Long Islanders hit streets, and wallets, for NYC mayoral candidates ahead of election

A MetroCard-yellow "ZOHRAN FOR NEW YORK CITY" button was pinned to Douglas Wiener's hoodie, the one from his childhood summer camp in Hauppauge.

It was Sunday night, and Wiener, 27, of Smithtown, stood waiting for the Long Island Rail Road. He had just left a rally in Forest Hills, Queens, where Brooklyn-born Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders and U.S. Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Zohran Mamdani amped up over 10,000 roaring supporters in the waning days of the New York City mayoral race.

Even though Wiener is a Long Islander and can't vote in the race, he has friends in the city, and he hopes Mamdani fever spreads beyond the five boroughs. Wiener likes Mamdani’s pledges to freeze roughly 1 million apartment rents and make the city more affordable. And the crowd’s politics bore little resemblance to what is more typical on Long Island, where some of the sentiment is that a Mayor Mamdani would be ruinous.

"I’m a big fan of his policies," said Wiener, a wedding video editor in Massapequa. "It’s just, like, everything is so grim, all the time, you know? It’s just nice to get around people who think and feel the same way."

In the final stretch of the New York City mayoral race that ends Tuesday, Long Islanders are helping knock on doors, work phone banks, contribute money and rally to elect, or defeat, Mamdani, the Democratic nominee and a state assemblyman; Andrew M. Cuomo, a third-party candidate and ex-governor; and Curtis Sliwa, the Republican nominee who founded the Guardian Angels crime patrol.

Since 2022, Long Islanders contributed millions of dollars — and millions more when factoring in donations from those who have businesses, summer homes or both on the Island but whose primary addresses are elsewhere — as well as countless hours of their time. The race has reverberated on the Island, turbocharging local interest in the Democratic Socialists of America (of which Mamdani is a member) and providing a foil for Republicans who say Mamdani is emblematic of a runaway Democratic Party gone too far to the political left.

The first money contributed in the mayoral race — back in February 2022, to then incumbent Mayor Eric Adams, who dropped out on Sept. 28 — included donations from Long Islanders in Plandome, Lynbrook, Holbrook and Woodmere, according to the city's Campaign Finance Board database.

And in the home stretch in the past month, nearly $1 million has poured in from across Long Island to all three candidates, with over 90% coming from a Syosset-based limited liability corporation — a sometimes-opaque business structure — giving to a super PAC that is working to elect Sliwa, according to the database.

Long Islanders current and former are among what Mamdani said Saturday are more than 100,000 volunteers for his campaign.

On Tuesday, dozens of canvassers converged at a children’s park in the Hell’s Kitchen neighborhood, cheered on by Mamdani himself, before fanning out to apartment buildings nearby.

Among them was Susie O’Brien, 61, of Cutchogue and Manhattan, a retired HR worker who was using an app listing local Democratic voters she was tasked with convincing. Out on the North Fork, she said, she is in the minority backing Mamdani.

O’Brien said she has a daughter who lives in Brooklyn and another who used to. She likes his focus on the working class and taxing the most wealthy, and how he gives her hope.

"Cuomo is being run by the billionaire classes," she said as she rang the buzzer for a Democrat who lives in a walk-up on West 47th Street between Eighth and Ninth avenues.

"I want my daughters to be able — they work hard, so they should be able to afford an apartment, and a little extra," she said. "It’s hard to even go to, like, a yoga class after you’re done paying your rent and your food."

Over several hours that evening, she was with her co-canvasser, Michael Edwards, 31, of Bushwick, when the duo came upon truck driver Julian Morales, 58, father of a would-be voter they came looking for.

Morales happened to be on the phone with him.

O’Brien made an impassioned pitch to the two of them — in English, then in Spanish.

"Mamdani is a guy who’s for the people of New York, for the city," she said in Spanish.

Both father and son said they were convinced. Two votes for Mamdani. Then the father had a question. 

"He’s a Republican, right?" the elder man asked.

"You’re not gonna vote for Sliwa?" O’Brien said. "That’s the Republican."

Morales was suddenly noncommittal.

"I don’t know yet," he said, holding a Mamdani campaign leaflet. "I’m going to think about it."

O'Brien and Edwards left with one yes and one maybe.

Imran Pasha, 47, who lives on the Levittown-East Meadow border and works in IT, has been canvassing in Queens — Queens Village, Forest Hills, Jamaica, Jackson Heights, Astoria, Richmond Hills, South Ozone Park — and is hitting the streets again in the final weekend before the election.

He has canvassed on Long Island, he said — for Laura Curran, Tom Suozzi, Kevin Thomas and Josh Lafazan — but he has never seen a volunteer base for any campaign like Mamdani's.

For Faran Khan, 52, of Dix Hills, an investment banker, the high cost of living is a big reason he backs Mamdani and is canvassing in the city to get him elected.

"Things have gone south," Khan said. "Even with people who are making north of 500,000, or three-quarter of a mil, they’re actually having a struggle to get things done — especially if you have a kid with you, maybe if you have two, that’s even more difficult," Khan said. His hometown, the house he owns and where his folks live (in that house) are all in Queens Village.

Newsday located Mamdani volunteers through word-of-mouth and by showing up to publicized meetups. Rich Azzopardi, a spokesman for Cuomo, who has fundraised in the Hamptons, didn’t make available volunteers from Long Island. Cuomo has relied more on fundraising than a volunteer boots-on-the-ground network. Mary Sliwa, a spokeswoman for Curtis Sliwa, didn’t make volunteers available either. Sliwa's campaign has ridiculed those who get lots of contributions from Long Island.

On the Island, Mike Adams, of Kings Park, co-chair of the political education working group of the local Democratic Socialists of America — which phone-banked for Mamdani before the primary he won — said on Monday that he didn’t know of any members who were working on Mamdani’s campaign now.

"We are focused on organizing for change in our own backyard and wish our NYC comrades the best of success in theirs," he said in a text message.