Diana Moreno, the Ecuadorian migrant and friend of Zohran Mamdani who hopes to replace him in the New York State Assembly

After dropping her baby off at daycare, Diana Moreno arrives at Madame Sousou, an Astoria café stocked with pastries, sandwiches, and cakes. She greets the staff who already know her, orders something hot, takes off her coat, and opens her laptop. From a blue tote bag that reads “Zohran for NYC” in yellow letters, she pulls out a makeup bag for a touch-up. This is how the day begins for the frontrunner in the race to succeed Zohran Mamdani as the State Assembly District 36 representative, now that the mayor has moved from his rent-controlled apartment in Queens to Gracie Mansion in Manhattan, after being elected in a landslide to govern the capital of the world.

Seven years ago, when Moreno had just moved to Astoria from Florida and was beginning to get involved with the Democratic Socialists of America (DSA), he met a twenty-something named Zohran — just his first name, back when his last name hadn’t yet captured the attention of New York politics, much less the nation. “I was starting to go to meetings, I wanted to get active in the community, and he was one of the first people I met, not even as a politician or a candidate, but as a fellow activist. He was an organizer, and he recognized me, a newcomer, and said, ‘Come on, let’s go out.’”

They went for beers at Diamond Dogs, a bar that last year displayed a poster of Mamdani’s face on its brick walls, and now has another one with hers, the 38-year-old Ecuadorian migrant who arrived in the United States at age 11 with her parents and older sister from Quito, when the economic and political crisis shook the South American country in the 1990s. “People lost a lot of savings, including my grandfather, who lost everything he had saved throughout his life,” Moreno says.

Her mother was a social studies teacher at a local school, and her father, an employee of a private telephone company who suddenly found himself unemployed. “Like many others, my parents said, ‘We have to get out of here, what future are we going to give our daughters?’” They sold everything, took their savings, and moved to the United States.

They arrived at the home of an Ecuadorian family they knew in South Florida. The city of Lakeland, where they settled, was a “conservative place, where there was a lot of racism, where the Latino and migrant community was very small at that time. It’s not like we had arrived in Miami or New York. It was a shock,” she says.

It was she and her sister who helped their parents communicate in English, fill out forms, open a bank account, or apply for jobs. “We grew up very fast,” she says. Her father started washing dishes at a Mexican restaurant; her mother cleaning hotel rooms; and they began their studies in a public school. Later, at the University of Florida in Gainesville, Moreno studied political science and earned a master’s degree in Latino Studies. “I was very interested in understanding my own migration history. I learned about imperialism and colonialism, and I started studying what migrants here were doing to organize for their rights, and that’s what brought me to Queens.”

In 2015, she interned at the community and civil rights organization Make the Road, where she got to know other groups working directly with undocumented immigrants in the city, and she knew that she would live there for the rest of her life. “Queens changed my mindset. For a migrant, a woman, a person of color, someone who was also beginning to explore her sexuality, because I identify as queer, I feel like this was a place where I could be myself in all my facets. You feel liberated in a place where you see a Muslim person next to an Ecuadorian person, or a trans person, or someone from Paraguay. It was the first time I felt at home in this country,” she says.

She then worked at the organization New Immigrant Community Empowerment. She fought against wage theft and educated many people about their labor rights. During the coronavirus pandemic, she was on the front lines. She distributed food, helped neighbors apply for government assistance, and denounced labor abuses against those cleaning and disinfecting the subway. She became a leader in the DSA. She fought against the reconstruction of a gas-fired power plant in Astoria, a city with high rates of childhood asthma. She fought to unionize Starbucks workers and volunteered to offer free English classes for immigrants.

“I gradually earned the respect and trust of many people,” says Moreno, just days before the special election that Governor Kathy Hochul set for February 3. If she wins, she would not only fill the “symbolic” seat vacated by Mamdani in a DSA stronghold, but she would also become the fourth Latina woman to uphold the Democratic Socialist legacy in the state. They have Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez in Congress, Tiffany Cabán on the City Council, Kristen Serene González in the Senate, and now they could have Moreno in Albany.

Mamdani’s friend

When Mamdani launched his mayoral campaign, he personally called Moreno and told her, “Diana, vote for me, we’re going to fight to win.” “He convinced me,” she recalls. “After seeing what was happening in Palestine, and being a new mother, I said to myself: ‘We can’t stay here, fighting at this level; we have to fight at the highest level.’”

They were friends. Moreno supported him in 2020 when Mamdani ran for the New York State Assembly. But she was still surprised that the 33-year-old Muslim man who wears Uniqlo clothes and is a follower of Arsenal was running for mayor. She thought they wouldn’t stand a chance against their rival, Andrew Cuomo. “That’s why I have so much respect for him, because he pushed me to dream bigger, to believe bigger. Many times we on the left are used to not having power. And he said, ‘We’re going to fight to have it.’”

In the initial video for Mamdani’s campaign, Diana is seen with her baby in a stroller when he was three months old. The mother can be heard saying, in English, “I want to raise my son in New York.” Months later, colleagues from the DSA began urging her to carry on Mamdani’s legacy in western Queens by representing Astoria and Long Island City in the state legislature. Moreno initially refused, saying, “With a baby just a few months old, that’s crazy.”

She wanted to “take a break,” to have some peace and quiet. She had a good job at the New York State Nurses Association. But she thought about her son. “I know what’s going on in this damn country at the federal level. I said, ‘If I can fight for my son’s future, for my community, against this authoritarianism, against this fascism, I’m going to do it. If I have the trust of my community, I’m going to do it.’ And the only reason I said yes is because I know I’m not doing this alone. This isn’t a personal ambition. This is a collective project.”

She knew that even if Mamdani won the election, he couldn’t rebuild the city alone. “He needs allies in Albany to pass a fair budget, to push the governor to support our mayor’s cost-of-living agenda,” Moreno explains. Mamdani himself approached her and said, “If you want to do this, you have my support.”

By the end of December, the then mayor-elect stood before his neighbors in Athens Square Park in Astoria and said, “I have known Diana for years and I know that in her, the working families of Queens will find a tireless and unwavering ally.”

Now Moreno, who was among the 100,000 volunteers in Mamdani’s campaign, has inherited hundreds of them who are knocking on doors to support her in the election. She knows it won’t be easy. If she wins, she will be in charge of a district where 38% of residents are immigrants, at a time when the White House is tightening its deportation policy.

“I want to be clear that I am ready to defend my migrant community in New York, even if it requires putting my body in the line of fire,” insists Moreno, who in September was arrested outside the Federal Plaza building, the epicenter of ICE detentions in Manhattan, when she participated in an act of civil disobedience. “We have to be ready to confront directly an agency that is willing to kill people, in the open air and with impunity. This is about democracy in this country. My position is that ICE must be completely eliminated. We have to confront the human rights abuses and the deaths they have caused,” she maintains.

Moreno often wonders how the “richest city in the history of this world” can have “a level of inequality that the average person can’t even imagine.” “When I talk about democratic socialism, I’m talking about the most basic necessities for survival. If we want to survive, and live with dignity, we have either the reality that Zohran Mamdani is offering us, or the nightmare that Donald Trump is offering us,” she says. “This is a crucial moment in the future that people will choose. I know the expectations are high, but I’m ready to take on this role, to make sure that I’m not only advancing Zohran’s agenda, but going even further.”

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