By COLE SINANIAN | news@queensledger.com
ASTORIA — Diana Moreno wasted no time in starting her new job.
Only hours after winning a landslide victory against Assembly District 36 opponents Rana Abdelhamid and Mary Jobaida on February 3 with 74% of the vote, Astoria’s newest Assemblywoman zipped up to Albany for the first legislative session of her term, where she co-sponsored the New York For All Act, a bill that would prohibit state law enforcement from collaborating with federal immigration agents.
Moreno, a DSA-backed lifelong organizer and new mom originally from Ecuador, made immigrant safety a key part of her campaign. Also key was her laser focus on the same affordability platform that won her predecessor Zohran Mamdani the mayorship. Just days into her tenure in Albany, Moreno is already well on her way to making good on at least one of her campaign promises.
“We cannot be complicit as New York State in the human rights abuses and in the abuses of law that ICE agents are engaging in,” Moreno said during an interview at the Queens Ledger office last month.
Moreno, who was favored to win the race after securing key endorsements from NYC-DSA, NYC Working Families Party, and the Queens Democratic Party in a rare, three-way alignment from the city’s most prominent left-wing political organizations, has been praised by political allies for her steadfast solidarity with working people and her proximity to the communities she advocates for.
“I’ve been in rooms with Diana filled with undocumented construction workers,” said US Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez during an election night event in Astoria. “She fought not on behalf of them, but fought with them. She helped them create power out of no power. That’s magic. That’s what organizing is.”
Diana Moreno stopped by the Queens Ledger office in January, where she called on state legislators to put working people first.
The race for AD 36 — the first since Mamdani’s election — was characterized by some political commentators as the first test of the new mayor’s political might. The three candidates — all of whom have at one point been DSA members — espoused remarkably similar ideologies, each running on the promise of affordability for working people and immigrant and labor rights. But it was Moreno, who had previously served as co-chair of the Queens DSA chapter, that got the coveted endorsement from NYC-DSA, which quickly threw the full force of its army of canvassers behind her. Days later Mamdani followed suit, all but sealing the deal on her election.
Abdelhamid and Jobaida, who ran on independent tickets, earned 17% and 8% of the vote, respectively. In a post to social media Tuesday, Abdelhamid conceded and thanked her campaign team for their hard work:
“Proud of everyone who believed in our vision, knocked on doors, made calls, and showed up to vote,” she said. “You proved that grassroots organizing builds real power.”
Moreno, who came by the Queens Ledger office in January to discuss her legislative agenda and her position in the wider DSA movement, has described herself as a loyal successor to Mamdani who will work tirelessly to champion his agenda in the state legislature. She spoke of a political and economic system that prioritizes profit for the few over the needs of the many, and vowed to use her office to help working-class New Yorkers access a comfortable and dignified life.
“We really have a system that is not working for working people, where we have to ask ourselves, how do we build an apartment where a family of four can live and pay rent?” Moreno said. “Just the fact that we have to ask ourselves that question points to the fact that this system is rigged for working people. We have a part to play in the New York government to un-rig that system.”
With three openly socialist candidates in one race, even if Moreno hadn’t won, there was little doubt that Mamdani’s successor in Astoria would be a socialist. The so-called “People’s Republic of Astoria” — a nickname that’s become a bit of a trope in recent months — has been a DSA stronghold since at least Mamdani’s election to the Assembly in 2020, at which point it became the only administrative district in America to have elected socialists at the municipal, state, and federal levels (Ocasio-Cortez is the neighborhood’s congresswoman, while Tiffany Caban is its City councilmember).
But as NYC-DSA looks to flood the State Assembly with a new crop of fresh-faced socialists come primary elections on June 23, the organization will face perhaps the first major test of its electoral organizing power since Mamdani’s upset victory in November.
In Brooklyn, DSA-members Christian Celeste Tate and Eon Huntley are running to unseat Democrats Erik Dilan in AD 54 and Stefani Zinerman in AD 56, respectively. In Harlem, public defender Conrad Blackburn is running to replace Democrat Jordan Wright in AD 70, while in Queens, lawyer and union organizer David Orkin is vying for AD 38, a seat currently occupied by Democrat and former Mayor Adams ally, Jenifer Rakjumar.
DSA-backed congressional candidate and District 37 Assemblywoman Claire Valdez, who hopes to replace the locally beloved US Rep. Nydia Velazquez, faces an even tougher primary fight. She’ll be up against Brooklyn Borough President Antonio Reynoso, who’s a popular progressive endorsed by Velazquez herself, as well as Sunnyside and LIC City councilmember Julie Won, who announced last week that she would enter the race on a similarly progressive ticket.
