Rep. Adriano Espaillat is 71, has held his upper Manhattan and Bronx seat for nearly a decade, and chairs the Congressional Hispanic Caucus. On Tuesday he lost his primary to a 32-year-old running for office for the first time.
Darializa Avila Chevalier is a democratic socialist who once helped organize pro-Palestinian protests at Columbia University. Mayor Zohran Mamdani backed her, and the AP called her his most polarizing pick. She beat Espaillat, the first Dominican American elected to Congress, in a sweep that also ousted a second sitting congressman.
That second loss belonged to Rep. Dan Goldman, a two-term incumbent. Brad Lander, the former city comptroller, beat him. The third winner was state Assembly Member Claire Valdez, a democratic socialist who defeated the handpicked successor of retiring Rep. Nydia Velazquez.
The mayor’s night
Mamdani, 34, moved around the city celebrating. At Valdez’s party in Brooklyn, with the crowd chanting “DSA! DSA!”, he said: “A year ago, it was not the end of a political movement. It was the beginning.” Later at Avila Chevalier’s party in Manhattan he added, “We are showing there is a new path for politics in our city and in our country.”
Avila Chevalier took on the “Democratic machine” in her own speech. “Today we make it clear, the politics of the past ends today,” she said. “No longer will we accept a politics that throws scraps at us and acts as if we should be grateful for them.”
All three Mamdani candidates have promised to abolish ICE, have condemned what they call a “genocide” in Israel’s war in Gaza, and have vowed to tax the rich. Lander, in his own victory speech, also said he would abolish the federal immigration agency and referred to “Trump’s fascism.” He was acquitted earlier this month on charges tied to a protest inside a building that houses an immigration court.
The Jeffries problem
House Democratic Leader Hakeem Jeffries campaigned against Mamdani’s candidates and lost. Before polls closed he had said of Mamdani, “We have agreed to strongly disagree,” and noted that the House Democratic caucus has 215 members. A handful of primaries, he argued, would not reshape the party.
Party leaders fear Mamdani and his allies may push Democrats too far left before the November midterms. Israel’s war in Gaza and affordability were the central issues of the slate’s campaign.
Voters on the ground gave mixed reports. In East Harlem, 47-year-old Sara Hyler said she went back and forth between Avila Chevalier and Espaillat, then settled on Avila Chevalier after learning how heavily AIPAC had supported the incumbent. “It was the breaking point, my last straw,” she said. Yvette Sanchez, a 30-year-old preschool teacher who voted for Espaillat, said she resented Mamdani’s push against established candidates, whom she said Black and Latino communities support. “Do you just think you can insert anyone you want or do you actually want to listen to us?” asked Sanchez, who supported Mamdani last year.
Not everything went the left’s way. Micah Lasher, backed by Democratic leaders, won the race for Jerry Nadler’s seat over a field that included Jack Schlossberg, George Conway and Alex Bores. Mamdani endorsed no one there.
