If you live in Bushwick, Williamsburg, or East New York, three people want to be your next member of Congress, and on June 3 all three of them stood on a Spectrum News NY1 stage and largely agreed with each other. Brooklyn Borough President Antonio Reynoso’s campaign sent out a post-debate press release declaring he had “dominated” the field. The sole thing it quoted the candidate himself saying that night was two words: “Go Knicks.”
That says more about the debate than about Reynoso. The hour-long forum between Reynoso, Queens Assemblywoman Claire Valdez, and Queens Council Member Julie Won aired, as several outlets noted, right before tip-off of Game 4 of the NBA Finals, where the Knicks clawed back from a 29-point hole against San Antonio. All three candidates predicted a Knicks series win in five. They split only on the MVP pick: Valdez took Jalen Brunson, Won took Josh Hart, and Reynoso went with Karl-Anthony Towns, citing the Dominican heritage the two men share. All three also said they would back Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez for president in 2028, a candidacy that does not exist yet.
The seat is open because Representative Nydia Velazquez, the first Puerto Rican woman elected to Congress, who has held NY-7 since 1992, is retiring. Four Democrats are on the June 23 primary ballot, but the race is functionally a three-way between Reynoso, Valdez, and Won. And because The Cook Political Report rates the general election “Solid Democratic,” the June 23 primary effectively picks the winner. Whoever takes it is almost certainly going to Washington.
Bushwick Daily has tracked Reynoso’s run all spring. In May, District Council 37, the city’s largest municipal union, endorsed his campaign, and Reynoso publicly weighed in on Mayor Mamdani’s ICE response timeline as federal immigration enforcement ramped up across the city. On paper, he is the establishment-blessed frontrunner: alongside Velazquez, he carries endorsements from Representative Jerry Nadler, Attorney General Letitia James, Representative Pat Ryan, and the Working Families Party, per amNewYork, plus the largest municipal union, DC 37. Ryan called him “a fierce fighter for his community and a New Yorker through and through.”
The “dominated” press release leaves out that Reynoso is not actually leading. A May 16 to 17 Emerson College poll of 350 likely primary voters put Valdez at 23 percent, Reynoso at 21 percent, and Won at 13 percent, with a 5.2 point margin of error and 43 percent still undecided. Valdez, a democratic socialist backed by Mayor Zohran Mamdani, is winning the under-40 vote 33 percent to 15 percent, while Reynoso leads voters over 50 by 27 percent to 13 percent. It is a statistical tie split along generational lines, not a coronation.
On the issues that define this district, the three barely diverged. As Patch summed it up, the candidates “largely aligned” on immigration, sanctuary status, transit, and military aid to Israel. Valdez said of ICE, “we have to get rid of this agency, which has only been around for 20 years,” per BKReader. Won said “no immigrant should fear for their safety when they want to go to the hospital.” Reynoso pointed to his own record, saying he was “there the next day at Wyckoff making sure that the NYPD knew that their role was not to cooperate with ICE,” per BKReader.
The candidates split in two places. The first was Gaza. Valdez went directly at Reynoso’s timing, telling him, per QNS, “I and many others have been in the streets calling for a ceasefire, but I never saw you there,” and adding that the first time he called the situation a genocide was when he launched this congressional campaign. Reynoso’s answer leaned on follow-through over chronology. That is the exchange that traveled, and it did not travel in his favor.
The second was money. Won and Reynoso both pressed Valdez over roughly 2 million dollars in support from a super PAC called American Priorities, given that she has positioned herself against outside spending, per QNS. Valdez’s defense was a number: an average donation of about 45 dollars from around 20,000 donors. That is the sharpest the night got, and Reynoso was on the attacking side of it, not delivering a closing argument of his own.
Reynoso did land one genuinely pointed line, and it was aimed at the White House, not at any rival. Asked about visiting Trump, he said, per NY1, “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,” and, per QNS, that Trump is “somebody that we should be getting ready to impeach.” It is not the line his campaign chose to put in the headline of its own victory lap.
When your campaign declares a debate “dominated” and then hands reporters “Go Knicks” as the takeaway, the press release is doing the work the performance did not. The fundraising bears that out: through March 31, Valdez had raised 751,680 dollars to Reynoso’s 630,068 and Won’s 644,604. The most-endorsed candidate in the race is currently trailing in both the polls and the money, and a debate where everyone agreed on policy and rooted for the same basketball team did not change that math.
If you live in NY-7, this primary is the whole ballgame, and with 43 percent undecided it is genuinely up for grabs. Early voting runs June 13 through June 22 and Primary Day is June 23. You can confirm your registration, your party, and your assigned poll site through the New York City Board of Elections at vote.nyc before the line forms. The candidates agree the Knicks will win in five. They do not agree on much else that matters, and on June 23 you get to break the tie.
Featured image: Bushwick Daily
