In the weeks leading up to New York State’s primaries, Zohran Mamdani took an unusual gamble. The mayor of the country’s largest city didn’t bow to New York’s various establishments and the custom of letting incumbents be incumbents; instead, he went full Ryland Grace to try to steer the world in the direction he wanted at a moment he saw as existential. Fueled by Mamdani (and no small dosage of leftist political streamer Hasan Piker), two races that many thought gimmes became battlegrounds between progressive Democrats and Democratic socialists, the mayor infuriating the Democratic Latino leaders in those areas in the process.On Tuesday night the gamble paid off in a way Ryan Gosling couldn’t have dreamed of: both of Mamdani’s candidates won their primaries, joining a third left-flanking candidate he also aligned with to complete a hat trick of sorts. (Democratic primaries in New York City almost always determine the general winner.) The backstory and reverberations will be felt across the country — and yes, may even boost Nithya Raman in her bid to take down her own establishment Democrat in Los Angeles.Oh, and in the meantime an anti-AI candidate lost narrowly in Manhattan, a social-media Kennedy lost a lot worse in Manhattan and an upstate Trump-aligned sticker mogul (!) pulled off a stunner of his own. We break down the four most noteworthy New York primary races from a wild Tuesday and what it means for entertainment and beyond Congressional District 7, aka The First WhopperA long, long time ago — or, like, back at Thanksgiving — Democratic Congressional leader and Latina trailblazer Nydia Velázquez announced her retirement after 32 years in Congress. A representative of the hipster-Hasidic-Puerto Rican neighborhood of Williamsburg (as well as Greenpoint and Ridgewood, Queens, among others), Velazquez is an icon in New York City politics, having become the first Puerto Rican woman to be elected to Congress. (She also is the first person in her family to graduate high school.) Velázquez supported Mamdani during last year’s mayoral race, helping lock down support for him among the city’s large Puerto Rican population. So, when it came time to retire the seventysomething kingmaker wanted to anoint her protege Antonio Reynoso — the Brooklyn borough president and a progressive — to take over her seat, Logan Roy-style. But Mamdani, feeling his oats and wanting a DSA candidate, went Shiv Roy on Velázquez and backed a young pol named Claire Valdez, who had a similar trajectory to his own — thirtysomething new-ish State Assembly member who came from far away (Texas), had a bifurcated identity (she’s also a citizen of the Ysleta del Sur Pueblo Nation) and found activism at an elite college (the School of the Art Institute of Chicago).That made Velázquez apoplectic — and became an instant test for Mamdani’s upstart DSA vibe against Velázquez’s establishment order. Polls coming into the race had Valdez and Reynoso them neck-and-neck. Casey Bloys has already greenlit two seasons.And then the kicker: On Tuesday Mamdani was vindicated, and Velázquez humbled, in a big way. Valdez won by a definitive 20 points, erasing any doubts that the legacy candidate was donezo or that Mamdani didn’t have the muscle to take on the establishment — again. One of the great political dramas in recent memory had a definitive series-premiere-level ending. The topper? One of the more high-profile celebrities living in the Williamsburg-Greenpoint area is Kieran Culkin. Yes, all this drama was to represent Roman Roy.Congressional District 13, aka The Second and Even Bigger WhopperBackrooms had less twists than this one.The political area of Manhattan north of 96th Street — Harlem et al — and spilling into the Bronx has long been a…conventional type of place. You kissed the ring and you paid your fealty. For more than 45 years the area was represented by Charles Rangel, one of the most powerful Congress members of the 20th century. The district lines shifted, but Rangel’s power didn’t. Even when he was felled by an ethics scandal in 2010 he held on another three terms. Then the seat was passed to his chosen protege. Adriano Espaillat was seeking a sixth term, and until a couple months ago it seemed like a lock. Mamdani himself said he would endorse him.Then the mayor changed his mind. The reason? A 32-year-old named Darializa Avila Chevalier. A child of Dominican immigrants Chevalier had never run for office before; she was an organizer and helped organize the 2024 pro-Palestine encampment protests at Columbia University, which she once attended as a student. She also reportedly attended a controversial pro-Palestine rally in Times Square on October 8, 2023.Chevalier was challenging the first-ever Dominican-American elected to Congress in a district that includes the heavily Dominican-American Washington Heights. But that heritage gas become fraught: Chevalier walked out of an interview Tuesday with the radio station La Mega in a heated discussion about why she didn’t include the Dominican flag in her social bio (she called Dominican nationalism “violent”). Whether the attention helped or hurt her as people were heading to the polls is unclear. Certainly she got a boost from other viral media platforms, appearing with popular-polarizing left-wing livestreamer Hasan Piker and Valdez at a Bushwick club two weeks ago; Piker had come in from LA to stump. Another big rally took place last Thursday, as Mamdani and his three chosen candidates (they also include former rival and ex-city comptroller Brad Lander) took the stage at the historic King’s Theater in Brooklyn; Sara Bareilles also performed in a moment that seemed to galvanize the candidacies of all three.All of it paid off in a big way Tuesday when Chevalier had an AOC-level upset, defeating Espaillat by about three points, or 2,000 votes, with 90% of the total counted. With her near-certain victory in November, Chevalier will instantly become the biggest progressive lightning-rod in Congress, passing AOC, who had a similar win over the establishment during the midterm of Trump’s first administration eight years ago. If you love Hasan Piker and progressive rabble-rousing (or are a conservative who likes dining out on it), she is great news; if you’re a moderate Democrat, less so.Chevalier and Valdez will join Lander, also a Mamdani-aligned Democrat who beat an incumbent, Dan Goldman, in Congressional District 10 in downtown Manhattan and largely-gentrified Brooklyn. While not officially a member of the DSA, Lander will unite with Valdez in what has been nicknamed — affectionately or derisively, depending on who’s saying it — the Commie Corridor, which stretches from a northwestern part of Brooklyn across that part of the boro into western Queens, where many young progressives live. And they’ll have a third point on the triangle up in northern Manhattan.Congressional District 12, aka the Jack Schlossberg (but really the Big Tech) CircusThis district includes pretty much all of Manhattan from 14th Street to 96th Street — Broadway, Madison Square Garden 30 Rock, Lincoln Center and pretty much where every media company is located and ever entertainment decision is made — was already an anomaly in that it did not feature any far-left Democrats. It has center-left Democrats and slightly further center-left Democrats. The two boldfaced names it had were Jack Schlossberg and George Conway — both popular on social media, both tankers in the polls.