Two years ago, SOMOS felt like a wake. Comptroller Mark Levine said it best when we caught up in San Juan last week: walking into the conference after the 2024 election was like walking into a funeral. People tried to lift each other up. It was hard.
This year was different. You could feel it in every hallway.
One week after Election Day, more than 2,500 people, from legislators, council members and union leaders to advocates and business partners, landed in Puerto Rico for the 40th year of SOMOS. And for the first time in a long time, we came with momentum.
Look at what voters did on November 3rd. Texas elected Gina Hinojosa as governor over Greg Abbott. Georgia elected Keisha Lance Bottoms, making her the first Black woman ever elected governor in America. Iowa elected Rob Sand. In North Carolina, Roy Cooper won the U.S. Senate seat. And in Mississippi, Scott Colom beat an incumbent Republican senator in a race decided by a few thousand votes out of nearly a million. Mississippi.
Here at home, the wave hit just as hard. Senate Democrats won back a supermajority, and the Assembly grew its Democratic majority to at least 111 of 150 seats. The message from voters was clear. They want leaders who will fight for them.
But here's what I told everyone I sat down with in San Juan: a wave is not a plan. Winning is the start of the work, not the end of it. That work has to show up in our schools, in our hospitals and clinics, and in an economy that creates real opportunity in neighborhoods like mine.
At SOMOS, I focused on two fights I've been leading in Albany.
The first is making sure we count everyone.
I have said it before and I'll keep saying it: the Census isn't just about numbers. It's about power.
New York lost a congressional seat in 2020 by 89 people. Eighty-nine. That's a Bronx apartment building. That's one block on the Grand Concourse. And it cost us a seat in Congress, federal dollars, and a stronger voice in Washington.
We cannot make that mistake again.
That's why I've worked side by side with Speaker Julie Menin. In this year's budget we secured $3 million for census work, and I'm carrying the bill to create a permanent New York State Census Office, so we stop treating the count like a pop-up shop every ten years. This isn't work Albany can do alone. We've been building it with the community groups who know their neighborhoods best, reaching Latino and AAPI communities alongside APA Voice, the MinKwon Center for Community Action, NMIC, BronxWorks, the Urban League and the NAACP. At SOMOS, the MinKwon Center reminded me the AAPI community is one of the fastest-growing in the city. Communities like theirs, and like mine in the Bronx, are exactly the ones that get missed. If we don't count them, we don't just lose seats. We lose schools, hospitals and roads.
That's why this investment matters. It's a real opportunity to fund the organizations already on the ground, the ones families trust, to educate the communities that get undercounted every ten years: immigrant families, renters doubled up in crowded apartments, young children, seniors, and neighbors who are wary of anyone from the government knocking on their door.
But that work can't wait for 2029. Trust isn't built in a census year. It's built in the years before it. If we want to count everyone in 2030, the work has to start now.
That means engaging community organizations today, not the spring before the count. It means social media campaigns that meet people where they already are: on Instagram, TikTok, WhatsApp and WeChat. And it means community outreach in the languages our neighbors actually speak, including Spanish, Chinese, Korean, Bengali, Arabic and French, carried by trusted local messengers in churches and mosques, bodegas and barbershops, schools and tenant meetings.
Every person we miss is money and power we leave on the table for ten years. We can't afford another 89.
The second is building a grid that keeps the lights on, and keeps them affordable.
I was proud to sponsor a SOMOS workshop with Con Edison called "The Future Runs Through the Grid: Delivering Reliable, Clean Energy in an Era of Rapid Load Growth." Con Edison serves more than nine million New Yorkers, and demand on the grid is only going up. We brought together Rory Christian, Sean Ewart, Lori Miller, Esther Rosario, Ruben Diaz Jr. and Eileen Torres of BronxWorks to talk about how policy, regulation, infrastructure investment and workforce development can meet that demand without sacrificing reliability, affordability or safety.
Puerto Rico knows what happens when the grid fails. So does New York; we lived through Sandy. Clean energy that working families can actually afford isn't a luxury. It's survival. And building that grid means good union jobs, jobs that should go to people from neighborhoods like mine.
And none of this is abstract for the people I represent. In Highbridge, Mount Eden, Claremont, Concourse and Morris Heights, families are paying more for rent, for groceries and for their light bill than they were two years ago. They didn't vote for a party. They voted for relief.
That's the test for us now. With a supermajority in Albany and Democrats leading in statehouses from Atlanta to Austin, there are no more excuses. Voters handed us the tools. Now we have to use them on housing, education, healthcare, energy costs, a fair count, and an economy that works for the people who keep this state running.
SOMOS has been bringing New York and Puerto Rico together for 40 years because our struggles are connected and so is our future. I left San Juan more hopeful than I've been in a long time. Not because we won, but because I saw a room full of people ready to do the work.
We can do this. Let's get to work.
I see you. I hear you. I fight for you.
Landon Dais is a New York State Assembly Member representing the 77th District in the Bronx: Claremont, Concourse, Highbridge, Morris Heights and Mount Eden. He serves as a vice-chair of the Bronx Democratic Party.
