Transplants Can Redefine Their Relationship With the City
By Jack Lourie
AN ENTHUSIASTIC “I VOTED EARLY!” STICKER placed on a fire hydrant. Photo credit: Jack Lourie.
It’s 12:45 p.m. on Election Day, and the temperature is 99 degrees. After three hours of door knocking for Zohran Mamdani, I’vnyce given myself a 45-minute break to sit in an East Village coffee shop. While my psyche is energized, I’m worried about heat exhaustion. And underneath my motivation is guilt. Until this point, my enthusiasm for Mamdani has only amounted to pressuring my friends to register to vote before the June 14th deadline. Today, of all days, was the first day I tried reaching out to strangers. I was overdue to stop shouting at people from behind social media, and talk to them in person instead.
When I shout, I am shouting at transplants. These are people who move to NYC from generally upper-middle class and above backgrounds — many of whom are my friends. I’m frustrated with what their money has done to the city, and I want them to see the city as I do. While it might sound counterintuitive to dislike the influxes of wealth that transplants bring, I don’t believe many have a plan or framework on how to wield it in an ethical way. They can use their funds to outbid New Yorkers on apartments, and incentivize new businesses to replace longtime local institutions. Whether NYC newcomers confront it or not, their dollars become a mandate to change neighborhoods in their image. And then they leave. Many transplants view New York as a chapter in their life, instead of their forever home. Naturally, this transience should lead to less personal investment in our local politics.
I check my phone. Someone from the Zohran Mamdani Lower Manhattan WhatsApp group says they need help with poll visibility on East 10th Street and First Avenue. Poll visibility is when you stand at least 100 feet away from a polling location to engage with constituents on your candidate’s policies in hope to gain their support. I say goodbye to the air-conditioned coffee shop and head back into the swampy heat. I had walked past that poll site earlier this morning where I noticed Anthony Weiner—the disgraced politician vying for City Council in my district. He was an alumnus of my high school, and I remember his brand of 2010’s liberalism being powerful when I was 15. I used to be proud of him. Then he sent explicit images of himself to a minor.
My City Council race was something I admittedly did not know much about. Andrea Gordillo, Sarah Batchu, and Harvey Epstein all seemed like good candidates: they wanted more affordable housing, and were at least not outright pro-policing — unlike Weiner. When I made it to the poll site, thankfully, he was gone, and I got to meet people working on those other City Council campaigns. Most had moved here recently, but they were all more knowledgeable about my local election than I was. These were not the transplants I thought I knew. They were clearly passionate about a future politic where we could all afford to live here. I was starting to feel that enthusiasm from transplants in the mayoral race as well, but I wouldn’t be satisfied unless Mamdani won.
There was a wave, before June 14th, of motivated newcomers urging their circles to get involved in the primary. I saw it all throughout my social media feed. Influencers were posting videos instructing their followers on how to register to vote. Many of my friends were doing the same. It was a moment in history where we could all participate in something exciting and worthwhile: uniting ourselves against the overarching pressure points in our economy. Some folks even cast their ballot early. The age, average wages, and districts of Mamdani voters all screamed “transplant.” Actually, some of the neighborhoods experiencing the worst gentrification — Bushwick, Bed-Stuy, and the East Village — had the highest numbers of Mamdani supporters. Gentrifiers and New Yorkers voted together, forming his coalition.
Clearly, transplant energy in this election was integral. As disconnection, disappointment, and distance from the Democratic Party grows in its base, the less its base will show up for the Democratic Party. Andrew Cuomo had two advantages over Mamdani, both related to voter disenfranchisement. The first was name recognition. Voters who are disengaged will support the person with whom they have familiarity. Mamdani’s meteoric rise in the polls during the last few weeks of the race was gained through fighting against this entrenched name-recognition strategy.
The second related factor was that voters already understood Cuomo’s flaws. Politicians come and go. They generally do not invest in the populations they represent — especially their constituents who are marginalized through legislation they likely support. In a disenchanted way, understanding Cuomo’s history with corruption and sexual harassment let those who voted for him know the scope of failure they could expect from a mayoral term, and make peace with that reality. Transplants had an opportunity to contribute to this election because they could believe in a local political system they had not yet been coaxed by.
Moving forward, my hope is that transplants chase this good feeling from the primary and find new ways to invest in the city. Add your own flair to our melting pot. Go to more local stores (shop Brooklyn, not Bezos, some would say); do more diligent research into the neighborhoods you move into, and try to imagine how you would treat NYC if it were your forever home. You might be more likely to engage in local politics, get to know your neighbors, and learn your area’s history. The city will start giving back to you.
And for the ones who didn’t register to vote, you still have an opportunity to do so before the general election. The cutoff date is October 25th, but according to the Board of Election officials, you should aim for early October. You do not need a New York ID, and can visit vote.nyc to register and find your poll site. See what journey you can forge by demonstrating care for NYC.
Disgruntled young? And how will they be when older, if disgruntled now!