Antonio Reynoso has spent the closing weeks of the NY-7 race rolling out a platform one plank at a time, on a campaign tour he calls “Real Fights, Real Results.” Put the pieces together and it is one of the most expansive progressive agendas in the four-way Democratic primary to replace Nydia Velazquez: a wealth tax built to actually shrink billionaires’ fortunes, a plan to abolish ICE, an insurance code for a disease most health plans do not recognize, and the decriminalization of sex work.
Start with the money, because that is where Reynoso started his tour. He is running on a wealth tax of 5 percent a year on fortunes above $50 million and 10 percent a year on fortunes above $250 million, which his campaign estimates would raise roughly $6.8 trillion over ten years while leaving more than 99.9 percent of Americans untouched. The point, his campaign is explicit about, is not just revenue. Reynoso says he wants wealth “taxed at rates that reduce the net worth of the ultra-wealthy,” a yearly levy meant to drain the biggest fortunes, not just skim them. “Working people in Brooklyn and Queens are paying higher effective tax rates than billionaires who use insider loopholes to hide their fortunes,” he said in announcing the plan. Around it he wants to close the carried-interest and “mega Roth IRA” loopholes, tax capital gains like wages for the ultra-rich, strengthen the estate tax, restore IRS enforcement, and overturn Citizens United.
On immigration, the third platform of the tour, Reynoso went furthest. Standing with members of Make the Road Action, he called for a pathway to citizenship for millions of undocumented immigrants, an end to ICE enforcement and a move toward abolition, and passage of the New Way Forward Act to dismantle what he calls the prison-to-deportation pipeline. He wants to cut ICE and CBP funding, open congressional investigations into deaths in custody and unconstitutional raids, and subpoena tech companies like Palantir over their role in immigration surveillance. The plan also folds in healthcare for immigrants regardless of status, restored asylum protections, the PRO Act for immigrant workers, and an end to federally funded policing in schools. “Washington has spent decades criminalizing immigrants while letting corporations and politicians profit off fear,” Reynoso said. “That ends now.” Blanca, a Queens resident and Make the Road Action member, said his platform “shows that he is prepared to take our stories to Washington.”
His reproductive-health plan carries the most personal stamp, and it is the one nobody else in the race is leading with. The centerpiece is unglamorous and specific: create an official insurance code for endometriosis, the painful disorder that, his campaign notes, leaves patients paying for costly treatment entirely out of pocket because insurers have no code to reimburse it. From there it expands to 12-month postpartum Medicaid coverage, universal paid family leave, coverage for IVF and egg freezing, and federal money for endometriosis research through the bipartisan Endometriosis CARE Act. Reynoso ties it to his record: as Borough President, his office says, he put his entire $45 million capital budget into Brooklyn’s public-hospital maternity wards and started a “Born in Brooklyn Baby Box” program. “When my wife and I were expecting our first son, our doctor warned us about the staggering rate at which Black women in New York City die from pregnancy-related causes,” he said. April Christina, an endometriosis advocate who joined the rollout, said expanding coverage for fertility preservation “would give more individuals the opportunity to build the families they envision.”
Food is the other kitchen-table piece, and it comes from his day job. In June, in his official capacity as Borough President, Reynoso rallied with twenty social-service organizations to demand action on SNAP theft, the skimming schemes that drain families’ EBT cards. He is pressing the city and state to create a dedicated Office of SNAP Fraud, a state-funded reimbursement program for victims, and a faster switch from magnetic-stripe EBT cards to secure chip cards. The scale, per his office citing the state comptroller: roughly 85,000 SNAP skimming cases and nearly $40 million stolen across New York between 2023 and 2024, with 60 percent of the city’s reimbursement claims coming from Brooklyn and the Bronx since August 2023. “Growing up, my family relied on SNAP,” Reynoso said. “It was often the difference between having food on the table or going to bed hungry.”
His LGBTQ+ platform, released during Pride and rolled out across a “Not Your Corporate Pride” drag show at 3 Dollar Bill and a Lambda Independent Democrats bar crawl through Williamsburg, is built around the Equality Act, Medicare for All that includes PrEP and gender-affirming care, the Pride in Mental Health Act, and two things most candidates step around: the decriminalization of sex work and the repeal of SESTA and FOSTA, the federal anti-trafficking law that sex-worker advocates say put them in danger. “We have the power to take LGBTQ+ policy further to not just protect the community, but focus on queer liberation,” Reynoso said. Stephanie Fox, president of Lambda Independent Democrats of Brooklyn, said “it’s not every day that an elected official takes the time to connect so directly” with the community.
And in an op-ed for the Spanish-language daily El Diario, Reynoso made Puerto Rico a plank of its own. He backs the Puerto Rico Self-Determination Act and wants to take on La Junta, the federally imposed fiscal control board behind years of austerity, school closures and health cuts; Act 22, the tax law that lets wealthy investors dodge taxes while local families are priced off the island; and the Jones Act, the shipping law that drives up the cost of food, medicine and gas. Nearly 38,000 Puerto Ricans left for the mainland in 2024 alone, he wrote, on an island that imports about 90 percent of its food and runs on a failing power grid. Reynoso, the son of Dominican immigrants who landed in South Williamsburg in the 1970s, framed it as a personal debt: Puerto Rican neighbors and community groups, he wrote, helped his parents find work and learn English, in the district Velazquez, the first Puerto Rican woman elected to Congress, has held for decades.
Reynoso is one of four Democrats, with Claire Valdez, Julie Won and Vichal Kumar, running to replace the retiring Velazquez in NY-7, which runs through Bushwick and Williamsburg and into Queens. In a district this blue, the June 23 primary effectively decides the seat. You can read his full plans at reynosoforcongress.com, and confirm your registration, early-voting site and Election Day poll site at the New York City Board of Elections before you go.
