On a balmy Saturday morning, six volunteers for the Democratic Socialists of America gather at a Queens playground to knock on doors for congressional hopeful Claire Valdez. Before they spread out across South Ozone Park, Umit Muradi, one of the lead canvassers, cautions the group not to rap too loudly.
“Here are the rules. No cop knocks. We don’t want anyone thinking ICE is at their front door,” he says. “Persuasion is important, but this is also about getting out the vote.”
One year ago, a little-known Queens legislator and democratic socialist named Zohran Mamdani mobilized 50,000 volunteers across New York en route to one of the biggest political upsets in the city’s history. Now, six months into his term, Mayor Mamdani and his allies are looking to extend that winning streak and expand the Democratic Socialists of America (DSA) agenda in Washington.
Why We Wrote This
Zohran Mamdani’s mayoral victory last year has aided the rise of far-left challengers in this week’s U.S. House primaries. With a potential House speaker also from New York City, the outcome could affect Democratic Party stances on key issues in Congress.
Ahead of Tuesday’s New York primary, Mr. Mamdani has endorsed three candidates for the U.S. House. They include Brad Lander, a former mayoral rival turned ally; Darializa Avila Chevalier, a community organizer and Ph.D. student from Harlem; and Ms. Valdez, a first-term state assemblymember from Queens. Mr. Lander, who is not a DSA member but has been embraced by progressives, and Ms. Chevalier are both trying to oust Democratic incumbents. Ms. Valdez is running for retiring 17-term Democratic congresswoman Nydia Velazquez’s seat; Ms. Velazquez has endorsed a different candidate in the race.
If they win – and if Democrats go on to retake control of the U.S. House – this trio of far-left candidates could help reshape the Democratic Party’s position on everything from taxes and housing to healthcare and foreign policy. Their success would reinforce a wider trend of such candidates gaining nationally in local and congressional elections. And it would also further raise the mayor’s profile as a national progressive leader and kingmaker.
Mr. Mamdani has been cutting television ads for his endorsees and making campaign appearances with them. He has also endorsed a number of DSA-aligned candidates for the State Legislature. At a get-out-the-vote rally for all three congressional candidates in Brooklyn on Thursday, alongside fellow democratic socialist Sen. Bernie Sanders of Vermont, Mr. Mamdani offered some blunt criticism of the Democratic establishment.
“For too long, our party has seen its job as managing decline rather than delivering for working people,” Mr. Mamdani said. “That old way of thinking will lose on Tuesday. … The party of the past will not be what leads us into the future.”
Over the past year, the DSA has notched a string of major victories in America’s largest cities. Both New York and Seattle now have democratic socialist mayors, and Washington is poised to join them, after a democratic socialist won that city’s Democratic mayoral primary last week. In Los Angeles, the mayoral contest has come down to a two-person race between a relatively unpopular Democratic incumbent and a democratic socialist challenger.
Some strategists say the DSA’s urban takeover is just the beginning, and that Washington is the next logical target.
“Winning races in Congress is [part of] a national plan to create a real movement and take over the reins of governance both at the local and national level – and it’s working,” says Hank Sheinkopf, a New York-based political consultant. “Should they win New York seats, their influence will go up significantly since [Brooklyn Democrat and Minority Leader] Hakeem Jeffries could become speaker, and the pressure on him will be extreme.”
Mr. Jeffries has endorsed both House incumbents, and he made a campaign appearance in Manhattan earlier this month on behalf of veteran Rep. Adriano Espaillat. “The mayor and I have agreed to strongly disagree as it relates to these congressional races,” the Democratic leader said at a press conference.
Lander leads incumbent Goldman
Of the three Mamdani-backed challengers, Mr. Lander appears to have the best chance of winning. After serving as a New York City Council member for three terms and city comptroller for one term, he ran last year for mayor, ultimately finishing third in the primary. But his alliance and cross endorsement with Mr. Mamdani, which helped stymie former Gov. Andrew Cuomo in that race, earned goodwill from progressives across the city.
A month after Mr. Mamdani won, Mr. Lander pivoted to challenge Rep. Dan Goldman, a Manhattan Democrat who served as lead counsel in the first Trump impeachment inquiry. Even though Representative Goldman is an incumbent, Mr. Lander is well known in the Brooklyn part of the 10th Congressional District; a May Emerson College poll showed Mr. Lander leading in the district by 57% to 23%.
