It’s a cool October evening, and I’m outside one of those buildings on the Upper East Side where a doorman is stationed in the lobby at all hours, a concierge is available to take up your dry cleaning, and even the one-bedrooms come with two bathrooms (and will run you about $1 million on a low-ish floor). As a canvasser, getting an address like this is a challenge. “We might have to get a new building, or we might get really lucky,” says Paloma, who lives in the neighborhood and has been doing a weekly canvass for Zohran Mamdani since the primary. “I sigh a breath of relief when I see that I’m doing a full list of walk-ups,” explains Strati, the other half of tonight’s team and another old hand at this — the chance of someone buzzing you in is much higher than a doorman letting you up. But this building, in the East 90s and properly sprawling, is the only one on their list for the night. Paloma briefly confers with Strati on the list of voters. Then we’re off.
And we get really lucky. The three of us breeze into the lobby alongside the people coming in and out and head toward the elevators. The plan is to start from the top and work our way down. But not the very top — Paloma and Strati decide to save the penthouse for later. Call it a canvasser’s intuition or a simple fact of real estate: Price and chill often have an inverse correlation. “That could be a person who might say, ‘Why are you doing this?’” Paloma says.
