Democratic socialists Claire Valdez and Darializa Avila Chevalier won their primaries for the U.S. House, a show of strength for the left wing of the party and a sign of Mayor Zohran Mamdani’s influence in New York City.
Chevalier, a Harlem-based organizer and doctoral student, defeated Democratic Rep. Adriano Espaillat in New York’s 13th District, a working-class seat including parts of the Bronx, Upper Manhattan and Harlem with a mostly Latinx and Black population.
She ran a campaign rooted in both ideology and generational change against the 71-year-old Espaillat, the chair of the Congressional Hispanic Caucus who was the first Dominican-American and first formerly undocumented person to serve in Congress.
She criticized Espaillat for what she said were his cozy relationships with large corporate donors and pro-Israel groups like AIPAC, which donated to one of the groups backing Espaillat. Espaillat has, in turn, attacked Chevalier for not committing to supporting House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries, a fellow New York Democrat, as House speaker. Chevalier has also spent time over the past few weeks apologizing for now-deleted tweets, including one from 2021 in which she said, “Fuck Kamala Harris.”
Valdez defeated Brooklyn Borough President Antonio Reynoso and Council Member Julie Won to succeed retiring Rep. Nydia Velázquez, who was the first Puerto Rican person to serve in Congress and who represented the Brooklyn and Queens-based seat for three decades. Valdez’s victory is also a win for Mamdani, who endorsed her for the seat and campaigned alongside her.
The 7th District encompasses several young, college-educated and progressive-leaning neighborhoods in Queens and northern Brooklyn, dubbed the “Commie Corridor,” that powered Mamdani’s mayoral election victory last year.
While Reynoso and Valdez were largely aligned on policy, the race between them divided New York City’s progressive left: Velázquez, several prominent labor unions and the New York Working Families Party backed Reynoso, while Mamdani, Sen. Bernie Sanders and the New York City Democratic Socialists of America endorsed Valdez.
Mamdani campaigned with both Valdez and Chevalier, as well as with former New York City Comptroller Brad Lander, who successfully challenged Rep. Dan Goldman from the left in the Manhattan-based 10th District.
Tuesday’s primaries were a major test for Mamdani and his political clout, a year after the 34-year-old upstart democratic socialist pulled off a successful campaign to defeat former New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo.
Both Chevalier and Valdez have backgrounds in organizing and are running economic populist campaigns: Chevalier is a community organizer and doctoral student, while Valdez was a clerical workers union organizer at Columbia University and a labor organizer at the United Auto Workers before getting elected to the state Assembly. Both are staunchly pro-Palestinian and support abolishing the Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency (ICE). Chevalier has also said that she does not believe in deportation.
Both races attracted national attention — and millions of dollars in spending from outside groups. American Priorities, a recently-formed pro-Palestine PAC created to oppose AIPAC, spent over $1.3 million boosting Chevalier and opposing Espaillat in the 13th District race and over $450,000 in the 7th District race. Justice Democrats PAC also spent over $1.5 million backing Chevalier and $371,000 backing Valdez.
Elsewhere in the state, Assembly Member Micah Lasher won a crowded open primary to succeed retiring Rep. Jerry Nadler in New York’s 12th District. In the Hudson Valley, Army veteran and ex-national security official Cait Conley won the Democratic primary to face GOP Rep. Mike Lawler in New York’s battleground 17th District, one of just three Republican-held House seats that voted for Harris in 2024.
Several DSA-backed candidates, some endorsed by Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, also won or are leading primaries for New York state legislative seats.
Ocasio-Cortez, a potential 2028 presidential candidate, has been selective in the 2026 midterm races she’s chosen to wade into and did not endorse the Mamdani-backed candidates in New York’s most hotly contested House races. But across the board, several of the candidates endorsed by her, Mamdani or both emerged victorious on Tuesday night.
