Congress
The Democratic Socialists of America are leaving it all on the field in NYC
NEW YORK — The Democratic Socialists of America are facing a reckoning in New York City — and there’s a lot on the line.
Two members of the hard-left group’s New York City chapter are running for congressional seats in this month’s primaries, vying to topple more mainstream Democrats — including one incumbent.
If the DSA’s candidates, Claire Valdez and Darializa Avila Chevalier, prevail, it will prove the ascendent organization can capitalize on the momentum generated by Mayor Zohran Mamdani’s once-improbable 2025 election win. Victories for Valdez and Avila Chevalier would expand socialist influence on Capitol Hill as the Democratic Party continues to grapple with its ideological identity after getting shellacked in the 2024 elections. And it would likely embolden the DSA to expand its political footprint — accelerating its evolution from insurgent movement to political institution.
But if one or both candidates lose, the DSA’s growth arc in New York would experience its first major dip since November, raising the prospect that the pendulum for Democrats may be swinging toward the middle. Defeat would also reflect poorly on Mamdani, who expended significant political capital to endorse Valdez and especially Avila Chevalier, who’s challenging a veteran New York congressional delegation member with deep ties to party leadership.
“Our goal is to win major races that show the Democratic Party establishment that our agenda is what working class New Yorkers demand,” Gustavo Gordillo, co-chair of the DSA’s New York City chapter, told Blue Light News. “The stakes couldn’t be higher for us.”
There’s a third insurgent candidate challenging an incumbent House member in New York City’s June 23 primaries: Former City Comptroller Brad Lander, who’s hoping to unseat Rep. Dan Goldman.
Lander isn’t a DSA member and hasn’t earned the group’s endorsement. But he’s campaigned to the left of Goldman, giving that primary a sense of importance for the broader progressive movement — especially since Mamdani is Lander’s top endorser.
There are currently only two members of Congress who qualify themselves as DSA comrades: Reps. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.) and Rashida Tlaib (D-Mich.). To that end, the DSA could double its presence in Congress if both Avila Chevalier and Valdez win their races.
In a sign that the three competitive New York City primaries are important for democratic socialism on a national level, Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.), the patriarch of the modern American left, plans to headline a rally Thursday in Brooklyn with Valdez, Avila Chevalier and Lander. Sanders — who has endorsed democratic socialist candidates across the country this year — is also expected to be joined on stage by Mamdani.
The DSA’s influence in New York has increased considerably since Mamdani’s rise, but it hasn’t been without growing pains.
Take New York’s 7th Congressional District. Valdez, a state Assembly member, is facing off against Brooklyn Borough President Antonio Reynoso and City Council member Julie Won in a race to replace retiring Rep. Nydia Velázquez.
Velázquez, a matriarch of local progressive politics and an early supporter of Mamdani’s 2025 run, has soured on the mayor — and the DSA as a whole — after they threw their weight behind Valdez despite the outgoing incumbent’s wishes to be succeeded by Reynoso.
In a candidate forum last week, Reynoso, a non-DSA progressive, suggested the socialist group has turned into a “machine” with Mamdani as its “boss” — language that harkens back to an era when the heads of the city’s county parties ruled local politics and could handpick whoever they wanted for any given elected office.
“She is beholden to the powers of the new administration, the same way all political machines are,” Reynoso said of Valdez at the June 8 forum hosted by WNYC.
There are indeed aspects of the DSA’s operational structure that resemble the component parts of a political machine.
With Mamdani as its figurehead, the DSA’s leaders rarely criticize him — even when he stakes out policy positions that run afoul of their dogma — a reticence that evokes how the county bosses of yesteryear were loath to tolerate dissent among their ranks (the group did issue a rare rebuke of Mamdani last week over his support for increasing the NYPD headcount this year).
The DSA has also shown itself highly capable of deploying thousands of loyal volunteers on canvassing efforts for its preferred candidates — another hallmark of a machine.
Basil Smikle, a political scientist and former executive director of the New York State Democratic Party, said the DSA is on its way to becoming a full-fledged political machine, but argued it’s not quite there yet.
“If they start creating local political clubs in individual neighborhoods, push to create its own ballot line and, frankly, just win more elections so they have more members in positions of power, that’s when it really starts to become the sort of machine that’s systemic and more similar to the old school political machines,” he said.
