of life. He’s one of the few people to offer a different solution to what’s usually proposed.” The message is so compelling, he noted, that other candidates have latched onto it.
Cohan and van Breda moved down the block to buildings that had not seen a new coat of paint for years and others that were sparkling new. One building still had the character of an older East Village, with a spiral wooden staircase and lavender-colored walls and someone burning incense. Another was so luxurious that, while no larger than others on the block that held dozens of units, it held only two. No one answered the knocks there. A woman in one newer building opened the door and told the two that her first choice for mayor was Adrienne Adams, Speaker of the New York City Council.
“I’m ranking the woman first. Nothing’s going to change that,” she told them. What about putting Mamdani second? Maybe, but he’s not experienced. What about not ranking Cuomo? Maybe, but she has “complicated” feelings about him, and in her eyes, he’s not all bad, though she doesn’t like how he treats women. She took a flyer.
A woman further down the block was uncertain about Mamdani because he lacked “executive experience.” But she was interested to hear whether he could have a place in someone else’s administration and asked about Comptroller Brad Lander, whom federal agents had roughed up and arrested for assisting defendants in immigration court. Lander and Mamdani had each endorsed the other, Cohan said. She came out into the hallway to continue the conversation, and her young daughter followed. Cross-endorsing was cool, she said. No, she wouldn’t let Cuomo near her ballot.
One voter who answered the door said she wanted Mamdani as mayor but was unaware the mayoral election was Tuesday or that she could vote early. Cohan looked up her early-voting and Election Day locations; van Breda warned her that the temperature on Election Day is expected to reach 100 degrees and suggested she go vote as soon as possible to beat the heat. She said she would.
The conversation with that voter was the most important of the night, Cohan said later.
“I feel really great about communicating with someone like that,” he told me after the canvass. “I think we underestimate how apolitical … how disorganized our civil society is.”
Such a depoliticized culture benefits only the people who oppose democracy, who want machine politics to continue apace, Cohan said, but people are hungry for a better world and can be called to action. The response he’s gotten canvassing shows him that voters see Mamdani as the antidote to both Trumpism and to mainstream Democrats whose primary message is “We must defeat Trump,” but nothing more.
“The campaign has tapped into people’s belief that things could genuinely be better. The context of Trump is a part of that, where people are feeling in a very dark place politically and feeling the necessity of getting involved,” Cohan said. Mamdani is “running on hope, possibility, and joy. We really could have a better society and a better city, and I think that has spoken deeply to people.”
The sun had set when Cohan and van Breda finished their list. Though they had covered just two blocks, the distance they’d walked up and down stairs came to more than two miles. Cohan said he’s lost two pounds since he began canvassing for Mamdani earlier in the year.
They headed toward the bar where other volunteers were waiting.
“You know,” van Breda said, “even if he loses, it’s a win.” Mamdani’s ideas have inspired people across New York. That counts for a lot, he added.
Cohan laughed. “Sure. But I want to win.”
Van Breda agreed.
Both of them canvassed the next day, too.
