Candidate Recommendation Methodology

About Abundance New York

Abundance New York is a 501(c)(4) nonprofit organization whose mission is to build a New York City and State with more than enough of everything residents need to reduce cost of living, improve quality of life, and guarantee safety and sustainability. We recommend candidates for local office, from city council to mayor, based on alignment with the Abundance Agenda: policies that generate abundant housing, public transit, public space, climate action, and state capacity to deliver. Our grassroots community includes over 2000 rank-and-file New Yorkers.

About Our Candidate Recommendations

Our recommendations exist to inform members of the Abundance New York community, their friends and neighbors, and the broader electorate about key local races. We recommend the candidates most likely to advance the city and state towards the future we hope to achieve. 

Recommendations are determined based on multifaceted analysis of candidates’ positions and records, and on the dynamics and stakes of each race:

  • We pay most attention to races where there is a clear abundance contrast between the candidates and/or high abundance stakes for the office

  • We support candidates based on their alignment with the Abundance Agenda and the viability of their candidacies

  • In ranked choice elections, we may recommend multiple candidates as worthy of ranking, delineating between our top-choice candidate(s) and others who merit inclusion

About Our Process

In determining which candidate(s) to support, we assess: 

  • Abundance Alignment (details below)

    • Past votes, bill sponsorships, and other official actions, if applicable

    • Public statements and public-facing materials (i.e. website, social media)

    • Conversations with experts and leaders within the issue areas that are constitutive of the Abundance Agenda, capturing nuances of behind-the-scenes allyship or opposition that may not be publicly legible

  • Candidate Viability: fundraising, district ties, field presence, endorsements 

  • Race Relevance

    • Impact of the office on abundance issues

    • Presence of our membership within a given jurisdiction 

    • General competitiveness of the race, and the potential impact of our recommendation 


Where necessary and practicable to delineate further contrast between candidates, we will also conduct in-person conversations with candidates to discuss their abundance-alignment and viability in greater depth.

Defining Alignment with the Abundance Agenda

When reviewing candidates’ records, statements, and behind-the-scenes support of abundance issues, we are using the following expectations as our yardstick for assessing abundance. Where there is enough information to support drawing an alignment conclusion, we assign each candidate a score of 1 to 5 for each of our four core issue areas and create a weighted average (5 for champion, 4 for positive, 3 for neutral/mixed, 2 for negative, and 1 for adversary).

Housing and Homelessness

  • Indicate belief in the housing supply shortage as the driver of unaffordability

  • Explicitly support creation of all housing types and policies to enable them, e.g. zoning liberalization, ending parking mandates, etc.

  • Do not repeat NIMBY talking points, e.g. supporting only affordable housing development, deferring to community feedback, or new housing straining infrastructure

  • Talk about the need for housing-first solutions to homelessness

  • Support shelters, especially safe havens or stabilization beds, including in their district—and do not reinforce fearmongering about shelters and homeless neighbors

Public Transit and Public Space

  • Support congestion pricing, without carveouts or other reductions of efficacy

  • Center the needs of transit riders, pedestrians, and cyclists, or focalize their policy through the experiences of drivers

  • Talk about the need for open streets, bike lanes, bus ways, outdoor dining, or trash containerization

  • Talk about needed investments in accessibility, i.e. subway elevators

Renewables and Resiliency

  • Support efforts to decarbonize the city, such as Local Law 97

  • Talk about expediting the deployment of renewable energy—e.g. such as through rooftop solar or faster permitting of offshore wind—in their policy platform

  • Discuss the need to weather-proof city infrastructure in light of increasing weather emergencies, i.e. with sewer and coastal improvements

  • Include other ideas for resiliency or climate response, such as increasing tree coverage or bioswales, in their platform

  • Recognize dense, walkable neighborhoods as a climate issue


Democracy and Delivery

  • Talk about government effectiveness and managerial competence as part of the solution to the problems facing their jurisdiction and New York at large

  • Include expanding access to voting and increasing turnout as drivers of their agenda

  • Participate in the matching funds program and support its integrity

  • Engage with the problematic nature of community feedback processes that overrepresent a small minority of residents already served by the status quo

  • Denounce corruption and cronyism, regardless of the partisanship of bad actors