New York Mayor Zohran Mamdani has endorsed multiple candidates in tomorrow’s Democratic congressional primaries as part of what the New York Times called a “vigorous push by the Democratic Socialists of America to claim more ground in Congress.”
Mamdani’s endorsements puts these races at the forefront of the ongoing conflict between establishment Democrats and the progressives to their left.
Keep in mind that Mamdani discouraged the DSA from backing a challenge to Democratic US House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries last fall.
The Mayor Places His Bets
Last week Mamdani headlined a rally at Kings Theater in Brooklyn where he endorsed Brad Lander in the NY 10th, Claire Valdez in the 7th, and Darializa Avila Chevalier in the 13th.
Lander and Chevalier are challenging incumbents Dan Goldman and Adriano Espaillat, respectively. Valdez is running for an open seat.
A separate NYT piece describes what Mamdani is up to:
(Mamdani) has thrown himself back onto the campaign trail, this time risking his political capital in a high-stakes bid to catapult fellow leftists to primary victories against the old Democratic guard.
Mr. Mamdani and allies are attempting to unseat two Democratic incumbents, Representatives Daniel Goldman and Adriano Espaillat, whom they view as too friendly to corporate donors and Israel. They want to lay claim to a third House seat. And down the ballot, they have designs on expanding the democratic socialist bloc in Albany.
If he prevails on Tuesday, Mr. Mamdani, 34, will go a long way toward establishing socialists as a major faction in New York City politics and himself as a kingmaker capable of vaulting relatively unknown candidates to victory and sidelining erstwhile power brokers.
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The mayor’s support goes further than mere endorsements. With his popularity never higher, Mr. Mamdani has personally involved himself in everything from candidate recruitment and fund-raising to ad shoots and private strategy sessions. A pair of his top political aides are helping run two of the campaigns. And the mayor attempted to push labor unions into backing at least one of his candidates.
They also do plenty of concern-trolling, handwringing and quoting his frenemies:
…a string of losses could be disastrous, weakening the mayor’s political standing just six months into his term, empowering political opponents and creating new ones.
His involvement has already alienated Black and Latino progressives, powerful labor unions and the left-leaning Working Families Party, all of which helped him get to City Hall and partnered with him as mayor. Some, like Representative Nydia Velázquez, have taken the rare step of publicly declaring they have lost trust in him.
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“This is a way to remake the Democratic Party,” (Michael Lange, an elections analyst and fellow democratic socialist) said. “But if he loses, the knives would be out. They would be really out. The risk is that they’ll say this is more man than movement.”
Without Zohran on the ballot, the DSA may lack the ability to drive younger voter turnout, the weapon that defeated Cuomo last year:
Mr. Mamdani still has work to do. He succeeded last year by driving a huge number of young voters to the polls, diluting the influence of more moderate older ones. But without him on the ballot, after a week of early voting, the electorate appeared to be trending toward being smaller and older.
The trend was pronounced enough that, in recent days, the local chapter of the Democratic Socialists of America called an emergency meeting to discuss what one leader described as the “cratering” youth vote and how to correct course, according to someone who participated in the meeting who asked for anonymity to disclose private details.
Mamdani is also endorsing five candidates for the state legislature.
It’s not just the Mayor who’s doing a political flex, it’s also the Democratic Socialists of America which spawned him.
DSA Is Feeling Strong
The NYT chronicles the tale of growing DSA power:
The D.S.A. has experienced growing pains before. After winning five seats in the Legislature in 2020, the organization failed to capitalize on its momentum in 2022.
“We were very ambitious, and we lost some races very narrowly,” recalled Ms Valdez, who joined the D.S.A. in 2019 and worked on the campaigns of earlier democratic socialist allies like Julia Salazar, a state senator.
Those defeats made Ms. Valdez apprehensive when Mr. Mamdani was gearing up to run for mayor in 2024. She feared he couldn’t win and would drain resources that could otherwise be used on legislative races and advocacy battles.
