Surging NYC mayoral candidate Zohran Mamdani tours Staten Island businesses, meets with local faith leader

STATEN ISLAND, N.Y. – Staten Island politics got a bit more red Friday, but not in the Republican sense.

Self-described democratic socialist Assemblymember Zohran Mamdani, 33, toured St. George businesses and drove with local supporters to Stapleton to meet with the Rev. Dr. Demetrius Carolina in a whirlwind day that saw the candidate touch down in all five boroughs.

At the St. George Pharmacy on Stuyvesant Place, Mamdani heard from store clerk Ael Loetterle about the needs for Staten Island youth.

Another stop around the corner at The Basement restaurant saw the assemblymember, a registered Democrat representing Astoria, hear from three patrons, including educator TJ Smolka who said he’d like to see the Empire Outlets made into a new school.

For Mamdani, the meetings got to the core of a political philosophy he says is more focused on the day-to-day experiences of people around the five boroughs, and ensuring their needs are considered.

“I think too often there isn’t much listening in politics. It’s lecturing,” he said. “We need to have a city government that listens to the very people who would be served by this infrastructure.”

The Advance/SILive.com was not allowed to join Mamdani for the meeting with Carolina, but the candidate said it went well enough that he plans to make a return visit to meet with members of the congregation at First Central Baptist Church.

As with most campaigns for the five-borough mayoralty, policies tailored specifically to the needs of Staten Island were hard to come by, but Mamdani did share an understanding of some local issues, particularly around home ownership and transit.

Mamdani referenced the U.S. Census-confirmed higher rates of homeownership on Staten Island and released a homeowner policy platform earlier this week that would aim to make it more affordable for people around the five boroughs to become and stay homeowners.

“I think Staten Island has long been a place where New Yorkers can find a little more stability in their lives, especially when we’re thinking about housing — close to double the rate of home ownership," he said. “We put forward a homeowner policy platform that...understands the role of the city in either making it or not making it affordable to own a home.”

On transit, Mamdani pointed to his goal of making city buses free across the city through higher taxes; a change of that order would need for certain state approvals.

He also spoke about the need to cut red tape so small businesses, like the ones he visited in St. George, have a chance to flourish.

“I think about just the Byzantine process by which you navigate city bureaucracy,” he said. “That is not making it easy to open and keep open a small business.”

His plan to improve small business opportunities includes cuts in fines, and increasing government engagement with those businesses, including the creation of a “Mom and Pops Czar.” The city already has a Department of Small Business Services, but a policy memo from the Mamdani campaign says the czar would “complement” that agency’s work.

With Mamdani’s campaign surging, he came off affably during his Staten Island tour, and engaged with constituents from different walks of life and with different perspectives.

When learning some of the businesses visited Friday would be on Stuyvesant place, he referenced the high school of the same name in a self-deprecating joke. “Where I couldn’t get in,” he said.

The candidate has long run second to former Gov. Andrew Cuomo in the polls but has been able to tighten the gap. A poll released Wednesday from PIX11, Emerson College, and The Hill showed Mamdani trailing the former governor by just 8 points in a ranked choice voting contest. That marks a significantly-shrunken gap from the high double digits Cuomo led by earlier in the race.

Many in Mamdani’s corner have their sights set on possible endorsements from fellow democratic socialists, Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and U.S. Sen. Bernie Sanders, but the candidate largely demurred Friday saying he hopes to run a campaign they’d be proud to endorse.

Staten Island’s Democratic Party establishment has largely gotten behind Cuomo. The party’s executive committee voted to endorse him before he even got in the race, and the former governor won endorsements from Assemblymember Charles Fall and Councilmember Kamillah Hanks.

On Friday, Mamdani chalked Cuomo’s early position in the race and those endorsements to little more than recognition.

“Governor Cuomo’s support is support based on name recognition, is support based on being a former governor who’s the son of a former governor and an idea that his campaign has put forward of inevitability,” he said. “What we’ve seen though is that that support is a mile wide and an inch deep. It’s support that exists in many ways like a house of cards.”

Cuomo spokesman Rich Azzopardi shot back at the competitor, taking aim at Mamdani’s posh upbringing and his time in office while also upping some of his boss’ accomplishments.

Born in Uganda to a filmmaking mother and academic father, Mamdani was raised in Morningside Heights attending the Bronx High School of Science.

“That silver spoon socialist has a lot of nerve using the nepo-baby argument. New Yorkers know it was Governor Cuomo who raised wages for millions, passed the strongest paid family leave and gun violence prevention laws in the nation and built the Second Avenue Subway, the Moynihan Train Station, the new Kosciuszko Bridge and the new LaGuardia airport and filled the leadership void during COVID,” Azzopardi said. “They know he has the experience and the record of results needed to fix what’s broken and put this city back on the right track. Mamdani has a paper thin record in public service as a backbencher legislator punctuated by performative press stunts and only three bills to his name his entire time in Albany.”

While Mamdani likely won’t be able to count on Democratic establishment support, he has gained backing from progressives around the city, including an endorsement from the Staten Island Democratic Association.

For his chances at the local ballot box, Mamdani said his optimism comes from the Staten Island success of Sanders during the 2016 campaign when he won about 47% of primary voters in his competition with Hillary Clinton, and a general disillusionment with politics as usual, particularly under the administration of Mayor Eric Adams.

“I see Staten Island as a real example of while there isn’t an ideological majority in this city, be it progressive or anything else, there is a majority of New Yorkers who feel left behind by the economic policies of this mayoral administration and of politics in general,” he said. “If you recognize that and offer them a path that addresses it and requires of them only a recognition and a belief in the urgency of that, then you can build an actual coalition.”