Mamdani's congressional 'team' wants to upset establishment Democrats

Three candidates are challenging mainstream Democrats for NYC congressional seats in the 2026 midterm elections, with the mayor's backing.Show Caption

During the fourth quarter of a game in the New York Knicks’ recent championship run, New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani unveiled his own squad in a commercial break."New York, we know anything is possible with a great team," the mayor said in the 30-second ad, which first aired at the end of Game 1 of the NBA Finals. Next to him were Brad Lander, Darializa Avila Chevalier and Claire Valdez, all left-leaning candidates running on a platform that includes abolishing Immigration and Customs Enforcement and taking on bad landlords and greedy corporations."This is the team," Mamdani said, with a backdrop of a basketball hoop and New York City’s trademark orange and blue, like the Knicks colors. "This is our year."Mamdani, a democratic socialist, has assembled a slate of candidates hoping to upend mainstream Democrats in deeply blue seats days ahead of the 2026 midterm elections. The June 23 Democratic primary will show whether his wing of the party has the same success as the Knicks, who won their first championship in 53 years.While the city writ large is divided on Mamdani, Democratic primary voters strongly favor the 34-year-old democratic socialist who won in an upset a year earlier, according to Bradley Honan, a Democratic pollster.Primary voters are much more likely to be progressives friendly to Mamdani’s brand of socialism, Honan said, seen in 2025 when Mamdani twice defeated Andrew Cuomo, the three-term centrist former governor who was hobbled by scandal. With President Donald Trump in office, an energized Democratic base is yearning for more confrontational politics."There is, right now, a hunger in the Democratic Party for something other than the status quo," Honan told USA TODAY. "That's why we have seen incumbents across the country in Democratic primaries going down to defeat."Gentrifiers, genocide take center stageThe districts span across Manhattan and northern Brooklyn, areas that have seen an influx of progressive, educated young residents.Incumbents have run on the perception that the transplants who have moved into working-class neighborhoods are pushing residents out while imposing their politics on more moderate communities of color.Two of the three races, where Avila Chevalier and Valdez are running, are in heavily Latino enclaves, where older votes may lean more conservative and younger ones are further to the left.The high cost of living in New York City is a major concern for working-class and middle-class voters of all races, which drew many Latino New Yorkers to Trump in 2024 in record numbers, but also contributed to their support for Mamdani for mayor, according to Rev. Eli Valentin, a political analyst who authored "Politicking in the Barrio" about Latino politics in New York."At least in New York, we are not seeing a defection. I would call it a repudiation," Valentin said. "In some ways, Latinos were expressing frustration with the economic conditions that they’ve had to endure."Another issue that has alienated progressives and younger voters of color from the Democratic establishment is the party's historic support for Israel, which has created a wedge in all three districts.The divide is most prominent in the 10th Congressional District, which spans Lower Manhattan and brownstone neighborhoods of Brooklyn like Cobble Hill and Park Slope. The mostly White, progressive and relatively affluent district is among the most Jewish in the country.Lander, who is Jewish, is challenging Rep. Dan Goldman, who is also Jewish, by running to Goldman's left.Goldman has drawn criticism for refusing to reject support from the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, or AIPAC, the pro-Israel lobbying group. Importantly, opponents have attacked Goldman for declining to say Israel has committed genocide in Gaza following the Hamas-led 2023 attacks in southern Israel. In contrast, Lander has said Israel has committed genocide.A United Nations commission, several human rights groups and a genocide scholars association have said Israel has committed genocide in Gaza, which Israel denies.Who represents working families in Manhattan, Brooklyn?Goldman, a former prosecutor who helped House Democrats run one of Trump's impeachment trials, won office in 2022 against a fractured field of progressive opponents. An heir to the Levi jeans fortune who lives in Manhattan, Goldman largely self-funded his campaign.In 2026, Goldman appears to be trailing in polls to Lander, a former city comptroller and councilman from Brooklyn. A May 21 Emerson College Polling/PIX 11 survey found Lander had a double-digit lead over Goldman.The two candidates are competing largely over who can fight the Trump administration, take on corporate interests and address cost of living for Americans.Lander has been arrested for protesting immigrant detention conditions inside a Manhattan building housing federal immigration court, while Goldman has used congressional oversight to scrutinize federal agents arresting people attending routine immigration court hearings and check-ins. Both have pledged to investigate the Trump administration if Democrats regain control of the House of Representatives.Lander cross-endorsed with Mamdani for mayor against Cuomo in the Democratic primary, meaning the two candidates encouraged their supporters to use the city's ranked-choice system to rank the other progressive second, in a successful effort to prevent Cuomo from winning. The congressional primary will not feature ranked-choice, as it is run at the state level."That unleashed a really moving amount of solidarity in New York City," Lander told USA TODAY while campaigning in Carroll Gardens, Brooklyn on June 14, the first Sunday of early voting. Politics, Lander said, didn’t have to be a selfish endeavor driven by ego. Early on in Lander's congressional bid, Mamdani backed Lander. Lander spoke at a "get out the vote" event with several dozen Jewish and Muslim New Yorkers, a day after the Knicks won the NBA championship. He said he felt energized, but it was hard to tell "how much of that is the Knicks, how much of that is Muslim-Jewish solidarity, and how much of that is the election a week from Tuesday."Unlike Lander, Goldman didn’t vote for Mamdani in the 2025 primary or general election, even when Mamdani was the Democratic nominee for mayor. Goldman reportedly