A loss might have also fed the narrative that their ideological worldview was on the retreat. She said that Mr. Mamdani ended up convincing her that having a D.S.A. member run for citywide office was “a really big risk” worth taking, because it could build the organization and introduce it to a lot of people.
Since October 2024, when the D.S.A. endorsed Mr. Mamdani, membership in the organization has more than doubled to 14,000 from 5,900, according to Gustavo Gordillo, the local D.S.A. chapter’s co-chair.
So, in what races are the young Mr. Mayor and his DSA allies betting their political capital?
Short answer, two tossups and one that looks like a gimmie.
Let’s start with the gimmie.
Backing Brad Lander Over Dan Goldman
Former city comptroller Lander ran for mayor against Mamdani but the two cross-endorsed each other in the city’s ranked-choice balloting and Mamdani’s endorsement appears to be a fruit of that alliance.
the Israeli-Palestinian conflict has become an inescapable issue in the 10th District, one of the most progressive and most Jewish districts in America, at a time when New York’s Jewish community has become increasingly divided along political and generational lines.
Both candidates are Jewish and describe themselves as liberal Zionists. But Mr. Lander has marshaled shifting public attitudes to turn Mr. Goldman’s defense of Israel — which aligns with the longtime status quo in American politics — into a potent line of attack. And he seems to have found an audience: Mr. Lander appears to hold a significant lead, though polling on primary races in New York is scant.
Ross Barkan is calling it for Lander:
In a few weeks, Lander will probably blow Goldman out and be on his way to Congress, where he’ll be a Jewish progressive willing to challenge the Israeli government.
As inevitable as this all might be, it’s still rather remarkable. Dan Goldman is not a scandal-scarred incumbent. He is not elderly. He is not a weak fundraiser. He is not such a mismatch for his district. It’s rare, really, for politicians like Goldman to lose—and lose badly. Not very long ago, he was probably fantasizing about an eventual run for Senate or at least Attorney General. Maybe, with his Levi Strauss family fortune, he could have underwritten a gubernatorial bid if Kathy Hochul ever stepped aside.
Now his political career appears over.
The Atlantic also discussed the race in a more disingenuous manner but includes some details on the district:
Goldman says Lander is exaggerating the gulf between them. “I am a progressive, I have a very progressive agenda, and I am very aligned with the district,” he told me. “I think 95 percent of the time we would vote the same way.” A few Goldman allies I interviewed seemed perplexed that the liberal wing of the party would want to defeat him. After all, he’s no Joe Manchin or Kyrsten Sinema, the centrist Democrats who stood in the way of some of former President Biden’s top priorities. Nor is he like John Fetterman, the Pennsylvania Democrat and onetime darling of the left who has become the party’s most ardent defender of Israel. “I don’t think he’s done anything wrong,” Mario Cilento, a New York State labor leader backing Goldman, told me. “Every Congress member gets one vote. If that individual votes the right way, I’m really not sure what else they can do.” To mock attacks on his record, Goldman is running a commercial designed as a scare ad that points out all the “radical progressives” who are supporting him, including Planned Parenthood, teachers’ unions, and public-housing advocates.
Goldman’s progressive critics acknowledge that he’s given them few bad votes to attack. But they have used the race to argue for raising the bar for a Democratic member of Congress, demanding more visibility—and more activism—rather than mere party loyalty. Lander’s backers are also challenging a system in which a safe House seat can easily become a sinecure, so long as the incumbent avoids either prison or an ideological betrayal.
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New York’s Tenth District is split between Manhattan and Brooklyn, and it encompasses some of the city’s wealthiest and most recognizable neighborhoods, including Wall Street, Greenwich Village, SoHo, and the stately brownstones of Brooklyn Heights and Park Slope. By that metric, Goldman is a perfect fit for the district. He is one of the richest members of Congress and has contributed millions to his campaigns; earlier this spring he announced that he would match every additional donation with funds of his own. (Goldman’s middle name is Sachs, and he has up to a $50 million line of credit with Goldman Sachs, according to a 2022 financial disclosure, but his family money comes from the Levi Strauss fortune.)Goldman’s wealth is a liability in the race…
Now let’s get to the nail-biters.
