Antonio Reynoso, Claire Valdez and Julie Won all want the same open congressional seat. At a NY1 debate, the three Democrats running in the 7th Congressional District, which spans parts of Queens and Brooklyn, agreed on opposing ICE, expanding support for public housing, and backing the proposed IBX light rail line, according to NY1, which hosted and reported the Wednesday night debate.
The sharpest exchange came over campaign money. Valdez, a first-term Queens assemblywoman running with the backing of Mayor Zohran Mamdani and the city’s Democratic Socialists of America chapter, was pressed on the support of a super PAC set up to counter the pro-Israel lobby. Because campaigns cannot legally coordinate with super PACs, candidates sometimes post a “red box” on their websites, a public note telling outside groups what to spend money on. Hell Gate reported that Won and Reynoso both asked Valdez why, if she opposes super PACs, her campaign site was courting them with exactly that.
“Could you help me understand how you could want to end Citizens United and no longer have super PAC funding our campaigns, yet take super PAC money yourself for your campaign?” Won asked during the cross-examination round, per NY1.
“The fact of the matter is, we have a campaign that we need to win,” Valdez said, according to Hell Gate, adding that she “would never accept money from corporate PACs, fossil fuel PACs, the real estate industry.”
Valdez then turned the Israel question on Reynoso, the Brooklyn borough president. “As far as I can tell, I don’t believe you’ve ever called for a ceasefire,” she told him. “And the first time you called it a genocide was when you launched this Congressional campaign.” Reynoso answered that “the timing of when we come to a decision on what we want to call the atrocities that are happening in Gaza, which are a genocide, is not more important than being able to follow through on what you say.”
Mamdani came up repeatedly. Reynoso and Won both said they would not join the mayor in lobbying President Donald Trump on the Sunnyside Yard housing project. “I don’t think we should be visiting the White House and talking to Trump. This guy is terrorizing our neighbors, is committing crimes, war crimes,” Reynoso said. Won drew her own line: “Neither Donald Trump or Zohran Mamdani are kings of this city. And we have to make sure that there’s a fair process legally.”
They split on Hakeem Jeffries.
Much of the debate was the candidates selling their biographies. Reynoso, raised by working-class Dominican immigrants in Williamsburg, said, “I was a child that was extremely poor, and in just one generation my family is able to see me here standing before you running for Congress.” Valdez, a former union organizer who moved to the city in 2015, said she shares “the experience of so many people in NY-7 who have had jobs where they worked long hours on their feet, day after day, no end in sight, seven days a week, and really struggling to come up with rent at the end of the month.” Won leaned on her resume: “I come from a non-traditional background of tech. I worked at IBM for 10 years, and I only pivoted to government to make sure that our low-income neighbors, especially our public housing neighbors, had free internet and cable TV.”
Near the end, the candidates were asked how long someone has to live in New York to count as a New Yorker. “I am an immigrant,” Won said, “and I believe that anybody who wants to call New York home that is here, to me you’re a New Yorker.” Valdez said, “If you live here, if you call this city your home, if you love it, you’re a New Yorker.” Reynoso said you qualify “the minute you get here, if you respect the people that helped build the foundation of where you’re living.”
Valdez went on to win the June 23 Democratic primary, and Reynoso lost, according to the unofficial results tallied in early July.
