‘Vax Daddy’ announces bid for Assembly

Huge Ma, the creator of TurboVax, announced his campaign for Assembly District 37 on Monday.  Photo via Ma campaign

By Jacob Kaye

Huge Ma, the creator of an online tool that helped connect New Yorkers to vaccine appointments, announced Monday that he’s scheduling an appointment for a State Assembly seat in Western Queens.

The creator of TurboVax, a bot that showed users appointments and walk-in schedules at vaccine sites across the city during the early days of the COVID-19 vaccine rush, Ma is running to unseat longtime incumbent Assemblymember Cathy Nolan in District 37, which covers portions of Astoria, Sunnyside, Long Island City, Ridgewood and Maspeth.

Ma, a 31-year-old software engineer, said that he was motivated to run by what he says is a lack of urgency from state legislators to tackle some of the city’s most pressing issues.

“I took action [with TurboVax] then, because I did not think the government was meeting our needs, and now, I'm taking action because I don't believe our state government is meeting our needs, as well,” Ma told the Eagle. “I'm hoping to go to Albany and really take on the most pressing issues today with urgency and creativity.”

“I've done it before, and now I'm asking my neighbors for the opportunity to do it again as part of the State Assembly,” he added.

Ma, who has spent most of life in Astoria, launched TurboVax in January, just as eligibility for the vaccine began to expand. Though appointments existed, searching for an available spot was mostly a scattered process.

Now, Ma estimates that he helped hundreds of thousands of residents book a vaccine appointment, something that made him a pandemic-era folk hero. The son of a nurse and a small business owner was dubbed “Vax Daddy,” and made headlines in The New York Times, The Cut and others.

The Queens native said that there wasn’t one singular moment that motivated him to run for office.

“After I shut down the website, I thought deeply about my place in the world,” he said. “TurboVax was a very intense experience for myself and I came to realize just how fortunate I was to have the right skills, and the right opportunity to build this tool and perform a public service for my neighbors. When I think about this seat in the State Assembly, I believe that I have an opportunity to use my platform and advocate for the needs of my neighbors.”

Ma added that he felt the substantial influence he had as a private citizen, could be increased as a public servant.

“When we look at some of these generational big problems, it's easy to throw up our hands and say, ‘They're too big, let's not bother and try to take it on.’ But when I think about, for example, climate, I do believe the state has incredible agency in taking on this issue,” he said.

The climate crisis, which he calls “the defining issues of our lifetimes,” is at the top of his campaign agenda, alongside housing policy and public transportation.

Ma said he’d advocate for decarbonizing efforts, policies that would create affordable housing in every city throughout the state and investments in public transit and road safety.

The candidate is squaring off against one of the Assembly’s longest serving members. Nolan was first elected to the seat in 1984 and currently serves as a member of the Assembly’s Ways and Means Committee, Rules Committee, and several others.

Nolan has mostly run unopposed throughout her nearly 40 years in the legislative body.

In 2020, Nolan was challenged by Mary Jobaida and Danielle Brecker. Nolan finished with around 47 percent of the vote.

Jobaida, who finished around 1,500 votes behind Nolan, has announced that she’ll again run for the seat in 2022. The candidate said she welcomes Ma into the race.

“I didn't see a democratic election [in the district] until 2020, when I put myself on the ballot and people finally had a choice,” Jobaida said. “With more people running, it’s more of a democratic process and people have more choices and I’m welcoming. I don’t find it a problem.”

Ma, who has not worked on a political campaign before, said that he’s running for the seat independent of who he’s running against.

“I don't think about it in the context of a particular incumbent or a candidate,” he said. “I'm thinking about the issues and thinking about ways that we can approach climate, housing and transportation, with urgency, and with creativity. And I believe that, you know, this is an opportunity for Western Queens, for us to really lead – and I'm excited to do that.”