In June, New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani stood before a packed house of voters, rallying support for a new wave of candidates hoping to build on his progressive momentum by winning seats in Congress. Inside Brooklyn’s historic Kings Theatre, the crowd answered chants of “Abolish ICE”, “Tax the rich” and “Free Palestine” with roaring applause, leaving little if any room for doubt about what the audience wanted from its politicians. Within days, all three congressional hopefuls endorsed by Mamdani – Claire Valdez, Brad Lander and Darializa Avila Chevalier – had won their Democratic primaries, becoming the party’s candidates in the midterm election.
Lander, the former New York City comptroller, defeated Congressman Dan Goldman in a race in which Israel was the defining issue. Avila Chevalier, a community organiser, unseated longtime Congressman Adriano Espaillat. Valdez, a lawmaker in the New York State Assembly and member of Democratic Socialists of America (DSA), won the contest to succeed retiring Congresswoman Nydia Velazquez.
Both Valdez and Avila Chevalier had the backing of New York City’s DSA chapter. The candidates’ heavily Democratic districts mean they are likely to win congressional seats in Tuesday’s midterm elections. The June Democratic Party primaries effectively served as the main event for voters.
In the final hours before Tuesday’s midterm election, New York City – a place colloquially dubbed the city that never sleeps – is more politically sleepy, with canvassers a bit harder to find than they were in the final stretch before the primaries. For the three progressive candidates, the past few months have been a test of how to turn bold campaign promises into policy they can actually deliver. The often slow minutiae of daily governance stand in stark contrast to buzzword-laden campaign slogans on the posters and signs galvanising their base of voters.
The three congressional candidates’ platforms overlap on issues like abolishing Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), ending US military aid to Israel and establishing a public healthcare system dubbed Medicare for All. But their paths into progressive politics differ. Lander spent years in the New York City government, most recently as comptroller overseeing the city’s finances.
After losing to Mamdani in the 2025 Democratic mayoral primary, he backed Mamdani in the election. But Lander’s congressional campaign against incumbent Goldman brought him national attention, with Israel and Palestine emerging as the defining issue in the race to lead a district with one of the largest Jewish populations in the United States. Lander has described Israel’s military campaign in Gaza as genocide and its occupation of Palestinian territory as apartheid.
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