Mamdani Opposes Velázquez’ Appointed Heir in the 7th
The 7th District, is just across the east river from Manhattan and includes:
…heavily Puerto Rican neighborhoods in the New York City boroughs of Brooklyn and Queens with white, wealthier neighborhoods in the borough of Brooklyn.
The district includes the Queens neighborhoods of Long Island City, Astoria, Sunnyside, Maspeth, Ridgewood, and Woodhaven; the Brooklyn neighborhoods of Bushwick, Clinton Hill, Downtown Brooklyn, East New York, East Williamsburg, Fort Greene, Greenpoint, and Williamsburg.
It’s been represented by the now 73-year-old Nydia Velázquez since 2013 and when she decided not to run again she endorsed Brooklyn Borough President Antonio Reynoso.
Mamdani chose not to back Velázquez’s play (hence her lost of trust in him, cited by the NYT above) and has now endorsed first-term state assemblywoman Claire Valdez, who was one of his early backers and has been a critic of Israel.
But Congresswoman Velázquez was also one of Mamdani’s early backers and she was not amused, baring her fangs to the NYT back in January:
Representative Nydia M. Velázquez has a word of warning for Zohran Mamdani, the New York City mayor she just helped to elect: Back off city politics.
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“Honeymoons are short, and people need to pay attention to the work at hand,” she said, when asked if she had any advice for Mr. Mamdani.“Primaries sometimes can be a distraction from the work that you need to do,” she added, arguing that the mayor’s involvement “opens up fights” among groups he needs to govern.
The growing distance between the congresswoman and Mr. Mamdani, 34, just two weeks into his term was striking after an almost yearlong partnership that began when Ms. Velázquez became the first member of Congress to back Mr. Mamdani’s long-shot campaign for mayor.
She used her stature as a respected elder stateswoman of the left to vouch for the little-known assemblyman and helped him stitch together a coalition of traditional progressives and ascendant democratic socialists. He, in turn, has called her “an inspiration.”
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The primary race between Mr. Reynoso and Ms. Valdez in New York’s Seventh District, though, has emerged as perhaps the most painful for the left, in part because of the candidates’ similarities. Both are well-liked and share commitments to strengthening workers’ rights, opposing the Trump administration and taxing the rich.Mr. Reynoso, 42, who is not a democratic socialist, is supported by left-leaning advocacy groups like Make the Road Action and New York Communities for Change, as well as by Jumaane Williams, the city’s public advocate. All of them backed Mr. Mamdani in the mayor’s race.
In addition to Mr. Mamdani, Ms. Valdez, 36, has the support of her former union, the United Auto Workers.
And although both Valdez and Reynoso sought the DSA endorsement, it went to Valdez in January.
The Bushwick Daily grapples with the tensions in the race:
The four-way Democratic primary for Nydia Velazquez’s open congressional seat ends June 23, and in a district this blue, that primary is the whole election. Here is the strange part: Antonio Reynoso and Claire Valdez, the two front-runners, agree on nearly everything. Both want to abolish ICE, tax the rich, fund Medicare for All, and end the war in Gaza. The race still turned into a brawl, over real-estate money, a Mamdani snub, and which wing of the New York left gets to claim NY-7.
Reynoso and Mamdani, former allies, traded fire over the mayor’s visits to Trump’s White House. “I don’t think we should be visiting the White House and talking to Trump,” Reynoso said at the NY1 debate, calling the president someone “we should be getting ready to impeach” for “war crimes.” Mamdani hit back the next day, telling reporters he would “leave it to the borough president to explain why he would prefer a New Yorker continue to be unjustly detained by ICE” rather than have the mayor meet Trump to win that person’s release, a reference to a Columbia student freed from ICE custody. The New York Post framed the whole thing as a civil war between the Working Families Party progressives Reynoso runs with and the Democratic Socialist wing behind Valdez. One Democratic operative put it less politely to the Post: “It’s definitely a choice to turn NY-07 into a turf war when the candidates are 95% the same.”
