By COLE SINANIAN
news@queensledger.com
Just days into 2026, Mayor Zohran Mamdani and Governor Kathy Hochul announced an historic expansion of free childcare here in New York. But if Diana Moreno has her way, childcare is just the beginning of a wave of policies focused on improving the lives of working-class New Yorkers that will one day guarantee everyone the basic necessities of a dignified life.
Of course, it won’t be easy. But the 38-year-old democratic socialist is ready to take the fight to the state legislature, where she hopes to represent Assembly District 36, a seat most recently occupied by Mayor Mamdani. Riding high off recent endorsements from New York City’s leftist quad-fecta — the NYC Democratic Socialists of America, the NY Working Families Party, Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Mamdani himself (not to mention the Queens Democratic Party) — Moreno has been considered by some a shoe-in, especially in a district that’s emerged in recent years as the nucleus of modern American socialism, smack in the middle of a deeply left-wing region that’s been affectionately dubbed the “Commie Corridor.”
It is perhaps unsurprising, then, that two of Moreno’s three competitors — Rana Abdelhamid and Mary Jobaida (the third being progressive Shivani Dhir) — are fellow democratic socialists and NYC-DSA members. By this point, most New Yorkers are likely familiar with the DSA’s tax-the-rich, working people-first political agenda which, as Mamdani’s election demonstrated, has resonated with the city’s working-class and immigrant communities, as well as younger, college-educated transplants.
But now the hard part begins. As Moreno has made clear in her campaign, it is up to state legislators to help implement Mamdani’s and the broader democratic socialist agenda, and so she views her role in the Assembly as one small part of a much larger political movement that she hopes will spill far beyond the so-called “People’s Republic of Astoria” and into the halls of Albany.
“My individual legacy, I’m not interested in that,” she told the Queens Ledger during a recent visit to our Sunnyside office. “I am deeply proud to be part of a movement, a movement of really changing our state to one that puts the needs of working people first.”
From Quito to Astoria
Born in Quito, Ecuador, Moreno’s worldview is deeply colored by her experience as an immigrant in America. Her father worked for a telephone company and her mother was a social studies teacher. Her grandfather was an indigenous farm worker who pulled his family out of poverty by becoming a bus driver and union organizer.
“He was an organizer until he passed,” Moreno said of her grandfather, recounting her earliest memories of the rousing political discussions he would instigate around the family’s kitchen table. After a foreign debt crisis plunged the country into economic depression, Moreno’s family left Ecuador in 1999 and resettled in the Central Florida city of Lakeland. As an 11-year-old just starting middle school in a new country, Moreno — who had studied English in Ecuador — was thrust abruptly into adulthood, acting as translator for her parents who had suddenly gone from respected white-collar workers to exploited immigrants.
“They came here to wash dishes,” Moreno said. “My mom was cleaning hotel rooms, she eventually found a cleaning job for another rich person. It was really difficult watching their labor be exploited. Them being underpaid and overworked — that was, I think, deeply politicizing for me.”
Later came 9/11 and the spike in anti-immigrant sentiment that followed. As a teenager Moreno got her news from Amy Goodman’s Democracy Now! and protested the Iraq War at her deeply conservative Florida high school. After earning a degree in Latino Studies from the University of Florida, Moreno moved to New York City in 2015 to intern in the worker’s rights program for the nonprofit Make the Road NY in Jackson Heights. She moved to Astoria in 2019, where she worked in communications for the New York State Nurses Association until she began her campaign this past October.
“I wanted to understand how immigrants are building power in this country and fighting for their rights,” Moreno said. “And it brought me to Queens, because I saw that there was so much wonderful activism and organizing that immigrants were doing right here.”
Photo by Kara McCurdy.
The Year of Universal Childcare
With the special election for District 36 set for February 3, Moreno plans to waste no time upon arriving in Albany. In the longer term, she supports efforts to build more social housing in New York City and bills like the New York Health Act, which would create a state-run single-payer healthcare system and provide universal healthcare to all New Yorkers.
But she said her top priority for her first days in office is to pass universal childcare, which — after Governor Hochul announced a $4.5 billion plan last week to fund free childcare for New York City toddlers — seems all but certain. For Moreno, the Universal Childcare Act hits close to home on two fronts: Not only is she a new mother, but universal childcare is perhaps the most ambitious of political ally Zohran Mamdani’s campaign promises, for whom Moreno campaigned during both his initial Assembly run back in 2020 and his mayoral run last year.
“I feel compelled to do everything I can to fight for my child’s future and to ensure that the state steps in where the federal government is failing,” Moreno said. “This is the year of universal child care, as Mayor Mamdani said in his press conference. We know that we have the political momentum, we know that we have Governor Hochul’s support, and we absolutely must get it done this year.”
In office, Moreno will also keep Astoria’s immigrant community at the top of her mind. She supports the New York For All Act, which would limit local law enforcement’s ability to collaborate with ICE, as well as the Mandating End of Lawless Tactics (MELT) Act, which would prohibit federal agents from wearing masks in New York.
Through her support for bills like Senator Kristen Gonzalez’s Secure Our Data Act — which would improve cybersecurity for state entities and prevent federal agencies from accessing the state data of New York residents — Moreno aims to help make New York a national leader in data security. For immigrant communities, this is particularly important, Moreno said, as recent arrivals who register for tax identification numbers could be simultaneously exposing their sensitive information to a hostile federal government.
“We’re going to see more data breaches,” Moreno said. “We’re going to see more security threats. We’re going to see our data being used in nefarious ways, even to target people like me, immigrants who were not born in the United States.”
While Governor Hochul has been largely supportive of childcare programs, Moreno acknowledges that she and her fellow socialists in office may have to battle the governor on other kinds of legislation. With her recent approval of the Williams NESE natural gas pipeline — which had previously been rejected several times by communities in southern Brooklyn and Queens — Hochul has been accused by some of her more progressive colleagues of being weak on climate. The challenge, Moreno said, is to ensure New York remains a national leader in the transition to a fully renewable energy grid while also lowering utility costs, particularly for small businesses, for whom expensive utilities can be a death sentence.
Moreno asserted that her district has “the best food in New York City” and praised Astoria’s vibrant small business community, recalling a vintage Oscar de la Renta blazer she picked up for $30 at Loveday 31 Vintage on 31st Ave that she’s wearing in her official campaign headshot. Keeping utility costs low for business while switching the grid to renewables would require several pieces of parallel legislation, Moreno said, like the Commercial Rent Stabilization Act, which would implement a rent control system and rent guidelines board for small businesses.
The Sky’s the Limit
But Moreno’s work in Albany would be only part of the equation. It was the mass mobilization of volunteer organizers that earned Mamdani his historic victory, she said, and this strategy can be applied to any political objective, not just campaigns. With the mayor’s recent appointment of fellow DSA organizer Tascha Van Auken to the newly created Office of Mass Engagement, Moreno is eager to ride this wave of civic involvement and use her position to continue organizing her community.
As a legislator, Moreno would be in a unique position to platform and promote organizations whose work she supports. Engagement is key; effective democracy must engage as many voters as possible in governance, not only through elections, but in the legislative process as well, Moreno said. This means community leaders, labor unions, nonprofits, and the general public must be engaged in all aspects of lawmaking. From canvassing and pressure campaigns to get laws passed, to ensuring they’re implemented as intended, Moreno will utilize her mass of organized constituents to help keep the socialist ball rolling in New York.
“The sky’s the limit,” Moreno said. “It doesn’t mean that we’re gonna win every single time, absolutely not. But organized people is the way forward to winning a sustainable future for working families in New York.”
