The prospect of a Democratic Socialist becoming New York City’s next mayor promises to sharpen the contrast with its suburb to the east.
Less than a year after most Long Island voters lurched rightward to help elect Donald Trump president, the city’s Democratic primary voters went in a different direction — toward Zohran Mamdani, a 33-year-old assemblyman who is running on an unabashedly leftist platform.
Mamdani shocked the political establishment by trouncing former Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo in a victory that according to a Tuesday tally by the Board of Elections was by 12 percentage points. Mamdani, a naturalized U.S. citizen who is an Indian Ugandan, came to America at age 7.
If he wins November’s general election — as the prediction markets forecast he will — a Mayor Mamdani promises to have profound impacts on the city to which hundreds of thousands of Long Islanders commute daily for work, school, recreation and more. And his victory was already reverberating eastward, with potential collateral impact on policy, politics, business and migration.
WHAT NEWSDAY FOUND
- The potential mayoral election of Zohran Mamdani — a Democratic Socialist assemblyman — could reverberate east onto Long Island.
- He would be a foil for Republicans on Long Island, which helped elect President Donald Trump.
- His primary win buoyed left-leaning Long Islanders who consider him an inspiration for more progressive government.
A foil for the GOP
Particularly for Republicans, Mamdani is likely to become a foil, according to Lawrence Levy, executive dean of the National Center for Suburban Studies at Hofstra University.
“The focus will be on Mamdani — and you’re likely to hear his name and see his face more than the Long Island Democrats they’re actually running against,” he said.
For Long Island, New York City is both magnet and kryptonite, inspiration and cautionary tale, foil and ally, as the bedroom community from which 306,000 Long Islanders commute, earning $37.9 billion in wages from jobs based in the city. Spending by those commuters generated an additional 179,000 jobs, as well as $15 billion in earnings on the Island, according to the Regional Plan Association.
If crime rises, if quality of life deteriorates under Mamdani, says former Suffolk County Executive Steve Levy, a onetime Democrat who defected to the GOP, fewer Long Islanders might take discretionary trips into the city to see a Broadway show or dine out at a restaurant.
“If you had to be in the city for work, you had no choice. But if it was a choice for you to go to Manhattan for a pleasure trip, you’d think twice,” Levy said.
He said that the beneficiary of any exodus from the city — if Mamdani were able to persuade the state to raise taxes, as promised, on the richest New York City residents and corporations — could include the East End, avoiding a city income tax.
Lawrence Levy said he doesn’t think there will be much of an impact on the Island from a Mamdani mayoralty.
“The idea of him sparking a mass migration is, I think, overblown,” he said. “Unless the city is seen as actually deteriorating to the point where people feel unsafe, unhealthy or overburdened with stuff like traffic or infrastructure crises.”
He said frustrations toward Mamdani and his perceived excesses could lead Long Island voters, fairly or not, to turn against Democratic candidates — as happened with the defeat of then-Nassau County Executive Tom Suozzi in 2009 amid President Barack Obama’s unpopularity, and the defeats, in 2021, of the then-Nassau County Executive Laura Curran and then-Suffolk District Attorney Tim Sini amid changes by the state legislature liberalizing New York’s bail laws.
“These candidates had nothing to do with the driving forces that brought them down,” Lawrence Levy said.
Mamdani’s campaign did not return a message seeking comment for this article.
Inspiration for LI progressives
But to Mamdani’s political allies on Long Island, his victory is an inspiration for what Long Island ought to be, according to Suffolk Progressives’ founder Shoshana Hershkowitz of South Setauket.
“I think it will, and already has created a lot of amazing energy and enthusiasm amongst grassroots progressives, because they’re seeing what’s possible,” she said. “You know, I think we’ve had some pretty uninspired campaigns out here.
“So I think that seeing something that is as bold as this one can really inspire people to imagine something better,” said Hershkowitz, who is also co-chair of the county’s Working Families Party, whose city counterpart boosted Mamdani.
Hershkowitz noted that some of the places won by Mamdani — who focused his campaign on affordability and economic issues — were also won by Trump in 2024.
“So many of the neighborhoods that broke for Trump — a lot of those voters came back for Mamdani,” she said.
She sees hope for a similar prospect on the Island.
Since Mamdani’s win, on June 24, the Long Island Democratic Socialists of America, which phone-banked for Mamdani, has seen an uptick in interest through its website, according to Mike Adams of Kings Park, co-chair of the DSA’s political education working group.
“This is a guy who’s run explicitly as a socialist and has not backed down,” he said.
The Mamdani effect will be tested later this year in an election for the Riverhead Town Council, for which a DSA-backed candidate, Kevin Shea, is running, Adams said.
Kevin Shea, seen above at his home in Baiting Hollow in 2021, is currently running for a seat on the Riverhead Town Council. Credit: Chris Ware
Asked about Mamdani’s effect on his race, Shea noted that Mamdani is endorsed by Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-Bronx/Queens) and Sen. Bernie Sanders of Vermont.
“If the ‘effect’ means that anyone living in Riverhead, and anyone looking from outside Riverhead, would consider that the rhetoric, sentiment, ideology and/or strategy of Zohran Mamdani’s campaign, endorsed by A.O.C and Bernie Sanders, would be a viable option to strive for to make Riverhead a more resilient and affordable place for all, I embrace it,” Shea wrote in a text.
Adams said the group has about 1,200 members and supporters in Nassau and Suffolk.
Support for a Mamdani approach is likely to have more appeal in areas of the Island that are heavily minority, relatively poor or more left-leaning, such as Hempstead or Westbury villages, Lawrence Levy said.
A candidate like Mamdani might also have appeal to Long Island’s Muslims, including those in middle-class and upper-class communities, he said.
And, Hershkowitz said, if Mamdani succeeds in implementing his campaign promises — freezing regulated rents, building more housing, free child care — more Long Islanders might choose to stay in or relocate to the city.
Steven Romalewski, director of the CUNY Mapping Service in midtown Manhattan, which undertakes mapping projects across the region, including Long Island, says he hopes that despite whatever misgivings more right-leaning Long Island officials might have toward Mamdani’s politics, the city under his mayoralty and Island officials would be willing to collaborate to develop a more regional approach to addressing housing shortages and skyrocketing costs in both places.
“The housing crisis doesn’t stop at the Queens-Nassau border,” he said, adding: “Long Island should do whatever they can — whether that means working with him, whether that means ignoring him, it doesn’t matter. Long Island officials should do whatever they can to address Long Island’s housing crisis.”
In New York City, the home rental vacancy rate has dropped to 1.4%, one of the lowest since records began being kept and a key driver of higher housing costs. The city’s restrictive zoning and other bureaucratic hurdles allow only a fraction of the construction of housing of other big cities such as Seattle, Boston and Washington, D.C., despite surging demand, according to a report from the Pew Charitable Trusts.
Long Island is even worse in keeping up with the demand.
Among America’s 100 biggest counties, Suffolk and Nassau permitted less new housing per capita from 2013 through 2022 than all but one county, in Ohio, according to a report in Bloomberg News.
No matter who’s New York City’s next mayor, some Long Islanders will always prefer Long Island.
Love or hate the city, “It’s the 800-pound gorilla in the region,” said Romalewski, a Baldwin native, “so you just have to deal with it.”
Matthew Chayes, a Newsday reporter since 2007, covers New York City.