Legis1 has a very detailed account of the race that focuses on the two things that matter in American elections: demographics and money:
(Velázquez’) departure leaves open a seat that was explicitly drawn to give Puerto Rican communities representation, but the district’s demographics have shifted dramatically. White non-Hispanic residents now comprise approximately 36 percent of the population, giving them a plurality. Hispanic/Latino residents make up approximately 34 percent, while Asian residents represent approximately 12 percent.
This represents a profound change from the district’s origins. Between 2000 and 2015, Williamsburg and Greenpoint added 20,000 or more residents overall while losing approximately 15,000 Latino residents.
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The money fight is sharper. In a video this past weekend, Valdez accused Reynoso of accepting more than $100,000 in real-estate donations in a district that is 77 percent tenant. Her campaign named names: a developer indicted for defrauding the state’s 421-a tax break, a real-estate investor who settled a Section 8 voucher-discrimination case with the city, and a string of brokers and landlords with portfolios running into the hundreds of millions. The charge lands because Reynoso pledged during his 2025 Borough President run not to take real-estate money, then did, as the Daily News reported. Pressed on it, he has drawn a narrower line, saying he only swore off “big” real estate; in a Breaking Points interview he put it bluntly: “I’ll take money from a real estate agent, a broker.” Valdez, a Ridgewood tenant who says she has refused every real-estate dollar, is running on rent control for every tenant and millions of publicly built union homes. Her campaign says she enters the final stretch with a 2-point polling lead, more than 3,000 volunteers, 250,000 doors knocked, and $1.3 million raised from 22,000 donors at an average under $50. She is endorsed by Mamdani, Senator Bernie Sanders, the New York City Democratic Socialists of America, and the United Auto Workers.
They breakdown the money situation for Valdez, Reynoso, and the other two main candidates in the primary: city councilwoman Julie Won and Vichal Kumar:
Claire Valdez, a Texas transplant who moved to New York approximately a decade ago, has become the fundraising juggernaut of the primary. Her campaign raised approximately $1.3 million in total campaign funds, with approximately $751,680 in Q1 2026 from individual contributions. As of June 12, she had approximately $418,000 in cash on hand.
But the real story is the outside money. Valdez has benefited from approximately $350,000 or more in outside Super PAC spending as of June 18. The American Priorities Super PAC, founded by a former Sanders strategist, committed $2 million to boosting Valdez and two other Mamdani-endorsed candidates.
Two tech industry figures have emerged as major donors to the super PAC supporting Valdez. Mohammed Waqas Javed donated $1 million to the American Priorities Super PAC supporting her. Omer Hasan also donated $1 million to the same super PAC. Both have ties to the tech industry.
Elizabeth Simons, daughter of late billionaire James Simons, was a top donor to the pro-Mamdani super PAC apparatus supporting Valdez. Sam Mahrouq, a Texas businessman, was also a donor to the American Priorities PAC supporting her. Mahrouq also donated to Marjorie Taylor Greene and Greg Abbott, showing a pattern of supporting candidates across ideological lines.
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Antonio Reynoso, who entered the race first and holds the most institutional endorsements, took a different path. He raised approximately $858,000 in total campaign funds, with approximately $630,068 in the first quarter of 2026, consisting of $614,618 from individual contributions and $15,450 from PACs. As of June 12, he had approximately $312,000 in cash on hand.Reynoso was the only candidate in this race to accept direct PAC money in the first quarter of 2026. He received institutional backing from labor unions and the Working Families Party. But Reynoso has trailed Valdez significantly in fundraising, and he received $97,210 in out-of-state donations, suggesting less ability to tap national networks.
Julie Won, a Korean American City Council Member from Queens, is running to capture the district’s Asian American community. She raised approximately $645,000 in the first quarter of 2026 since her February announcement, with approximately $213,000 in the most recent fundraising period reported as of June 12, with approximately $320,000 in cash on hand. She raised funds entirely from individual contributions with no direct PAC money accepted. Won polled at 13 percent in an Emerson College poll conducted May 17, though 43 percent of likely primary voters were still undecided at that time.
