Queens gets a new voice in Congress, and the DSA picks it.
State Assembly Member Claire Valdez, the DSA-backed state Assembly member representing western Queens, won the Democratic primary for New York’s 7th Congressional District Tuesday night, defeating Brooklyn Borough President Antonio Reynoso 58% to 33% with most votes counted.
Valdez, endorsed by Mayor Zohran Mamdani and Sen. Bernie Sanders, will likely succeed Rep. Nydia Velázquez, who is retiring after more than three decades in office. The result extends the Democratic Socialists of America’s footprint in New York’s congressional delegation and is a significant early test of Mamdani’s political reach beyond City Hall.
Reynoso had backing from Velázquez, the Working Families Party, and several major labor unions. The margin suggests Mamdani’s endorsement carried more weight than the institutional left’s.
NY-7 covers parts of western Queens and Brooklyn. Valdez will face the Republican nominee in November in a district that leans heavily Democratic.
editorial
Our take
This graphic from Steven Romalewski & the CUNY Mapping Service at the Center for Urban Research tells a whole lotta stories!
You could overlay the above image with all sorts of other datasets and tell a host of stories:
- Who lives where?
- What’s the predominant household religion?
- What’s the Household income?
- What is the Household Transportation mode?
- What’s the distance from subway station?
- What’s the income breakdown?
- What’s the power of story and organizing?
The obvious data sets to compare to this map are household religion or household income; but I’d love to see housing tenure, or household size, or primary mode of transportation.
So many interesting avenues to tell stories!
