Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Date of Degree

2-2026

Document Type

Master's Thesis

Degree Name

Master of Arts

Program

Political Science

Advisor

John Mollenkopf

Subject Categories

Political Science

Keywords

Housing, New York City, 2025 Mayoral Race, Messaging, Mamdani, Cuomo

Abstract

Polls of likely voters prior to New York City’s 2025 mayoral race suggested that proposing a persuasive solution to the city’s housing crisis was likely to be critical to the building of a winning electoral coalition. And an important factor in voters’ reception of each candidate’s housing proposals would be the role that housing developers are perceived to play in those solutions. Developers, who are widely regarded as unscrupulous profiteers in a local housing landscape where the deck is always already stacked against the renter or home buyer, figure (accurately or not) as the chief villain in the story many New York City voters tell themselves about the housing crisis. This tendency to blame developers has the potential to unite ideologically disparate voters, yet most candidates could not afford to rhetorically alienate developers, whom they were likely to need as campaign donors or as partners in housing development (including for affordable housing) once in office. Thus, mayoral candidates often choose not to attack developers directly in their housing plans and public statements; instead, a promise to build new housing at large scale has become a proxy for candidates’ developer-friendliness. Complicating the matter for candidates in 2025 was that a significant number of voters, particularly leftists and progressives, had come to equate what they derisively term a “build, baby, build” strategy with developer-friendliness. Therefore, the promise to build new housing – which became a component in every major mayoral candidate’s housing plan, to a greater or lesser degree – was a needle that candidates needed to thread with great caution, as it could alienate many left-of-center voters. In this thesis, formulated at the beginning of the mayoral race, I hypothesize that the candidate who successfully navigated the political pitfalls of the promise to build new housing – whether by rhetorically conflating “new housing” with “affordable housing” (as Brad Lander seemed to intend doing) or by creating ambiguity around the proportion of newly built housing that will be affordable (an approach that Zellnor Myrie, a progressive with mainstream aspirations, showcased in his housing plan) would have the best chance of forging a coalition of progressives and moderates that was large enough to carry him or her to electoral victory.  This thesis tracks the builder-friendliness of candidates’ messaging on housing during the spring 2025 primary season, analyzes the political calculus that appeared to inform that messaging, and considers, in light of the results of the June 24 Democratic mayoral primary and November 4 election, the degree to which each candidate’s messaging was able to attract the coalition of voters he or she hoped for.

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