On many issues, the two men hold similar positions. Mr. Goldman has touted his visits to the Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) detention center at 26 Federal Plaza and vowed to lead a new round of investigations into the Trump administration. Mr. Lander celebrated his not-guilty verdict after he was arrested last fall trying to visit the federal building’s holding cells, and he sued the Trump administration after the Federal Emergency Management Agency seized $80 million in city funds that were being used to house migrants.
A notable point of difference, however, is over Israel. Mr. Goldman, who was in Tel Aviv when Hamas attacked Israel on Oct. 7, 2023, has criticized Israel’s subsequent offensive in Gaza. But he avoids using terms like “genocide” and “apartheid,” marched in last month’s Israel Day parade, and has been endorsed by the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC). Mr. Lander, by contrast, accuses Israel of committing genocide in the Palestinian territory, skipped the parade, and has urged the United States to end aid for Israel’s defense systems.
“Solidarity reaches out across the world,” Mr. Lander said at the rally Thursday. “It reaches to Palestinian kids in Gaza who can’t go to school because our tax dollars paid for the bombs that destroyed them all.”
Contention between Chevalier, Espaillat
Israel is also a potent issue in the 13th Congressional District, where Ms. Chevalier has made Palestinian rights a centerpiece of her campaign. She has repeatedly condemned Israel as an apartheid state, and says she was spurred to run for office by frustration over Representative Espaillat’s inadequate response to Palestinian activist Mahmoud Khalil’s detainment last year.
The race has been unceasingly negative. Ms. Chevalier, a legal services investigator in Harlem, has ripped Mr. Espaillat over his support from AIPAC, whose super PAC has spent nearly $3 million on TV ads attacking her. She accuses him of putting corporate donors ahead of his voters.
“We deserve someone who will fight for us in the same way we fight for each other every single day,” she said at the Thursday rally. “You cannot take working people for granted, and you cannot outspend a movement whose time has come.”
Mr. Espaillat, who chairs the Congressional Hispanic Caucus, has cast Ms. Chevalier, a Columbia University graduate, and her DSA supporters as elitist gentrifiers trying “to impose their failed ideology” on a community of working-class people who don’t share their extreme beliefs. He and his allies have highlighted her participation in a rally in Times Square the day after Oct. 7, 2023, that appeared to celebrate the attack on Israel.
Ms. Chevalier has come under fire for social media posts in which she called for the abolition of prisons and police, and for the U.S. to “abolish the border,” declaring, “All deportation is wrong.” During a debate, she apologized for some posts, including one that used an expletive to attack former Vice President Kamala Harris.
Still, many voters appear to be in the mood for change. While the five-term congressman led Ms. Chevalier by 8 percentage points in a June Mercury Public Affairs poll, a Data for Progress internal poll showed her edging him by 4 points. Enrollment in the DSA’s Bronx and upper Manhattan chapters is up 179% since 2024, so the DSA might have the numbers to compete with Mr. Espaillat’s vaunted political machine.
A close race for Valdez
If there is one candidate the city’s democratic socialists seem most excited about, it is Ms. Valdez. The assemblymember and former union organizer had served less than a year in the State Legislature when Mr. Mamdani encouraged her to run.
Ron Adar/SOPA Images/Reuters/File
Ms. Velazquez, the district’s retiring incumbent, has endorsed Brooklyn Borough President Antonio Reynoso, pitting two progressive candidates against each other. (A third candidate, City Council member Julie Won, is considered a long shot.)
Few policy differences separate the top contenders. Ms. Valdez and Mr. Reynoso both call Israel’s assault against Palestinians a genocide. Both support the mayor’s proposal to redevelop Sunnyside Yards for affordable housing. Mr. Reynoso says he’d work with developers to build more market-rate and affordable units, while Ms. Valdez favors expanding government-run social housing and passing universal rent control.
Polls show a close race, with Ms. Valdez narrowly leading Mr. Reynoso, 23% to 21% with 43% undecided, in a May Emerson College poll. Ms. Valdez is being boosted by a super PAC run by Mamdani allies, which expects to spend $2 million on the contest, while Mr. Reynoso has the support of a political action committee funded by unions. In the final weekend, Mr. Mamdani accompanied Ms. Valdez to take selfies with voters and launch canvasses in several Brooklyn neighborhoods where he dominated at the polls last year.
Ms. Valdez says the movement to fight for working New Yorkers is bigger than her own political ambitions.
“Whatever the outcome of these races are, we still have not won a dignified life for working people. That’s what we’re fighting for,” she says in an interview. “Winning this election won’t immediately abolish ICE; it won’t tax the rich; it won’t end the [Palestinian] genocide. But it will put people in place to actively organize towards that.”