New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani bet big on reshaping the city's congressional delegation in his own ideological image, and on Tuesday night, all three of his picks won their Democratic primaries. Brad Lander toppled incumbent Dan Goldman in NY-10. Darializa Avila Chevalier, a 32-year-old public defender's office investigator who once called for abolishing police and prisons, knocked off 71-year-old Adriano Espaillat in NY-13. And Claire Valdez, a state Assembly member and former union organizer, captured the open NY-7 seat.
All three districts are rated safely Democratic. Barring something extraordinary in November, three self-described democratic socialists will soon represent chunks of Manhattan, Brooklyn, Queens, and the Bronx in the U.S. House.
That is the practical result of a mayor using the machinery of City Hall to stack Congress with allies who share his vision of abolished borders, defunded police, and an adversarial posture toward Israel. Voters in deep-blue New York primaries handed Mamdani exactly what he wanted. The rest of the country will live with the consequences.
The speed of the rout told its own story. NBC News called the NY-10 race for Lander less than ten minutes after polls closed. CNN called it while Lander was mid-interview on the network. Goldman, a former federal prosecutor, heir to the Levi Strauss fortune, and lead counsel during the first Trump impeachment in 2019, never had a chance.
Goldman's sin, in the eyes of Mamdani's coalition, was straightforward: he refused to accuse Israel of committing "genocide" in Gaza, saying he had seen no evidence to support that characterization. He also never endorsed Mamdani during the New York City mayoral race. In the transactional world of New York progressive politics, that was enough to draw a target on his back.
Lander, the city's former comptroller, had cross-endorsed Mamdani during the mayoral primary in an arrangement designed to box out former Governor Andrew Cuomo. The primary victory was also a win for the city's ascendant progressive wing, with Bernie Sanders and Mamdani rallying together to back Lander against Goldman. Mamdani's endorsement of Lander amounted to repayment for that earlier political support, and a message to any Democrat who might think twice about falling in line.
Goldman is Jewish. So is Lander. The difference was not faith but fealty, specifically, fealty to the anti-Israel litmus test that now functions as a loyalty oath in New York's far-left circles.
If Lander's win was the most predictable of the three, Avila Chevalier's victory in NY-13 was the most revealing. CNN reported that the 32-year-old daughter of Dominican immigrants had previously expressed support for abolishing the police, prisons, and the border. She also questioned Israel's right to exist.
Perhaps most memorably, she wrote "f*** Kamala Harris" on social media in 2021 after then-Vice President Harris told Guatemalan migrants they shouldn't come to the United States. Avila Chevalier later apologized for those postings.
Espaillat, the incumbent she defeated, tried to make those posts a campaign issue. In an interview with CNN, the first Dominican American to serve in Congress did not hold back.
"This is not just some common statement that was made when you were a young person, a teenager, an adolescent. This was just a couple of years ago."
He added that he found it "irresponsible for someone that has a chronically irresponsible social media to go to Congress." His closing thought: "Words really matter."
Evidently, primary voters in upper Manhattan and the Bronx disagreed. Espaillat, who chairs the Congressional Hispanic Caucus and has represented NY-13 for nearly a decade, was finished before 10 p.m. ET.
The final days of Espaillat's campaign were further complicated when City & State reported on Monday that one of his senior advisers had made racist and Islamophobic comments about Avila Chevalier. That revelation likely did nothing to help a campaign already struggling against the Mamdani machine.
The third race was the most straightforward structurally but no less telling ideologically. NY-7, which covers parts of Brooklyn and Queens and has earned the nickname the "Commie Corridor," was an open seat after longtime Rep. Nydia Velázquez announced her retirement.
Velázquez gave her blessing to Brooklyn Borough President Antonio Reynoso. Mamdani backed Claire Valdez, a 36-year-old state Assembly member of Mexican and Native American heritage who had been an early supporter of Mamdani's mayoral run. Valdez, who moved to New York City in 2015 to pursue becoming an artist and previously worked in low-wage jobs before becoming a union organizer, has served in the Assembly since 2025.
The Associated Press called the race for Valdez at 9:23 p.m. ET. The retiring incumbent's preferred successor couldn't hold the seat against Mamdani's pick. That pattern, establishment Democrats losing to Mamdani-aligned insurgents, repeated itself across all three districts in a single evening.
What Mamdani accomplished Tuesday night deserves clear-eyed assessment. A mayor who has been in office barely a year leveraged his position to reshape his city's congressional representation in one stroke. He campaigned alongside Bernie Sanders. He targeted incumbents who crossed him or failed to meet his ideological standards. And he won every race he entered.
This is the same mayor who proposed $23 billion in new taxes during his first 100 days in office. The same mayor whose budget woes grew so severe that Governor Kathy Hochul, who backed Goldman in the NY-10 race, had to deliver $4 billion in state aid to keep the city solvent.
And the same mayor who has drawn scrutiny for everything from accepting free World Cup tickets to reversing his own policing positions under pressure.
Yet none of that baggage slowed his candidates. In the low-turnout world of deep-blue Democratic primaries, organizational muscle and ideological energy matter more than governing results. Mamdani supplied both.
The internal Democratic divisions these results expose are real. Hochul backed Goldman. Velázquez backed Reynoso. Espaillat represented the old-guard Hispanic political establishment. All three lost to Mamdani's operation. The moderate and center-left factions of New York's Democratic Party are being systematically displaced by a movement that views abolishing ICE, defunding police, and condemning Israel as baseline positions.
Because all three districts are safely Democratic, Lander, Valdez, and Avila Chevalier are effectively headed to Congress. The question is what they do when they get there.
Avila Chevalier will arrive having once called for abolishing the border, the police, and the prison system, positions she has since apologized for but never clearly repudiated in policy terms. Valdez will arrive as a former union organizer from a district whose own nickname signals its ideological tilt. Lander will arrive as a former comptroller whose alliance with Mamdani was cemented through the mutual goal of sidelining Andrew Cuomo.
New York's budget crisis will not be solved by sending more democratic socialists to Washington. The city's crime challenges will not be eased by representatives who once endorsed abolishing police. And the national Democratic Party's already strained relationship with moderate voters will not improve when a fresh cohort of members arrives in the House openly hostile to border enforcement and allied with a mayor whose governing record is defined by fiscal chaos and ideological overreach.
Tuesday night was a win for Zohran Mamdani. Whether it was a win for the people who actually live in these districts, the taxpayers, the small-business owners, the residents who want safe streets and functioning city services, is a different question entirely. The answer will come due long after the primary confetti is swept away.