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?” In May 2026, Bernie Sanders endorsed the full NYC-DSA slate.
