May Malik Launches Campaign for New York State Assembly in District 73

May Malik served, for the past three years, as the Deputy Commissioner of the Office of Immigrant Affairs in the Mayor’s office, battling both the Trump Administration and COVID-19. Before that, she served as the Director of Public-Private Partnerships at NYC Service to tackle financial and socioeconomic hurdles facing the city. And she’s served as a mother, raising her 7-year-old daughter on the Upper East Side.

Now, she’s campaigning to serve as District 73’s Assembly Member in the New York State Assembly, hoping to fill a vacancy created by current Assembly Member Dan Quart’s announcement in December that he would not be running for re-election.

“I’m going to be in the trenches fighting for what’s right for this District,” Malik said. She’s particularly invested in supporting local businesses in the wake of COVID-19, increasing school funding and championing affordable housing “so that single parents” like herself can call District 73 — which spans from Murray Hill through Midtown East to the Central Park side of the Upper East Side — their home.

Malik grew up in Los Angeles, California after immigrating to the U.S. from Sudan as a child, and recalled that her parents “worked odd jobs to pay the bills and make ends meet.” Since moving to New York to attend Columbia University’s graduate school of education, Malik has built herself a life advocating for others in the city; she raised nearly $7 million while at NYC Service for workforce development programs and “helped lead the city’s fight against our two biggest enemies, Trump and COVID,” keeping nonprofit partners informed of new White House policies while at the Office of Immigrant Affairs and fending off former President Donald Trump’s attempt to add a citizenship question to the 2020 census.

She’s running now with the conviction that her own trials and tribulations will contribute to her ability to support others as the pandemic lingers.

“Now more than ever, particularly after the horrors that we have faced, including the loss of so much life among New Yorkers, including those in our own district,” Malik said, “we need someone in Albany who is going to advocate using their actual, lived experience, right? I know what it’s like to live paycheck to paycheck. I know what it’s like to be concerned about sending your child to a school with COVID protocols that you may be concerned are not rigid enough.”

Her motivation to vie for the chance to represent Manhattan’s 73rd District? It has nothing — and everything — to do with local politics.

“I’m running for my daughter,” Malik said. “I’m a public school mom; I’m a working parent; I’m an advocate, an immigrant and a longtime public servant, but I really am running for my child.”