If you live in Greenpoint, Williamsburg, Long Island City or Bushwick, you have a congressional primary on June 23 that nobody can call, and the loudest voice in it is your new mayor. Mayor Zohran Mamdani has spent the closing stretch of this race personally working the streets of New York’s 7th Congressional District for Claire Valdez, a 30-something Queens assemblywoman and former union organizer running to replace the retiring Nydia Velazquez. On Sunday, June 15, Mamdani marched with Valdez at the Knickerbocker Avenue Puerto Rican Day Parade in Bushwick, where she told the crowd, per NY1, “We need to be fighting for Puerto Rico, for self-determination, for the resources the island needs.”
The woman whose seat is open does not want Valdez to have it. Velazquez, who has held NY-7 since 1992 and is known across the district as “La Luchadora,” is backing Brooklyn Borough President Antonio Reynoso, according to CBS New York. So the most popular new figure on the New York left is squared off against the retiring incumbent over who replaces her.
The split runs deeper than two people. The Democratic Socialists of America endorsed Valdez, and so did Senator Bernie Sanders, building her campaign on the same volunteer machine that put Mamdani in City Hall in 2025. She launched her bid with an endorsement from Mamdani and the United Auto Workers at Maria Hernandez Park in Bushwick on January 9, where UAW President Shawn Fain put the pitch in one line, per QNS: “What has the experience of millionaires and billionaires on Capitol Hill done for working-class people?” Bushwick Daily covered the wider movement in May 2026, when Bernie Sanders endorsed the full NYC-DSA slate.
But the Working Families Party, the same outfit that helped elect Mamdani, broke with him and endorsed Reynoso. WFP State Director Jasmine Gripper called Reynoso “the best candidate to fight for working families in Washington D.C.,” per the Brooklyn Paper, which reported that Mamdani had personally urged WFP leadership to back Valdez and that unions and advocacy groups inside the party pushed for Reynoso instead. Mamdani said he was “heartened by the fact that WFP chapter members voted for Claire Valdez,” calling her “an incredible Assembly member.” Reynoso also carries 32BJ SEIU, DC 37 and the Hotel and Gaming Trades Council; Valdez has the UAW, AFA-CWA and the socialist left. The labor movement in North Brooklyn and western Queens is right now fighting itself.
No one is winning yet. An Emerson College poll of 350 likely Democratic primary voters, taken May 16 and 17 with a margin of error of plus or minus 5.2 points, found Valdez at 23 percent, Reynoso at 21 percent and Queens Councilmember Julie Won at 13 percent, with 43 percent undecided. Emerson’s Spencer Kimball pointed to age: “Voters under 40 support Valdez over Reynoso, 33 percent to 15 percent, while voters over 50 break for Reynoso over Valdez, 27 percent to 13 percent,” per Emerson College Polling. On policy the three leading candidates barely differ, since all support Puerto Rican self-determination and tenant protections. The split is generational.
The money shows the same close contest. Valdez led the field in contributions during the first reporting period of 2026, while Reynoso trailed the other leading candidates, per FOX 5 New York. Valdez says she is the only candidate in the race who “hasn’t taken any money from real estate developers,” and she told Greenpointers that “77% of NY-7 is made up of tenants,” pitching federal NYCHA funding, repeal of the Faircloth Amendment and new social housing.
Valdez is not a longtime fixture, and her opponents know it. She was elected to the State Assembly in 2024, representing District 37, and before that organized with UAW Local 2110, the union for clerical and professional staff at Columbia University, where she served on the bargaining committee. Her congressional campaign is staffed by Morris Katz, who City & State reports forms Mamdani’s “innermost circle” alongside the mayor’s longtime chief of staff, and who said flatly of the mayor: “There is no one in my life more important than the mayor.” She is the Mamdani movement’s candidate, staffed by Mamdani’s own people. Whether that helps her or hurts her is what June 23 decides.
Reynoso’s counter is experience. A two-term borough president and former City Council member, he tells voters he has already done the hard things, pointing to his record on removing ICE from Rikers Island and expanding maternal healthcare access, per CBS. He has also leaned into Puerto Rico, the historic heart of a district that redistricting and gentrification have steadily diluted, with a platform that backs a status referendum and abolishing the island’s fiscal oversight board, according to THE CITY, which reported that NYC is home to roughly 670,000 Puerto Ricans. Velazquez put the stakes bluntly: “Puerto Rico is a colony of the United States. Congress has total jurisdiction.”
The closing argument is a campaign finale. On Thursday, June 18, five days before the primary, Bernie Sanders is headlining a rally with Mamdani at the Kings Theatre in Brooklyn for Valdez and two other Mamdani-backed House candidates, Brad Lander in NY-10 and Darializa Avila Chevalier in NY-13, per Jewish Insider. Mamdani is dismissing the polls that show this race a coin flip, telling NY1: “I don’t care what poll you put in front of me … I don’t believe a single one of them.”
You do not have to wait for the rally to weigh in. Early voting in New York’s primary is already happening, running through Sunday, June 21, with primary day on Tuesday, June 23, per CBS New York. If you live in NY-7, which covers Greenpoint, Williamsburg, Bushwick, Long Island City, Sunnyside and Ridgewood, you can confirm your registration and find your early voting site through the NYC Board of Elections at vote.nyc before the rest of the city decides for you. For more on where Reynoso and Valdez stand, Bushwick Daily’s guide to the NY-7 Democratic primary walks through both candidates in detail.
Featured image: Marc A. Hermann / MTA / CC BY 2.0 via Wikimedia Commons