Frank Carone, an attorney who has been deeply involved in the Brooklyn Democratic Party for decades, said he “can certainly see why” Reynoso would draw the comparison, noting that the DSA’s canvassing prowess is undeniable.
But Carone, an ardent DSA critic and confidant of former Mayor Eric Adams, said Reynoso’s attempt to use the machine term as a cudgel against the socialist group is “bullshit.”
“Same way he did against county back then, he’s doing it against DSA now,” Carone said, referring to Reynoso’s longrunning beef with the Brooklyn Democratic Party. “Any time you’re invoking emotion to do this type of name-calling, it’s bullshit. It’s essentially cowardly.”
In an interview last Wednesday, Valdez also took a dig at Reynoso for the machine jab.
“The Brooklyn borough president doesn’t understand where DSA’s power comes from,” she said. “Our membership is the boss of this organization. We steer the ship, and it’s a misunderstanding to say there’s a single figurehead.”
As it relates to the looming election, Valdez said “the power” the DSA has built in New York won’t dissipate even if she and Avila Chevalier lose their races. If they win, “it would cement this organization as a major power-player in New York City,” said Valdez, who first joined the DSA in 2019.
Polling has been scant in the race for the 7th District, which spans gentrifying parts of Brooklyn and Queens. A PIX11 survey released on May 21 showed Valdez and Reynoso neck-and-neck, with Won far behind in third place.
Asked how much is at stake for the DSA in the race, Reynoso told Blue Light News he’s “glad to see this much energy on the left.”
“The only way any of us actually delivers for working people is by working together instead of fighting over who gets the credit,” he said. “With Trump back in the White House and ICE tearing families apart, that is the fight that matters, and I intend to be a partner to every group ready to roll up their sleeves and get something done.”
On the other side of the East River, Avila Chevalier has emerged as the DSA’s riskiest gamble this election cycle.
A first-time candidate known for her pro-Palestinian activism, Avila Chevalier is challenging Rep. Adriano Espaillat, the chair of the Congressional Hispanic Caucus who has over the years built a political machine of his own in upper Manhattan and parts of the Bronx.
As in the Valdez-Reynoso-Won race, there hasn’t been much polling in the contest between Espaillat and Avila Chevalier. A survey conducted last week on behalf of a pro-Espaillat super PAC found him leading Avila Chevalier by a 35-27 percentage point margin. A second poll commissioned at the beginning of this month by Justice Democrats, a progressive group supportive of Avila Chevalier, showed her beating Espaillat by a 39-35 margin, though that survey only had a sample size of 319 likely voters.
For the DSA, any momentum stands to be blunted, however, by a torrent of old social media posts from Avila Chevalier. In her since-deleted missives, she denigrated Democratic politicians, the police, Israel and private property. The posts have surfaced since Mamdani and the DSA got behind her. Espaillat and super PACs that support him have seized on her social media history, airing ads that characterize her past online screeds as evidence she’s too extreme.
“This is what it looks like when movements stop asking for a seat at the table and start building our own,” Avila Chevalier said in a statement when asked about the DSA’s impact on her campaign. “Our movement is fighting for and powered by the people, and I look forward to bringing it home for our community on June 23.”
Ironically for the DSA, Lander seems like the most potent progressive running for Congress in New York City this cycle. Polls are showing him ahead of Goldman by double digits, and he has benefited greatly from an endorsement from Mamdani, who won Goldman’s Manhattan and Brooklyn district by a wide margin in last year’s mayoral election.
The DSA generally doesn’t endorse candidates who aren’t dues-paying members. Lander, who’s Jewish, left the DSA in late 2023 over the group hosting a rally ostensibly celebrating Hamas’ Oct. 7 terror attack against Israel shortly after it happened.
Gordillo, the DSA co-chair, would not comment on Lander’s race. But speaking generally, he said he’s bullish about pickups in New York City.
“Last year’s mayoral election showed there’s a citywide constituency for democratic socialist politics,” he said.
Tom Cotton made his name in Washington as an outspoken critic of a Democratic president’s deal to check Iran’s nuclear ambitions.