And what’s this American Priorities PAC? Per the NYT:
A super PAC created as a counterweight to powerful pro-Israel advocacy groups has pledged to spend $2 million in New York to support a pair of candidates challenging Democratic House incumbents from the left and a third progressive Democrat running for an open seat.
The new super PAC, American Priorities, told The New York Times that the money would fund television, streaming and digital advertisements that boost three congressional candidates also backed by Mayor Zohran Mamdani: Brad Lander, Darializa Avila Chevalier and Claire Valdez.
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Some of the group’s biggest funders are prominent Muslim business owners who also supported Mr. Mamdani’s mayoral campaign.
Now let’s look at the really ugly fight.
Establishment Knives Come Out in Harlem and the Bronx
New York’s 13th Congressional District is in Upper Manhattan and the Bronx, and per Wikipedia it’s a +32 point Dem district, meaning the race will be decided in tomorrow’s Democratic primary, like the others where Mamdani endorsed.
The Guardian has more background on the race and the incumbent:
(Adriano) Espaillat has represented the 13th congressional district since 2017, when he became the first Dominican American and first formerly undocumented immigrant to serve in Congress. Encompassing much of upper Manhattan and parts of the Bronx, the diverse, deep-blue 13th district is home to a large Afro-Latino population rooted in historic neighborhoods including Harlem and Washington Heights.
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Avila Chevalier, 32, served as the Mamdani mayoral campaign’s organizing lead for her district’s region, where he won by nearly 60% to 40% against former New York governor Andrew Cuomo. Espaillat endorsed Cuomo in the party’s mayoral primary, before he was beaten by Mamdani. Like many prominent New York Democrats, Espaillat pivoted in the general election, endorsing Mamdani over Cuomo.
Last November the NYT introduced Chevalier to its readers as a challenger in the race, emphasizing the role of Justice Democrats in her rise:
Justice Democrats, the organization that helped power Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez’s rise to Congress in 2018, will test New York City’s political climate by throwing its support behind an insurgent challenger to Representative Adriano Espaillat.
That candidate, Darializa Avila Chevalier, a Harlem-based organizer, received the group’s first endorsement in New York City for the 2026 midterms…
Ms. Avila Chevalier, 31, said that both Mr. Espaillat’s record and Mr. Mamdani’s successful mayoral campaign had compelled her to run. Her 71-year-old opponent, she said in an interview, has been more beholden to corporate interests than to the needs of the district’s working-class families.
“He takes money from the very institutions that are making life harder for New Yorkers here — institutions like landlords, AIPAC and corporate PACs — and turns the other way when our rents are being raised, when we’re being priced out of our communities,” she said, referring to a prominent pro-Israel lobbying group.
Recently, the Time’s coverage has been a bit less friendly to Chevalier, choosing to take the MSM’s well-worn path through the progressive candidate’s social media history in a piece titled “Tweet, Delete, Repeat: Social Media Posts Overshadow N.Y. House Race.”
Some lowlights:
Darializa Avila Chevalier, a democratic socialist backed by Mayor Zohran Mamdani, is facing scrutiny for numerous social media posts that she has since deleted.
From 2018 through 2022, Ms. Avila Chevalier, who is challenging Representative Adriano Espaillat, unleashed an extraordinary torrent of social media posts, often using profane and dismissive language as she railed against establishment Democrats, questioned the origins of the pandemic and criticized interracial relationships on Twitter, now known as X.
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Mr. Espaillat, 71, and his allies are seeking to bury Ms. Avila Chevalier, 32, in her own words, and to use them to argue that she lacks the experience and judgment necessary to serve in Congress.
Ironically, while it’s Chevalier’s social media history getting the MSM attention, it’s Espaillat’s supporters who are engaging in some very ugly racial politics on social media despite both candidates being of Dominican descent.
Espaillat immigrated to the US from the Dominican Republic as a child and Chevalier was born in Florida to Dominican parents.
But that’s not stopping Espaillat’s supporters from using the term “Haitian” as a slur to refer to Chevalier in predominantly Spanish language social media posts.
