Voters in New York’s 7th Congressional District choose a successor Tuesday, Nov. 3, to Rep. Nydia M. Velázquez, who announced last November that her 17th term in the House would be her last.
Velázquez, a Democrat, was the first Puerto Rican woman elected to Congress, according to the Library of Congress, and the first Latina to chair a full congressional committee, according to her official biography. She won all 17 general elections she entered, never with less than 76.5% of the votes cast for candidates, the House clerk’s election statistics show. She sponsored 457 bills and resolutions, 11 of which became law, according to Congress.gov, and her campaigns raised $11.2 million, according to the Federal Election Commission.
Three candidates are on the ballot for the open seat, according to the city Board of Elections’ contest list: Claire Valdez on the Democratic and Working Families lines, Melvin Rivera on the Republican and Conservative lines, and Priscilla Ghaznavi on the Our Future line. Valdez won the June 23 Democratic primary with 39,626 votes to Antonio Reynoso’s 25,127, Julie Won’s 4,438 and Vichal Kumar’s 1,187, according to the board’s certified results.
Velázquez explained the decision in a Nov. 20, 2025, statement: “After much reflection, I have decided that this will be my last term in Congress. This was not an easy decision, but I believe that the time is right for me to move on and for a new generation of leaders to step forward.”
She reached Congress in 1992 by winning the Democratic nomination from Stephen J. Solarz, whom the Library of Congress profile describes as “a nine-term incumbent.” That November, in what was then the 12th District, she received 55,926 votes, or 76.5% of the votes cast for candidates, according to the clerk’s 1992 statistics. It was the lowest share of her career. In her retirement statement, she wrote: “Back then, there were only three Latinas in the House.”
Her share peaked at 95.8% in 2002, when her only opponent on the ballot, Conservative Cesar Estevez, received 2,119 votes. Her largest total came in 2020: 191,073 votes on the Democratic and Working Families lines. In her last race, in 2024, she received 172,795 votes to Republican Bill Kregler’s 48,435, or 78.1%, according to the clerk’s 2024 statistics. Across her 17 general elections, the clerk’s figures add up to 1,708,142 votes for her. Those totals combine every ballot line that carried her name; the percentages leave out blank and write-in votes.
She has served on the House Small Business Committee in every Congress since 1993, according to the House’s history office. In February 1998, she became its ranking Democrat, which her biography says made her the first Hispanic woman to serve as ranking member of a full House committee. She chaired the committee from 2007 to 2011 and again from 2019 to 2023, and her biography lists her as its ranking member now. In November 2008, her colleagues in the Congressional Hispanic Caucus elected her to lead the caucus in the 111th Congress, her office announced at the time.
Congress.gov lists 515 measures she sponsored as of Tuesday morning: 457 bills and resolutions and 58 amendments. Eleven of her bills became law. Five were short-term extensions of programs under the Small Business Act, enacted from 2007 to 2010 while she chaired the committee. The others are the Money Laundering and Financial Crimes Strategy Act of 1998, the Women’s Business Center Amendments Act of 1999, the RISE After Disaster Act of 2015, a 2018 law naming the post office at 6 Doyers Street in Manhattan the Mabel Lee Memorial Post Office, the Puerto Rico Recovery Accuracy in Disclosures Act of 2021 and the PPP and Bank Fraud Enforcement Harmonization Act of 2022. That count includes only bills she introduced that became law on their own, not provisions folded into other legislation. She sponsored the most bills and resolutions, 81, in the 116th Congress, from 2019 to 2021. She also cosponsored 5,766 measures.
In her retirement statement, she pointed to one program that is not on that list: “One of my proudest accomplishments was creating the Women-Owned Small Business contracting program, which became law in 2001 and has helped thousands of women entrepreneurs get ahead.”
Her campaigns reported $11,233,202 in receipts over the 17 election cycles from 1992 through 2024, according to FEC summary files. Contributions the FEC classifies as coming from other political committees made up $6.39 million of that, or 56.9%, and contributions from individuals $4.56 million, or 40.6%. Her largest cycle was 2008, when she raised $1,136,165.
Her office’s website in January 2009 described the 12th District as the only congressional district with parts of three boroughs: Bushwick, Greenpoint, Red Hook, Sunset Park and Williamsburg in Brooklyn; Maspeth, Ridgewood and Woodside in Queens; and parts of the Lower East Side, East Village and Chinatown in Manhattan. She has represented the 7th District since 2013, according to Congress.gov, and her biography now describes it as parts of Brooklyn and Queens.
She ended her retirement statement this way: “Serving New York has been the honor of my life. I will always be grateful for the trust my constituents placed in me over all these years.”
Featured image: U.S. House Office of Photography (public domain)