Now, with a president of his own party angling toward a similarly structured agreement, the Arkansas Republican is so far using a softer voice.
Cotton, the No. 3 Senate Republican and Intelligence Committee chair, is not alone among GOP defense hawks in finding himself in an awkward position more than a decade after lambasting President Barack Obama’s Iran deal.
But the combination of his prior ferocity toward the Iranian regime and his current leadership responsibilities have put him into an especially tight spot as President Donald Trump and Vice President JD Vance sell their 14-point “memorandum of understanding” to skeptical Republicans.
Cotton moved toward critiquing that framework in a Fox News interview Thursday, crediting Trump for “making Iran weaker than it’s been in decades” while airing concerns that “certain aspects of this deal are a step in the wrong direction.”
“We need to make sure that we don’t squander the leverage that we’ve built” against Iran, he said.
That is a far cry from the rhetoric Cotton deployed as a freshman senator in 2015, when Obama was moving in concert with other global powers to force Iran to curb its nuclear program in return for sanctions relief and other economic favors.
Cotton led a brash effort to undermine the deal — most notably by organizing a public letter signed by 46 other GOP senators to Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, then the supreme leader of Iran, warning that “anything not approved by Congress is a mere executive agreement” that could be nixed by a future administration.
The letter enraged the Obama administration and congressional Democrats, but it was prescient.
After he was elected in 2016, Trump withdrew from the deal, known as the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, setting the stage for his second-term military campaign against Iran that he is now seeking to end by trading curbs on Iran’s nuclear program for sanctions relief and other economic favors.
If that was the only jam Cotton was facing from Trump this week, it would be plenty. But the discomfiting Iran situation has been compounded by the president’s recent moves to upend Cotton’s careful negotiations aimed at extending a key surveillance program for three years.
After Trump blew up that deal by appointing a political ally to a top intelligence position, Cotton moved quickly to fast-track a permanent replacement through his committee and rekindle the surveillance deal — only to watch Trump blow things up once again.
Majority Leader John Thune, like most Senate Republicans, had nothing but praise this week for the “great job” Cotton was doing amid the tumult over the expired spy law and the director of national intelligence drama.
“He’s a really strong chair on the committee. And he had it all teed up and ready to go,” Thune said in an interview. “Now it’s just … back to the drawing board.”
But Cotton’s moves amid the back-and-forth — particularly his decision to publicly announce a hearing would move forward Wednesday for DNI nominee Jay Clayton even after Trump publicly declared he was “cancelling” it — attracted attention on the right.
Former Trump strategist Steve Bannon voiced blistering criticism of Cotton, calling him “out of control” and suggesting he “should be turfed out” of his safe seat over trying to proceed with the hearing. Cotton is up for reelection and expected to win easily.
Cotton backtracked, postponing the hearing while noting that it was “regrettable” that Trump directed Clayton not to appear. The White House didn’t respond to questions about Cotton.
Thune defended Cotton, saying he was “operating within his rights and prerogatives” as chair in insisting, however briefly, that the hearing would go on.
Unlike most GOP senators, Cotton is unusually tight-lipped around the Capitol, enforcing a blanket “no comment” policy in the hallways this week as reporters tried several times to ask him about everything from the surveillance program to Clayton to Iran. His office did not respond to an interview request.
Cotton has plenty of supporters within the Senate Republican conference, where he is well-liked and won a contested race for the No. 3 leadership spot. And his quick rise through the party has generated speculation that he could one day become Senate GOP leader or run for president.
It’s not lost on Republicans that even the straight-talking 49-year-old, who was under consideration for a Trump Cabinet position, has found himself crosswise with the administration. That speaks to the larger issues the Senate GOP is facing as the president’s rash decisions complicate their carefully laid plans, they say.
“Senator Cotton is surely, surely a big fan and supporter of the president,” Sen. Lisa Murkowski (R-Alaska) said. But, she added, “he’s got a committee to run.”
Cotton is also hardly alone among his GOP colleagues in voicing concerns about the memorandum of understanding signed by Iran and the United States.
Though there are now more senators with MAGA-aligned “America First” foreign policy instincts than a decade ago, Cotton is part of a still-prominent pack of national security hawks that include the likes of Sen. Lindsey Graham of South Carolina and former Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, who recruited Cotton to run in 2014.