Spamming that racist nonsense. Espaillat is spreading lies about her identity to stoke racial hatred because he thinks there’s something wrong with being Haitian. He pulled this same divisive racist bullshit against Rangel and he’s pulling it again out of desperation
— Jennifer English Stan Account (Iris) ✪🇵🇸 (@WokeMaelle) June 18, 2026
last time i saw this much open racialized hatred from an establishment dem against a younger black challenger was the hillary campaign against obama. this kind of hatred is coming from the former DR energy minister as he campaigns for espaillat! local media & msm is silent! shame https://t.co/ncr10PFCKN
— hasanabi (@hasanthehun) June 21, 2026
Here’s a translation (by Grok) of the tweet Hasan Piker is citing above:
To the Dominican Americans in NYC…
Dominicans in New York with voting rights must stay highly alert… everything points to Mayor Mandhany being focused on reducing or downplaying the political influence of the hardworking and thriving Dominican community.
He proposed a Muslim candidate to run against Representative
@RepEspaillat … who apparently had refused certain demands from the mayor, who aspires to ethnically reconfigure the election district, integrate new voters from other groups that are more aligned with him, including among them the Haitians with whom he has strong commitments.The mayor of NYC has just appointed a sheriff of Haitian origin. North Americans of Dominican descent must respond with unity to that crazy strategy of Mandhany.
At the same time, they must remind Representative Espaillat that he must give the highest priority on his agenda to denouncing the international crime being committed against the DR: there is no Dominican solution to Haiti’s problems.
The NYT has also done some coverage of the race that frames Mamdani’s endorsement of Chevalier as a betrayal:
Mr. Espaillat, who has built the trappings of a small political machine and chairs the Congressional Hispanic Caucus, is facing a Democratic primary challenge from Darializa Avila Chevalier, an organizer and democratic socialist nearly 40 years his junior.
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Mr. Mamdani had committed to supporting Mr. Espaillat last year, according to three people familiar with the pledge. It came after the congressman dropped his support for former Gov. Andrew Cuomo’s mayoral bid and got behind Mr. Mamdani after he won the Democratic primary.But after watching Ms. Avila Chevalier gaining momentum, the mayor reconsidered his decision.
Note the “according to three people famiilar with the pledge” sourcing. I wonder if those three people work for Rep. Espaillat.
In another piece, the NYT speculates the race may be decided in Harlem, which has long been enemy territory for the incumbent:
As a crowd of well-wishers recently gathered at an Episcopal church in Harlem to pay their respects to a Manhattan power broker whose wife had died, one person’s attendance raised eyebrows among the political cognoscenti.
Representative Adriano Espaillat joined the sea of mourners, staying long enough to shake hands with the Manhattan leader, Keith L.T. Wright.
His appearance suggested a potential change in the bitter feud between Mr. Espaillat and Mr. Wright — a turf war dating back to 2016, when Mr. Espaillat defeated Mr. Wright to become the first Dominican American elected to Congress, seizing a House seat long controlled by Black leaders from Harlem.
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Ms. Chevalier plans to be in Harlem on Friday for a news conference with the New York Progressive Action Network, which recently rescinded its endorsement of Mr. Espaillat to back her instead, citing hundreds of thousands of dollars of donations he’s received from pro-Israel forces.“I think that Harlem will be the deciding factor,” said the Rev. Al Sharpton, whose civil rights organization, the National Action Network, is based in the neighborhood. “Adriano is going to have to show what he feels he delivered and she’s going to have to show why they should trust something new. I wouldn’t take anything for granted. I think it’s going to be won in the streets.”
We’ll find out if Mayor Mamdani wins his bets on Tuesday.
Related Posts:
- Mayor Mamdani’s Battle With Entrenched Power Begins
- Zohran Mamdani Wins New York City in a Youthquake
- Andrew Cuomo Counting on Trump’s Support in New York General Election
- Is Mamdani’s Primary Win Over Cuomo The End of Democratic Party Neoliberalism?
- 2025 New York Mayoral Primary, Mamdani Vs. Cuomo
