Democratic socialist candidates backed by New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani dominated Democratic congressional primary races across the city on Tuesday. All three of his picks were projected to win their respective races by the Associated Press and NY1 on Tuesday night.
With 94% of the vote counted, former city Comptroller Brad Lander holds a commanding 65.9% to 34.1% lead over incumbent Rep. Dan Goldman — a staggering 31.8-point margin — in NY-10. Lander, you may recall, was a candidate in the 2025 Democratic New York City mayoral primary. After losing to Mamdani and former New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo, he endorsed Mamdani, and according to Politico, the two have “since formed a close alliance, as evinced by the fact that the mayor introduced Lander at his election night party at a brewery in Brooklyn.”
Among his many extremist positions, Lander supports the abolishment of ICE and the expansion of the Supreme Court. He also believes that all student loan debt should be forgiven.
After he was projected the winner on Tuesday night, the antisemitic candidate told CNN it was time for the U.S. to reset its relationship with Israel. He said, “We shouldn’t be taking corporate PAC money from Wall Street and crypto and AI and AIPAC. … We’ve got to fight harder for working families and have people see us fighting for them, and we have to reset the U.S. relationship with Israel.”
In his victory speech, Lander told supporters, “We ran this campaign like a team sport, because that’s what it takes to stand up to billionaires and bullies. And that’s what I intend to do in Congress. Our team of progressive champions has been winning across the country, and our ranks will keep growing, tonight and in the months ahead.”
With no serious Republican opposition in the general election, Lander is widely expected to represent New York’s 10th Congressional District in Congress next year.
Far-left activist Darializa Avila Chevalier, perhaps the most radical of Mamdani’s endorsees, is projected to unseat incumbent Rep. Adriano Espaillat. She currently leads 49.6% to 46.1%.
How radical is she? Her now-deleted X account tells the story. She has called for the abolishment of ICE, the police, U.S. borders, and prisons. Fox News’ Bill Melugin reported she believes that all deportations, including those of violent criminals, are wrong, she has called the U.S. an ‘effing disgrace,’ and said in a prior social media post ‘I forgot to get napkins so I just wiped my hand on the American flag behind me.'”
The New York Post noted that Avila Chevalier’s projected win “echoed the stunning 2018 victory by her fellow DSA diehard Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez over Democratic fixture Joe Crowley.”
One outraged Avila-Chevalier critic appeared to express the sentiments of many on X:
NYC Democrats just unseated the chair of the House Hispanic Caucus for a DEI hire woman who said she wants to use the American flag as a napkin! She is unemployed 32 year old on her way to Congress, who was recently rioting with pro-Hamas activist Mahmoud Khalil in the Columbia University encampment on a college campus while asking for “basic humanitarian aid! Darializa Avila Chevalier, who just won the NY-13 Democrat primary, says “Inshallah” if she makes it to Congress, she wants to make sure to reflect her Muslim faith “in the halls of power”. She wants to abolish police, prisons (even for murderers), and says all deportation is wrong! This is a fkn nightmare! Wake Up! The Democratic Party is Dead! This is Insane!
Meanwhile, in the race for the open seat in NY-07, Mamdani-backed state Assemblymember Claire Valdez routed Brooklyn Borough President Antonio Reynoso, prevailing by a margin of 56.1% to 35.8%.
Among her many far-left policy positions, Melugin highlighted her support for granting citizenship and voting rights to illegal immigrants, using taxpayer dollars to fund all transgender medical treatments, and abolishing private health insurance.
Her congressional campaign website states that she “worked low-wage customer service jobs at Taco Bell and Trader Joe’s” before being elected to the state Assembly.
Democratic strategist and former secretary to Andrew Cuomo, Melissa DeRosa, who has always struck me as an honest broker, said of the candidates, “They are not Democrats; they are socialists, and they are parasites. They cannot win on their own by creating their own party, so they are going to latch onto the Democratic Party and feed off of it, with the overall goal of taking it over and killing it.”
Palestinian Aber Kawas, a candidate for the New York State Senate, who claims that “9/11 was America’s fault due to ‘capitalism, racism, white supremacy, and Islamophobia,’ has won her seat.”
None of these results came entirely out of the blue. Mamdani’s endorsement has become one of the most powerful forces in New York Democratic politics, and each of these candidates entered Election Day with momentum and the backing of an energized progressive base.
Still, the magnitude of the victories was remarkable. An incumbent member of Congress was trounced by more than 30 points, another appears headed for defeat at the hands of a little-known activist, and a borough president was routed in a race for an open seat. Taken together, the results underscore just how thoroughly Mamdani and the Democratic Socialists of America have reshaped the political landscape in New York City. The question now is whether the party’s increasingly radical trajectory will remain confined to deep-blue districts or become a model Democrats attempt to replicate elsewhere in the country.
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