Sen. Roger Wicker (R-Miss.), who chairs the Armed Services Committee, went even further than Cotton in a Thursday statement that said the agreement is “completely out of step with the president’s goals.” And Sen. John Cornyn (R-Texas), a member of Cotton’s committee, predicted that the agreement would only be an “intermission” in Iran’s decadeslong conflict with the United States and Israel.
“They get $300 billion — it’s not going to be for constructive or useful purposes,” Cornyn said, a reference to a “reconstruction fund” included in the agreement.
Cotton aired concerns about multiple financial concessions included in the Trump-signed memorandum, including a new allowance for Iran to conduct oil sales that he estimated would provide as much as $6 billion a month
“That money … we know is not going to build new hospitals or day cares,” Cotton said Thursday on KTHV, a Little Rock TV station. “It’s going to go to replenish their drone stockpiles, their missiles, to support terrorists.”
NEW YORK — With just five days to go until the primary election in New York, Mayor Zohran Mamdani issued a stark warning to members of Congress who believe “incumbency is a substitute for action”: Watch out.
“People often ask me what I think of the state of the Democratic Party,” Mamdani said to the crowd at the Kings Theatre in Brooklyn as he boosted his endorsed congressional candidates. “This slate here today is our answer. The Democratic Party must change.”
The democratic socialist framed Tuesday’s election as much more than what that means for New York, though. In recounting how people also ask him about the 2028 presidential election, he put it bluntly: “It starts now. It starts on Tuesday.”
“For far too long, our party has seen its job as managing decline instead of delivering material change for working people,” Mamdani said. “That old way of thinking will lose on Tuesday. And frankly, it will lose in South Carolina and New Hampshire. It will fall short of 270 electoral votes, because the party of the past will not be what leads us into the future.”
Mamdani, joined by Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders, urged his supporters to show up for his endorsed candidates “the way you showed up for me.” They include former New York City Comptroller Brad Lander, who’s challenging two-term Rep. Dan Goldman; state Assemblymember Claire Valdez, who’s vying for retiring Rep. Nydia Velázquez’s seat; and community organizer Darializa Avila Chevalier, who’s trying to unseat five-term Rep. Adriano Espaillat, the chair of the Congressional Hispanic Caucus.
Mamdani’s endorsed slate of legislative candidates were at the rally, too.
The rally featured standard stump speeches from the candidates, highlighting the need to support working class New Yorkers and immigrants. Speakers called out the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, the pro-Israel group that has loomed over many of these primaries — despite no evident spending from its independent expenditure arm. Sanders also emphasized his call to ban super PACs, which have reshaped primaries across the city.
Taking place just hours after the massive ticker-tape parade celebrating the Knicks’ historic championship, there were also Knicks references galore.
“I hate to break it to you, but OG Anunoby is not here to save the day,” said Mamdani, who was wearing a Knicks jersey under his suit. “The only hands we can count on are ours.”
Sanders, who is wildly popular in New York, previously endorsed Valdez and Lander. Both Valdez and Avila Chevalier are members of the Democratic Socialists of America and are backed by the city chapter in their bids. Sanders had not officially endorsed Avila Chevalier prior to the rally.
“Why are progressives and socialist candidates winning elections all across this country?” Sanders asked. “The answer in my view is not complicated. The working class of America understands that our current economic system is rigged, that it is designed to benefit the wealthy and the powerful.”
Polling has shown Lander with a lead over Goldman, and a tight race for Velázquez’s seat. Public polling is scarce in the Espaillat race, but recent internal surveys suggest Avila Chevalier is posing a real challenge to the incumbent. Mamdani endorsed her just weeks ago, much later than Lander and Valdez, but his engagement in the race has significantly elevated its profile.
“Six months ago, they told us this race was over before it started,” Avila Chevalier said at the rally. “They told us Adriano was untouchable, that he was an institution, that you don’t run against someone like him and win. That this district was his, and that we should wait our turn. And they said it with such confidence, like the outcome had already been written. Look around. Look at what we’ve built.”
Mamdani’s decision to get involved in congressional races is stress-testing how the new mayor navigates relations with powerful, well-respected party figures — many of whom he’s on the opposite side of.
