"The early days of Zohran Mamdani's primary campaign were heavy with gimmicks. He ran the marathon wearing a T-shirt that read "Eric Adams Raised My Rent!" and "Zohran Will Freeze It!" on the back. He jumped into the Atlantic on New Year's Day. "I'm freezing ... your rent," he told the camera, barefoot, in a dripping-wet suit. You could understand his predicament: It was early in the race, the Democratic field was crowded, and almost no one outside of his assembly district knew his name."
"But his message was consistent and digestible enough to be plastered on campaign posters that hung on grocery stores and apartment windows from Flatbush to East Harlem: "A New York You Can Afford." And in a city that's 70 percent tenants, where a majority pay one-third of their income to a landlord every month, that means doing something about their rent. "You're gonna have to sell it," a marathon watcher told Mamdani after clocking his T-shirt on a stretch of Long Island City."
Zohran Mamdani ran an unconventional primary campaign using stunts and clear messaging focused on affordability. He pledged a four-year pause on rent increases for roughly one million stabilized units, affecting about two million tenants. The pledge was central because it was simple, implementable within mayoral powers, and resonated in a city where 70 percent are tenants and many pay one-third of income to landlords. Campaign posters and public stunts spread the message across neighborhoods from Flatbush to East Harlem. Rising rents, the end of pandemic deals, and renewed evictions created widespread housing strain that framed affordability as the decisive issue.
Read at Curbed
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