Brad Lander beat Rep. Dan Goldman by nearly 30 points. Darializa Avila Chevalier beat Rep. Adriano Espaillat by a little over three. Claire Valdez beat Brooklyn Borough President Antonio Reynoso by 20. Mayor Zohran Mamdani had endorsed all three, and on June 23 they went 3 for 3.
Two of the three winners unseated sitting Democratic congressmen. The third took an open seat.
The margins
Goldman, a second-term Democrat, represents lower Manhattan and part of Brooklyn. Lander, a former city comptroller who ran against Mamdani in last year’s mayoral race and later joined his camp, took that district in what USA Today’s reporting called a lopsided result. Lander is a fixture among New York progressives who has often shown sympathy for the democratic socialists. The war in Gaza split them. Both are Jewish, and Lander attacked Goldman for not being tough enough on Israel. Goldman has criticized Israel’s government and condemned settler violence but has not called the war a genocide, as Lander does.
Espaillat chairs the Congressional Hispanic Caucus and was in his fifth term. Chevalier, 31, is a democratic socialist who once helped organize pro-Palestinian protests at Columbia University. Mamdani’s most polarizing pick sailed past him. The caucus title, one report noted, carried little clout on the night.
Valdez, 36, is a democratic socialist and state Assembly member. Her district straddles Brooklyn and Queens. Reynoso was the handpicked successor of retiring Rep. Nydia Velazquez, and he lost anyway.
In most of New York City’s House districts the Democratic nominee is all but assured of winning in November, so all three are likely to be seated in January.
What Mamdani and Jeffries said
The 34-year-old mayor went from party to party across the city. “A year ago, it was not the end of a political movement. It was the beginning,” he told the crowd at Valdez’s celebration in Brooklyn, while supporters chanted “DSA! DSA!” At Chevalier’s party in Manhattan he said: “We are showing there is a new path for politics in our city and in our country.”
House Democratic Leader Hakeem Jeffries had campaigned against Mamdani’s candidates and lost. On Capitol Hill he played it down. “We have agreed to strongly disagree,” he said of Mamdani. “There are 215 members of the House Democratic caucus. A handful of primaries that go in one direction or the other, in a given state or two, aren’t going to reshape who we are as House Democrats.”
Party leaders fear that Mamdani and his loyalists could drag the party too far left before the midterms, which will decide who controls Congress for Donald Trump’s last two years in office.
Not a clean sweep for the left
North of the city, the result went the other way. Army veteran Cait Conley won a five-way Democratic primary in the 17th District by 17 points and will face Republican Rep. Mike Lawler. Backed by the centrist Majority Democrats, she told supporters the party must “build the biggest coalition this district has ever seen,” independents and Republicans included.
Elsewhere in Manhattan, state Assembly member Micah Lasher, backed by Democratic leaders, won the race to replace retiring Rep. Jerry Nadler. Jack Schlossberg, John F. Kennedy’s 33-year-old grandson, lost, as did George Conway and Assembly member Alex Bores. Mamdani made no endorsement there.
State Comptroller Tom DiNapoli, meanwhile, won more than 61 percent against two challengers, the first primary opposition he has faced in almost two decades.
Sources
- Mamdani-backed candidates sweep New York City Democratic primaries
- A tale of two NY primaries, from Mamdani in NYC to Trump upstate
