How did Phil Wong win in Queens’ purplest district?

Phil Wong’s win was a shock to Republicans, who said they had felt the love for their candidate, Alicia Vaichunas, everywhere they went. 

“I know the neighborhood,” Queens GOP Chair and Juniper Park Civic Association President Tony Nunziato said just before the votes came in on election night. “I feel so good about it, I really do. She’s the right person – she’s fourth generation from the neighborhood.” 

But by the end of the night, Wong had 3,652 more votes than Vaichunas, besting her by 10 points. It was even surprising to him – the Democrat said that he had expected to win, but “not by this much.” 

Both Wong and Vaichunas were staffers of outgoing Council Member Bob Holden, a conservative Democrat who ran on both party lines throughout his term. They ran as friends and ideological heirs of their boss throughout most of the race until Vaichunas became bitter in the final weeks, going on the attack against Wong. Ultimately, in a dramatic concession speech, she declared that Holden had betrayed her by not favoring her over the Democrat.

Since then, Vaichunas has quit her job in Holden’s office, the council member said. Wong is still working. 

Given losses for Republicans across the board – Council Member Kristy Marmorato was ousted from her Bronx seat and George Sarantopoulos saw a bruising loss in Bay Ridge – Holden now believes it was always going to end up this way. 

“It was a Mamdani tsunami,” Holden said, adding later that “there was nothing Alicia could have done.”

The district is a confusing shade of purple: a mix of white homeowners in Maspeth, Middle Village and parts of Glendale, Hispanic families and younger lefty residents in Ridgewood, Asian and Hispanic voters in Elmhurst, and Jewish and Asian communities in Rego Park (to drastically oversimplify). Although registered Democrats significantly outnumber Republicans, Council District 30 voted decisively for Curtis Sliwa over Mayor Eric Adams in 2021. Then in 2023, when Holden ran for reelection on multiple ballot lines, Republican and Conservative party votes combined were almost exactly evenly split with Democratic votes. A year later the district swung for Trump by a few points. Now it’s given Phil Wong a sizable victory, with parts of Maspeth and Elmhurst swinging back to blue for the first time since 2020.

It doesn’t help with clarity that the top of the ballot was truly a three-way race and that the district’s preferred candidate, Andrew Cuomo, was a Democrat running as an independent candidate. 

Republican Council Member Joann Ariola, who supported Vaichunas’ campaign, agreed with Holden on the Mamdani wave.

“We had a lot of places that were energized by Mamdani’s get-out-and-vote operations that just weren’t as active in the past,” she said in a statement over text, citing high turnout in Ridgewood. “In Rego Park, too, we saw something of a Mamdani effect albeit in a different direction. We saw a lot more people turn out to vote for Cuomo because they were worried about a Mamdani mayorship, but those new voters were also not too keen to vote down ballot for a Republican candidate.”

Wong said that connecting with Asian voters in Elmhurst and Rego Park was crucial. He garnered about 29% of his votes from those areas, so it paid off – he won in Elmhurst with about 70% and in Rego Park with about 60%. In blue Ridgewood – the only area of the district where Mamdani won, and where Vaichunas never had a chance – Wong picked up another quarter of his bounty with almost 5,000 votes, two-thirds of the neighborhood’s total. Most Mamdani voters seem to have voted Democrat down the line, with the mayor-elect only gathering a few hundred more votes than Wong did (despite Wong’s strong opposition to him). 

He didn’t do too badly in the district’s suburban core of Maspeth and Middle Village, either. Though Vaichunas won most of that turf, Wong was never too far behind, netting 42% of the vote – which made up a crucial 30% of his total. Those results might have looked different if Vaichunas had made a genuinely convincing case, much earlier in the race, that Wong wasn’t her and Holden’s political partner but some kind of covert progressive. 

Wong’s primary fight, Holden said, might have helped him stick in voters’ minds. It was a competitive race against Democratic machine-backed UFT strategist Dermot Smyth and Middle Village hockey coach Paul Pogozelski, who ultimately split the vote in the district’s bluer areas; Wong emerged as the most conservative candidate, distributing “Back the Blue” lawn signs and aligning himself closely with Holden. Vaichunas, meanwhile, never faced a primary challenger, so she only began campaigning in earnest over the summer. 

Wong also had a particularly strong ground game and opted to spend on paid canvassers rather than mailers and ads. 

Vaichunas started out as more of a public figure in the community – she worked in a more front-facing role, and was with the office for much longer. But Holden said he warned both candidates early on that it’s easy to overestimate one’s own name recognition.

“When you’re a candidate, you get a strange perspective on things,” he said. “You know, you walk on the street, people are beeping their horns, they’re waving.” 

Wong seemed to take that advice to heart more than his Republican counterpart. 

“Alicia said, ‘you know, I was raised in Elmhurst, so I think I’ll do well there,’” Holden said. “Well, that was a long time ago.”