said he wanted to see more "concrete action" from Mamdani, who is Muslim, to combat antisemitism which has been surging in New York City.In an interview, Goldman said he and Lander share many of the same views on Israel, including support for Zionism.But Goldman said Lander has used Israel’s treatment of Palestinians in a way that was "divisive" and "cynical," while the issue should be "secondary" to the needs of voters in his district. He spoke to USA TODAY during a Chinese American community rally for him in the heavily immigrant neighborhood of Sunset Park in Brooklyn. Many longtime Chinese and Latino residents, he said, are more focused on housing and immigration enforcement than conflicts in the Middle East."The working families in this district overwhelmingly support me," Goldman said. "It's one thing to talk about it, it's another thing entirely to do."Goldman's campaign announced he has been endorsed by 31 tenant associations of the New York City Housing Authority, which underscores the divide of lower-income residents supporting moderates like Goldman, who is worth an estimated $250 million. Goldman is also endorsed by several labor unions and the Planned Parenthood Action Fund.However, Lander has accused Goldman of cozying up to Wall Street interests, including corporate political action committees. While Lander has been skeptical of the cryptocurrency industry, Goldman has been supported by crypto advocates. Goldman broke with most of his party to back a 2025 regulatory bill that critics said would make it harder to identify fraud or other illegal transactions, City & State New York reported.In Manhattan and Bronx, questions of transplantsIn New York's 13th Congressional District, in northern Manhattan and parts of the Bronx, Darializa Avila Chevalier and Rep. Adriano Espaillat have far less in common than Lander and Goldman.Avila Chevalier, a Democratic Socialists of America member and community organizer, was endorsed by Mamdani in a shocking blow to incumbent Espaillat, who has held the seat since 2017 and backed Mamdani in the general election after supporting Cuomo in the Democratic primary.Espaillat − endorsed by Gov. Kathy Hochul and House Minority Leader Rep. Hakeem Jeffries, a Brooklyn Democrat − is a fairly typical establishment Democrat, while Avila Chevalier is running on a Mamdani-esque platform."Espaillat has adopted the language of a progressive without the actions of one," Natalia Latif, the media director of Avila Chevalier, told USA TODAY. "It really goes back to the central question of, 'Well, what does it mean to be a progressive?'"Avila Chevalier, 32, a Dominican-American organizer, investigator and PhD student, has become the most threatening challenger Espaillat, the 71-year-old Congressional Hispanic Caucus chair, has faced.The district is half Latino and one-quarter Black, according to Census data. But as housing prices jump, more professionals − mostly White, young, and progressive − residents are moving to Upper Manhattan neighborhoods such as Harlem, Washington Heights and Inwood.A political advertisement from the Latino Victory Fund, who backs Espaillat, implied Avila Chevalier, who has lived in the area for 14 years, is a gentrifier herself.In recent weeks, Avila Chevalier has been under a microscope for her past tweets, including posts calling for defunding the police and abolishing the border, alongside harsh insults of big-name Democrats such as former Vice President Kamala Harris. She has since apologized.But the race is expected to come down to one thing: Will voters want a new person in the seat, or someone they know?"I have been in the neighborhood all along during our most difficult times," Espaillat said in a debate between the two this week. "This is not a PhD program. This is government. And you need experience."The value of legacy endorsements in Brooklyn and QueensBrooklyn Borough President Antonio Reynoso and Assemblymember Claire Valdez are the frontrunners for the 7th District, which covers historically working-class, mostly Latino, but now-trendy neighborhoods in Brooklyn and Queens including Williamsburg, Bushwick and Ridgewood.The seat opened after Rep. Nydia Velázquez – the first Puerto Rican woman elected to the U.S. House of Representatives – announced plans to retire.Velázquez and other local representatives such as Councilmember Sandy Nurse and Assemblymember Catalina Cruz backed Reynoso, a lifelong Williamsburg resident who represented the area on the City Council.But Mamdani refused to support Reynoso, a progressive who had endorsed Mamdani for mayor. Instead, he backed Valdez, a DSA member and union organizer originally from Texas, who took office in the Assembly just last year. Both have similar campaign promises, like tackling the housing crisis and taking on ICE.The Valdez team said her candidacy will bring Mamdani's politics to Washington."It seemed like an opportunity to send a unionist and Democratic Socialist to Congress. And so, it really had nothing to do with Antonio Reynoso," Andrew Bard Epstein, the communications director for her campaign who also served in the same role on Mamdani's, said. "It had everything to do with Claire, her vision and her leadership in these movements, which have built up so much in New York City over the past years."I think there was also a real desire to show that Mayor Mamdani's election was not the culmination of that movement, but one step in an ongoing process to transform the politics of the city and this country."Reynoso said the district needs someone who will represent all of its constituencies, not just the 3,000 DSA members who live there."I don't view progressive politics through the lens of membership," Reynoso said in a statement to USA TODAY. "Throughout my career, I've worked closely with DSA members, the Working Families Party, labor unions, community organizations, and grassroots advocates because the crises we face are too big for any one group to solve alone."Velázquez − who supported Mamdani early during his run − has spoken out for Reynoso after her and the mayor were unable to come to an agreement on a successor, the congresswoman said."It will be a mistake to think that the support that [Mamdani] was able to get during the mayoral race is going to be there for every other candidate," Velázquez told USA TODAY. "At the local level in congressional races, as well as any local race, relationship with the community matters.""I have nothing personal against [Valdez]," Velázquez said, "But the challenging times that we are facing requires tested leadership."