On Tuesday night, all three of the Democratic candidates endorsed by New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani won their primaries.
The victories of Brad Lander (over two-term Rep. Dan Goldman in NY-10), Darializa Avila Chevalier (over five-term Rep. Adriano Espaillat in NY-13), and Claire Valdez (to replace a retiring Rep. Nydia Velazquez in NY-7) have ignited a debate about the future of the Democratic Party and generated a meltdown among pro-Israel centrists.
Will this progressive insurgency extend beyond New York? What does it say about Mamdani’s power in the city? How will Lander, who has equivocated on the issue of Palestine, govern on the issue in Congress?
Mondoweiss U.S. correspondent Michael Arria asked political consultant Peter Feld about these questions and more.
Mondoweiss: Did anything about last night’s results surprise you?
Feld: Well, I didn’t expect Valdez to win by such a large margin, but it just goes to show the strength of Mamdani’s operation and the strategy that they put together when they chose these three races. They were well-selected.
That’s a good segue. Can you talk about the Mamdani of it all? He goes 3 for 3 with his endorsement picks amid the usual right-wing, pro-Israel campaigns smearing him as an alleged antisemite.
What does last night say about Mamdani’s political power in the city and the power of NYC-DSA more broadly?
I think both Mamdani and DSA really exponentially increased their power yesterday. Mamdani and his team ran these races in a way that would really cement the understanding that he’s created a new type of organizing in the city, as his victory last year showed.
It also demonstrates, as you noted a few weeks ago, that the smear campaigns that have been used against Mamdani and against Palestine advocates don’t work anymore. That we’re going to have a member of Congress who attended the October 8th rally in Times Square, which would have been considered politically disqualifying, but now turns out to be actually qualifying. It’s been pointed out in in quite a few ways that support for Palestine is a touchstone of authenticity at a time when Democratic politicians really are lacking in it, as you can see in the party’s low ratings.
One indication of that is the weakness of several incumbents, like Dan Goldman and Adriano Espaillat, but also a number of others that nobody was watching, who all scored surprisingly low victories against opponents that didn’t have much money or name recognition, like Grace Meng winning with just 57% against an opponent without much money.
Some people asked, why is Dan Goldman in trouble? He’s been a standard issue, garden variety liberal Democrat on 90-odd percent of the issues. So why would he lose? Well, we have the answer. It was because he was completely out of step with his district, including a lot of Jewish voters, on [Israel].
And I think we’re going to see it’s not over yet. We’re going to see this in other states and other primaries where there is no Mamdani, and that will be the real test. Mamdani certainly showed the careful strategy in his planning, and demonstrated the strength he brings when he endorses political candidate and puts his muscle behind them.
But the issues also drove a lot of these results, particularly in District 10.
Some people asked, why is Dan Goldman in trouble? He’s been a standard issue, garden variety liberal Democrat on 90-odd percent of the issues. So why would he lose? Well, we have the answer. It was because he was completely out of step with his district, including a lot of Jewish voters, on an issue that people wrongly thought would consolidate Jews in favor of someone like Goldman. We learned that Jewish voters and non-Jewish voters in lower Manhattan and parts of Brooklyn in that district do not want to be represented by somebody who voted to sanction the ICC, who voted to censure Rashida Tlaib, who’s voted for every weapons system Israel ever wanted, who couldn’t call it a genocide. That doesn’t represent us. And it’s an important enough issue that we will make a change.
You alluded to this, but we have the midterms coming up, and the Republicans seemingly have some Trump-created problems as a result of the Iran War.
There’s a standard refrain from centrists after results like last night’s, when people say New York City doesn’t represent the rest of the country. However, as you say, the issue of Israel/Palestine obviously transcends the location.
Do you believe progressive campaigns will help shape the midterms in some capacity, and what would you say to people who say NYC is not reflective of the wider United States?
Well, I think that the insurgent progressives are going to help save the midterms.
First of all, we’ve seen lots of places besides New York City where people with similar perspectives on Palestine have won upset victories. Analilia Mejia and Adam Hamawy in New Jersey, Chris Rabb in Pennsylvania, and at the end of this month, there’s a strong possibility that Melat Kiros in Colorado is going to defeat longtime incumbent Diana DeGette. We have primaries to come in Florida. We have general election contests in California that will be progressive Democrats versus mainstream Democratic incumbents such as Doris Matsui and Jimmy Gomez. So we’ll find out soon enough that this type of movement is not limited to New York.
But I would also suggest to people who say that New York isn’t the world that they look at the polling on Israel and the Iran war nationally. It’s impossible to get those huge numbers we’re seeing react negatively to Israel if it were only New York.
