In New York's 'Commie Corridor,' a Race Over How to Build Power

[Celerity]

The goals of New York Assemblymember Claire Valdez and Brooklyn Borough President Antonio Reynoso are similar. How they intend to meet them is miles apart.

https://prospect.org/2026/06/17/new-york-commie-corridor-valdez-reynoso-seventh-district-congressional-race/



To the casual observer, the two candidates vying for the Democratic nomination in New York’s Seventh Congressional District to replace retiring 16-term stalwart Nydia Velázquez may look indistinguishable. New York Assemblymember Claire Valdez and Brooklyn Borough President Antonio Reynoso are both Democrats, and both intend to abolish Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), fund affordable housing, institute health care for all, and end Israel’s war on Palestine, which they agree is a genocide. Both candidates have substantial endorsements from powerful figures and organizations. New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani backs Valdez, a fellow Democratic Socialists of America member, as do DSA-NYC and Justice Democrats; Rep. Velázquez, the New York Working Families Party, and state Attorney General Letitia James back Reynoso.

Both candidates can point to actions that show them standing up to institutional injustice. Reynoso supported a bill to successfully and permanently ban federal immigration agents from Rikers Island. Valdez was arrested at immigration court in New York, when she and other electeds sought to inspect the conditions at 26 Federal Plaza, where imprisoned immigrants have been illegally detained in squalid conditions. But the two have distinctly different ideas about how to build power, the best way to halt fascism, and the role of everyday people in their campaigns and in politics. For Valdez, the project is not only to win a seat in Congress, but to use her campaign to develop leaders among those helping her get there. That’s the best way to maintain the political engagement and momentum of volunteers who knocked doors for Mamdani, she told the Prospect.

The goal is “to recognize the political potential in every single person,” she said, “not just to capture the excitement but to hold [volunteers] as politically powerful people who can think strategically, who can consider resource allocation, and who can be real organizers in that way.” That’s how the left will build durable power and beat back the threat of fascism, she said. Reynoso has a different strategy. He faults “an unimpressive presidency by Biden” and the fact that no one was held accountable for the crimes of Donald Trump’s first presidency. “We didn’t hold people accountable. What we need to do is hold people accountable,” he told the Prospect. “I’m going to be somebody who is really invested in oversight … I won’t let the Democratic Party cower and let the Democratic Party tell us that ‘this is partisan politics.’ No. Accountability is going to be central to my advocacy.”


Brooklyn Borough President Antonio Reynoso speaks at a protest against ICE, May 21, 2026, in New York. Credit: Camara Porter/AdMedia/MediaPunch/IPX

Asked to respond to criticisms that Democrats are not doing enough now, he said the only thing that’s available at the moment is “making a lot of noise.” “We don’t have any technical power at every single level of government, the Supreme Court, presidency, Congress, Senate,” he said. “This is not like an ineffectiveness conversation, this is about the reality of government being run entirely in one party. Those are realities that exist.” The race also puts in opposition two rising progressive forces in New York City politics: Democratic Socialists of America (DSA) and the Working Families Party (WFP). Along with its coalition of multiple organizations, WFP endorsed Reynoso, despite a vote by its Brooklyn and Queens chapters to recommend endorsing Valdez. According to an explainer from City & State, the two chapters were outvoted by WFP’s nonprofit affiliates, who make up the majority of the WFP coalition. New York City has about 3,000 individual dues-paying members versus 175,000 affiliate members.

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