Diana Moreno, a labor organizer and democratic socialist backed by Mayor Mamdani, will take his former state Assembly seat, following Tuesday\u2019s special election.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Moreno won the three-way race handily with about 73.8 percent of the vote, according to preliminary results from the state Board of Elections. Nonprofit founder Rana Abdelhamid had about 17 percent, and organizer Mary Jobaida came in at 7.7 percent.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cToday, Astoria and Long Island City voted to send a socialist immigrant mom to the New York State Assembly,\u201d Moreno said on X just after midnight. \u201cOur movement is headed to Albany. I\u2019m ready to make you proud.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n
An Ecuadorian immigrant with more than 10 years of organizing under her belt, Moreno said on her website that she had not planned to run for office, but she felt she had \u201cno choice but to fight\u201d in a moment of \u201cpolitical crisis.\u201d<\/p>\n
Key issues to her platform were to raise taxes on the wealthy to fund free universal childcare, strengthen tenant protections, promote affordable housing development and protect immigrant communities \u201cunder attack from Trump\u2019s cruel and racist deportation machine,\u201d according to her campaign site.<\/p>\n
Moreno was nominated by both the Queens Democratic Party and the Working Families Party, and she appeared on the ballot under both tickets. Abdelhamid ran on the Queens For All party line, and Jobaida on the People First ticket. No primary was held ahead of the special election.<\/p>\n
All three candidates belong to the Democratic Socialists of America, which gave its nod to Moreno. The NYC DSA said on X that her landslide win marks the group\u2019s first victory of the 2026 election cycle.\u00a0<\/p>\n
In addition to Mamdani and the DSA, Moreno was backed by numerous elected officials, including U.S. Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-Bronx, Queens), state Sens. Kristen Gonzalez (D-Manhattan, Brooklyn, Queens), Mike Gianaris (D-Astoria), Toby Ann Stavisky (D-College Point), Julia Salazar (D-Brooklyn, Queens), Assemblymember Claire Valdez (D-Sunnyside) and City Councilmember Tiffany Cab\u00e1n (D-Astoria) in Queens.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cFrom universal childcare to expanding labor rights, I look forward to fighting for the people of Astoria alongside you,\u201d Ocasio-Cortez said on X.\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Diana Moreno, a labor organizer and democratic socialist backed by Mayor Mamdani, will take his former state Assembly…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":123274,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[37],"tags":[29436,3814,29438,7496,609,9,24,63,87,122,124,123,53860,82],"class_list":{"0":"post-123273","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-queens","8":"tag-assembly-district-36","9":"tag-astoria","10":"tag-diana-moreno","11":"tag-election-day","12":"tag-government","13":"tag-new-york","14":"tag-new-york-city","15":"tag-nyc","16":"tag-politics","17":"tag-queens","18":"tag-queens-headlines","19":"tag-queens-news","20":"tag-queens-votes","21":"tag-zohran-mamdani"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/123273","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=123273"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/123273\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/123274"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=123273"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=123273"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=123273"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}