New York City – “Focus, focus, focus on affordability”.
It is a simple message, but one that Robert Wood, a 47-year-old writer and a lead volunteer for mayoral candidate Zohran Mamdani, believes is the key to turning out voters in the final stretch of New York City’s closely watched race.
Mamdani’s surprise victory in the June Democratic primary – and his commanding lead in the polls ahead of the November 4 election day – has achieved a symbolism that has resonated far beyond the borders of the city’s five boroughs.
To many, it has represented a rebuke to the wealthy donor-dominated Democratic establishment: A path forward for liberal politics lost in the woods in the age of US President Donald Trump.
But for a movement that has reverberated across the country – and indeed the globe – to fully actualise, Mamdani supporters know he must actually make it into City Hall. That begins and ends with door-knocking: lots and lots of door-knocking.
In a row of townhouses in the neighbourhood of Crown Heights, an area that split between Mamdani and top opponent Andrew Cuomo in the primaries, a door opened to reveal Nadia on a windswept October day. She said she’s already all in for Mamdani.
“Regardless of what the polls say, we need to make sure our friends and families get out and vote,” Wood urged, noting a resounding mandate would help to energise Mamdani’s ambitious plans: rent freezes on stabilised apartments, free buses, and universal childcare, paid for by increasing taxes on corporations and the wealthiest New Yorkers.
Execution will require hard-fought buy-in from state lawmakers and the governor.
At a nearby, pre-war rent-stabilised apartment building, another man said he was unsure. Wood pointed to Mamdani’s vow to freeze rents in buildings like his, which make up about a quarter of the city’s housing stock.
The man is gracious, but unwilling to make a final decision: “Thank you, I’m still deciding”.
Down the street, climbing a steep concrete stoop, Wood met Onika Saul, a 45-year-old property manager. In Mamdani’s pledges, she worried, “realism is kind of skewed”.
“Anyone can say anything, but action always speaks louder than words,” she said.
“So I think for me personally, being disappointed so many times by so many politicians and so many promises, I want to see more action than words.”
But Wood dug in. He detailed Mamdani’s activism as a state assemblyman, which included joining a taxi worker hunger strike; he had been arrested in front of US Senator Chuck Schumer’s home during a protest against US funding for the war in Gaza; Mamdani, he noted, has relied on small donations, unlike the sums provided by billionaire business and real estate leaders who have fuelled Cuomo’s campaign.
He also pointed to an issue that has been one of the most decisive in the race: Mamdani, he noted, has been a vocal supporter of Palestinian rights, a rarity in mainstream US politics.
“Zohran is certainly the only politician in the race who will call what’s happening [in Gaza], what it is: a genocide,” Wood said.
Saul agreed: “It is a genocide”.
By the end, Saul still had her reservations. After all, Mamdani’s top pledges —rent freezes and universal childcare for children under five — would not directly apply to her. But she said she’s willing to give his vision a shot—and her vote.
“I feel better about him,” she said. “But it’s still the whole seeing is believing thing.”