Mayor Zohran Mamdani pushed through a crowd in East Williamsburg on Tuesday night, and his face went blank with disbelief. Aides clapped their hands over their mouths. He hugged his chief of staff, Elle Bisgaard-Church, under a disco ball while the room bounced around them. A state representative nearby was crying.
The New York Times reported that Mamdani spent three hours that night hopping between victory parties from Brooklyn to Upper Manhattan. He had bet his own popularity on three House primaries, and all three of his candidates won: Brad Lander, the former city comptroller, and two democratic socialists, Darializa Avila Chevalier and Claire Valdez. Two of them knocked out sitting members of Congress.
Three races, three upsets
Avila Chevalier beat Representative Adriano Espaillat in an upset, by a narrow margin. Lander ousted Representative Dan Goldman, and the race was called minutes after the polls closed. Valdez, a one-term state lawmaker, is set to succeed Representative Nydia Velázquez, who is retiring.
Mamdani had held fund-raisers, appeared in ads and spent the last weeks of the campaign on the trail for the slate. Along the way his candidates beat people backed by Gov. Kathy Hochul and Representative Hakeem Jeffries, in a primary with relatively low turnout. He was wagering that voters, fed up with the system, would give newcomers a chance over better-known politicians.
At Valdez’s watch party, Mamdani told the crowd the night showed his own win in the mayor’s race “was not the end of a political movement, it was the beginning.” Supporters chanted “D.S.A.! D.S.A.!” “The old politics that got us into this crisis is not the politics that’s going to get us out of this crisis,” he said.
A night of parties
The tour began at a Gowanus brewery, where Lander’s supporters gathered, including members of Jews for Racial and Economic Justice and the longtime city progressive Ruth Messinger. Mamdani embraced his former mayoral rival. “We need a good neighbor,” he said, nodding to Lander’s “Mr. Rogers” campaign messaging.
Valdez’s party in south Brooklyn was closer to a rave. Twenty-somethings in neon wristbands danced to a set from the guest D.J., Chelsea Manning, and the tunes ran from “Sweet Dreams” to “Solidarity Forever.” Young people who said they joined the D.S.A. during Mamdani’s campaign sipped Modelos and cheered at random.
Gustavo Gordillo, co-chair of the Democratic Socialists of America in New York City, pushed back on the idea that it all came down to one man. “We are not just a movement of a charismatic leader,” he said. The Times noted that some progressive leaders had worried before the vote that the moment was more man than movement. When Mamdani walked in, some supporters could barely speak.
The last stop was a Puerto Rican restaurant uptown, not far from where Mamdani grew up. Avila Chevalier’s supporters were shocked more than giddy. “We were told time and time again that the odds were stacked against us,” she told them, the mayor grinning beside her. Mahmoud Khalil, who became the face of the federal effort to deport pro-Palestinian activists, said it felt “vindicating” to defeat a candidate backed by the American Israel Public Affairs Committee.
Elsewhere on the ballot
In Manhattan, Micah Lasher, a state assemblyman, won the race to succeed Representative Jerrold Nadler, beating a field that included Jack Schlossberg, the grandson of John F. Kennedy. Mamdani made no endorsement there. In the suburbs north of the city, Democrats chose Cait Conley, a combat veteran and national security expert, to take on Representative Mike Lawler in November.
Democrats hope to flip the House this fall amid voter unease over inflation and the war in Iran. Mamdani said the results proved his movement was not a fluke, and that it offered a way forward on affordability.
