Some extremely-early reflections and anecdata on the first Zohran Mamdani for Mayor canvass in Crown Heights, where I was a field lead and led the training:
A: Enthusiasm is high. People seem inspired by the size and sweeping focus of the operation. I think we are going to benefit a lot from being distributed and utilizing a Block Captain strategy heavily. People talked a lot about how the campaign would help them meet their neighbors, so I think there's a lot of hunger for that kind of organizing, but it will need to be balanced with mass events.
B: Lead with housing. Just like the 2024 cycle, this is going to be the issue. Working to activate rent-stabilized tenants specifically will be very powerful, as ever. I always remind canvassers to lead with this when in doubt. The issue will always be tenants not knowing that they are rent-stabilized.
C: Early childhood position sort of flopped on my doors. Obviously, this is a key aspect in policy and rhetoric, but I suspect that in a lot of conversations, I will end up bunking it in with broader planks on education and schools, which ZKM has great and easily communicable ideas for (see reducing class sizes and things of that sort). This seemed to play well.
D: How and where to work in the bus stuff remains to be seen for me. My canvassing partner who was canvassing for the first time (yay!) had a lot of success framing the free buses as "Something Assemblymember Mamdani already succeeded in trying." Shannon, if you are reading this, great work.
E: I haven't had to deal with any policing questions yet, but I am extremely heartened by the campaign's insistence on actually having a response to "what about defunding the police" that, lo and behold, discusses *only* ways he would actually do it without any waffling. I discussed taking a fairly aggressive stance against the cops on the doors and social media in my article from August. It remains to be seen exactly how important this will be.
F: A lot of the people that have stepped up to do leadership thus far are already electoral cadre. This is reasonable, as we are a ways out from the election, but I was hoping to see more people who merely volunteered for Eon ready to take on some of these bigger lead roles. I think it’s going to happen, but whenever I’m in a Zoom call and already know everyone in the room, I get wary. This is going to be a big peer-to-peer effort.
All in all, I'm pretty happy with how this turned out. I'm excited for this campaign to develop more electoral cadre, which is something we will desperately need in 2026 and beyond. DM me if you are looking for ways to get involved!