Mamdani’s endorsement is expected to be a significant asset for his picks; he had dominant performances across these districts in last year’s mayoral primary. And that shine doesn’t seem to have dulled. Recent polling has shown that Mamdani has high approval ratings.
Goldman did not support Mamdani during last year’s mayoral primary or the general election, as Lander has often pointed out. Espaillat backed former Gov. Andrew Cuomo in the primary, but supported Mamdani in the general election. Valdez’s opponents, Brooklyn Borough President Antonio Reynoso and city Council Member Julie Won, both supported Mamdani in the primary.
The mayor has been active on the trail for his congressional candidates of choice in the closing stretch of the campaign. And he touted them all in an advertisement that ran during the first game of the Knicks’ finals run.
Still, Lander has tried to keep some distance. When asked at a recent press conference why he would appear in that ad with Avila Chevalier, who attended a pro-Palestinian rally the day after Hamas’ Oct. 7 attack in 2023 — the same rally Lander said he left the DSA over — he said it was an “opportunity to show New Yorkers that politics can be a team sport.” He also clarified that he has not endorsed candidates in any other congressional primaries.
Avila Chevalier told reporters that she went to that rally to “stand against” Israel engaging in “a response that is often disproportionate and creates a greater loss of life.” She added that she has “condemned Hamas” and does “not believe that celebrating the loss of anybody’s life is OK.”
Kings Theatre isn’t located in any of the districts these congressional hopefuls are trying to represent — though it neighbors the seats that Lander and Valdez have their eyes on.
It’s especially far from Espaillat’s district, which includes parts of upper Manhattan and the Bronx.
While handing out campaign literature to people walking out of the subway in Hamilton Heights, Blue Light News asked Espaillat if he had thoughts about Avila Chevalier appearing at the rally.
“I’m rallying right here in my district with my constituents — not in Brooklyn,” he replied.
Jason Beeferman contributed to this report.
Retirement groups are calling on Congress to investigate Meta over a wave of social media scams targeting older Americans.
In a letter sent Thursday to House Homeland Security Committee Chair Andrew Garbarino (R-N.Y.) and ranking member Bennie Thompson (D-Miss.), the groups alleged Meta has been slow to take down fraudulent ads, leaving seniors vulnerable to financial loss. The letter, shared exclusively with POLITICO, was signed by the Alliance for Retired Americans, the American Postal Workers Union Retirees and the American Federation of Teachers, among others.
“Fraudulent Medicare ads have proliferated on Meta platforms and too many seniors are getting scammed while Meta profits,” said Richard Fiesta, executive director of the Alliance for Retired Americans. “We are calling on Congress to investigate how these scams are allowed to spread, what Meta knew about them, and why stronger protections are not in place. Seniors should not be left vulnerable while scammers and tech companies cash in.”
The letter’s demands follow a report published last month by the Center for Countering Digital Hate, a nonprofit advocacy group, which alleged that Meta has profited by leaving up fraudulent ads, many of which target Medicare recipients.
“Scammers are determined criminals who use increasingly sophisticated tactics to defraud people and evade detection,” Meta spokesperson Andy Stone said in a statement. “We aggressively fight scams on and off our platforms because they’re not good for us or the people and businesses that rely on our services and for years we’ve been one of law enforcement’s strongest partners in the fight against this type of online crime — identifying criminals, disrupting their crimes and helping bring them to justice.”
Stone pointed to several examples of Meta’s efforts to combat scams on its platform, including a recent collaboration with U.S. and Thai law enforcement to disrupt online scams.
It’s not the first time Meta has faced scrutiny over the scams: Sens. Richard Blumenthal (D-Conn.) and Josh Hawley (R-Mo.) urged the Federal Trade Commission and the Securities Exchange Commission to open an investigation into the company in November after Reuters reported that Meta in internal documents projected 10 percent of its 2024 revenue would come from fraudulent ads. And in February, a group of bipartisan lawmakers pressed Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg over its plans to prevent and combat fraud on its platforms.
Reps. Dan Meuser (R-Pa.) and Lou Correa (D-Calif.) also introduced bipartisan legislation earlier this year to combat predatory scam ads.
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