the right candidate in the wrong district

Young Indian-American attorney seeks generational change that Upper West Siders aren’t in the market for.

Photo: William Mebane for The Washington Post via Getty Images

NEW YORK, NY — “Generational change is not dead,” Patel asserted. His polls suggested otherwise.

Securing only 19% of the vote, Suraj Patel – a 38-year-old progressive – lost by massive margins to Jerrold Nadler, 75, and Carolyn Maloney, 76, in the August Democratic primaries for the newly redrawn house district 12 in New York. He appealed to a demographic that just wasn't in his district.

With a combined 60 years of incumbency, Patel was just nine years old when his opponents were first elected to office in 1992. So, while Nadler and Maloney were busy passing bills and drafting policies in Washington, Patel was cleaning motel rooms, fixing air conditioners, and bussing tables to keep his family’s hospitality business afloat in Rochester.

“The differences between me and the other two opponents was so wide,” Patel explains, “it's not just on issues and energy and urgency. It's frankly, in appearance, and culture.”

Born in Hattiesburg, Mi, Patel is one of four sons to parents of Gujarati Indian origin who emigrated to chase economic opportunities – the quintessential ‘American Dream.’ They moved around the midwest, spending time in rural Indiana, Ohio, Illinois, and Kentucky. “We bought a motel when I was five years old, we lived in that motel,” he noted, while prodding his straw at the melting ice cubes in his coffee. By age seven, his family built a restaurant and another small motel in Rochester, Indiana. “We worked on construction sites and learned cuss words from plumbers,” he laughs, “that is how we learned about America”

Now, he holds his bachelors in political science from Stanford, masters in public policy from Cambridge, and juris doctorate from New York University. He worked on both of President Obama’s campaigns and became a founding member of The Arena, which “supports a new generation of American leaders.”

His platform was built on the need for generational change in office. He feels that his experience growing up in rural Indiana influenced him to put out solution-based policies that “people across the spectrum all agree on” – for example, banning horse carriages in Central Park and increasing crosstown bike lanes across uptown Manhattan to ensure rider safety. He also supports progressive ideals like The New Green Deal and Medicare for all.

But, even with Patel’s embellished LinkedIn profile and policy meant to gain bipartisan support, Upper West Siders were not trying their luck with a candidate who lacks actual experience.

“I feel strongly that younger people need to get involved and we need to support them.” says 72 year-old Julie Pars-Cadenhead, an Upper West Sider and longtime Nadler supporter. However, Patel’s age alone wasn’t enough to win her vote: “for all these gazillion years that [Nadler] has been here, he’s done a really good job. He's been consistent and caring and listening.”

Patel even recognized this massive challenge. “This is a district that's unique in that it's progressive as hell, politically, the positions are really left – but the voters are culturally conservative.” Patel’s laugh pierced through the ambient noise of the Fourth Avenue Think Coffee location. “It would be very difficult to convince an Upper West Side 60-year-old man to be like, ‘oh, I’m going to vote for that 38-year-old brown guy.’”

Shuffled congressional lines from a messy redistricting process due to unconstitutional gerrymandering cut out Patel’s strongest electorate in Brooklyn and Queens. Having only 16 weeks to introduce himself to an entirely new demographic, he had to get creative. He got an ice-cream truck and plastered his colorful campaign posters that read ‘change the vibes’ across the entire truck.

“It was such a vibe,” he said. For just $800 a day, Patel used his campaign budget to employ immigrant entrepreneur Carlos Cutz to drive around the city, play music, and hand out free ice-cream. “Who doesn't love ice-cream in August? It is hot as hell – I ate more ice cream in two weeks than I have in my life combined, and I love ice-cream,” Patel smiled.

Not only was the ice-cream truck a fun way to engage with the community, it was also exemplary of two issues Patel feels strongly about: supporting immigrant workers, and the current inflation crisis. Due to rising gas and dairy prices, Cutz’s ice-cream business has been on the brink of collapse.

23 year old Jacob Klipstein who worked as Patel’s deputy field director explained how the ice-cream truck was one of the best things they did for the campaign. “That’s the kind of demographic supporting Suraj, the working class of Manhattan,” he says, referencing people like Cutz.

“Manhattan is just too expensive,” argued Klipstein, “people who vote there and people who live there are totally different.” New York’s 12th congressional district has the highest per-capita income among all other districts in the United States.

Even if the ice-cream truck did win over some voters, a huge population of Manhattan was not there to see it. “I imagine that there are a lot of people who showed up after Labor Day with a bunch of mail in their mailbox from Nadler, me, and Maloney and were like: ‘oh, there’s an election,’” Patel sighed, “no one knew.”

A historic August 23rd election made for incredibly low voter turnout. In the last week of summer, Upper East and West Siders alike dash off to their vacation home in the Hamptons, and young professionals and families take their last week off to travel before schools start up again after Labor Day.

On a breezy mid-October afternoon at Chelsea Park, three Upper West Siders (who requested to remain anonymous) disclosed that they did not participate in the democratic congressional primary because they were out of town; one of them confessed she did not know what district she lives in.

Despite his numerous challenges, Patel remains optimistic. “I feel like we really struck a nerve here. I think nationally, we hit the right moment for generational change, getting people to recognize that the challenges change in this country as the decades go by, but our leaders are the exact same.”

Originally written ‘on spec’ for Professor Tyler Kelley’s News, Narrative, and Design II class at The New School.