Reported by Al Jazeera
Brad Lander, Darializa Avila-Chevalier and Claire Valdez sweep their congressional races in key Democratic districts.
Progressive candidates endorsed by New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani have won decisive victories in their campaigns to join the United States Congress.
On Tuesday, New York City politicians Brad Lander, Darializa Avila-Chevalier and Claire Valdez secured their seats in the 120th Congress, representing the 10th, 13th and 7th districts, respectively.
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All three were considered shoo-ins following the state’s June 23 party primaries. Their districts lean heavily Democratic.
But their wins in the 2026 midterm election solidifies a political shift in the New York City area, ushered in by Mamdani’s own victory as a democratic socialist in the 2025 mayoral race.
“To me, the national story is about this new generation of progressive leaders and getting excited about those who will be inspired by them just as they were inspired by Mamdani,” Adin Lenchner, progressive political strategist for Carroll Street Campaigns, a consulting firm, told Al Jazeera.
“Brad, Darializa and Claire are on their way to help lift up that same vision of progressive leadership in DC.”
All three representatives-elect spoke to the public on Tuesday, addressing, among other things, President Donald Trump’s pledge earlier in the day to cease annual military aid to Israel by the end of the year.
Cutting off such aid was central to all three candidates’ policy platforms, as part of their opposition to Israel’s genocidal war in Gaza.
“I don’t know that we can trust this president to make moral and consistent decisions about our military budget, so we’ll have to see,” Valdez told Al Jazeera outside a polling location in her district late Tuesday afternoon.
Valdez will head to Congress from the state assembly. Her political career began in the labour movement, and she has pushed to make it easier for unions to organise, as part of her policy platform.
She defeated Republican community activist Melvin Rivera in a largely lopsided race.
US Representative Alexandra Ocasio-Cortez, a progressive who was first elected in 2018, also handily won her House race for the 14th congressional district.
Other notable wins…