In Michigan, it looks like we’re going to have Abdul El-Sayed cruising to a victory in the primary. I predict he’ll win the general election and go to the Senate. I believe he will be a stronger candidate in the general election than his main opponent, Haley Stevens, would be. We’ll have to see if some progressive insurgents can win primaries in swing districts and then prove we can carry those districts in November with a similar message — not just primaries in blue districts.
There’s been a lot of focus on the three candidates Mamdani backed, but there were other left-wing victories as well. Can you talk about those?
DSA won seven out of the eight legislative races that they that they targeted. And the eighth one was a very narrow loss. So the power of DSA and the Mamdani left in New York certainly goes beyond these three congressional races, and it will embolden other challenges in the future. I don’t think we’re done yet. A lot of incumbents at the state Assembly level who were not targeted by DSA and weren’t followed closely got very low reelection percentages. It makes sense because it’s really the same voters.
Organizing breeds organizing and victory breeds victory. I think we’re looking at a movement that’s really feeling its power and deciding where to go next.
Organizing breeds organizing and victory breeds victory. I think we’re looking at a movement that’s really feeling its power and deciding where to go next.
Last weekend we saw a lot of establishment Democrats crying to the New York Times about how they were Mamdani’s allies and now he’s turned against them. Well, Mamdani did the biggest favors for the establishment you could ever imagine. He vaporized Chi Osse’s challenge to Hakeem Jeffries challenge, and he vaporized Kathy Hochul’s challenge, and both of them would have been fighting the same voter revolt that took down Espaillat and Goldman. A lot of people including me were upset, but other people are saying this was smart because he was able to focus on these three winnable races and have the maximum impact.
But Hakeem Jeffries should not be resting easy, not only for a future re-election, but even in a speakership, there’s a decent chance that the bloc of progressives that come in next January if Democrats win the House will be larger than the Democratic majority. And those progressives will be able to put Hakeem Jeffries’ speakership, should it happen, into a chokehold over issues like Israel and corporate giveaways and healthcare, and a lot of other things that are important to the people who elected them. Neither Avila Chevalier nor Valdez have committed to support Jeffries for Speaker.
It seems like the writing had been on the wall for Goldman for over a year. Are there current incumbents who should be getting nervous about potential challengers?
There are quite a few incumbents who could face challenges in two years. But we have to see how they perform once they’re back in Congress next year. One of the great benefits of a stunning sweep like we saw yesterday is that it puts fear into the establishment Democrats.
And it may change the way that they act in office.
So I do think that there’s every possibility of a wide palette of challenges in 2028 to establishment Democrats, not least of whom would be Chuck Schumer, who I think almost could plan his retirement at this point. I have a feeling that Schumer looked at last night’s results and is seriously reconsidering whether he even wants to subject himself to the kind of campaign he will have — whether that’s a challenge from AOC or, should she decide instead to run for president, some other progressive running against him.
Schumer is a clear example because he’s the leader in the Senate. Jeffries is the leader in the House. So both of them are really in a unique position, because they don’t have a free hand to govern the way they would want to, looking at last night.
Beyond that, I would say let’s see if the surviving establishment Democrats who go back to Washington next year get the message or not. If they do, then it will change who gets challenged.
What does last night mean for pro-Israel lobbying groups, like AIPAC? It’s obviously a big loss for them and their message.
The Israel lobby is toxic, and that was proven again yesterday. Nevertheless, they’re still crowing about several victories that they had in a variety of districts, including NY-17, where their preferred candidate Cait Conley was nominated. They won the race in Maryland where they had spent a lot of money. Obviously they failed in these three marquee races in New York, but we’re not going to be able to stop fighting them. They don’t just shrivel up and fade away. They adapt their tactics.
Now, things may be changing faster than they can adapt. We’ve talked before about some of the things that they’ve done to adapt. For one thing, they’ve thrown in the towel on aid to Israel in order to preserve arms sales. So that will become the new battle.
They used a lot of tactics against Darializa Avila Chevalier that they previously used against Jamaal Bowman and Cori Bush, but this time they didn’t work. I’m talking about criticizing her for what she said about Kamala Harris and Joe Biden, for example. Those were big messages that were used in 2024 against Bowman and Bush. But they didn’t work against Darializa. Neither did her old, deleted social media posts. And so what we’ve also learned is that sometimes vast amounts of money are not enough.
It’s an incredible sign of changing times that, while AIPAC has to hide its hand and avoid any mention of Israel, a successful candidate for Congress like Claire Valdez would air a TV ad that is all about Palestine. I don’t think anyone would have believed this even two years ago.
Now the money does do something. Espaillat came closer to winning than I thought he would, because his poll numbers were in the 30s, and he ended up doing better than that. That could be the result of the massive money that was spent against Avila Chevalier in the final two weeks. But it didn’t work. And they do have to hide their hand as best they can. You have investigative journalists like Ryan Grim and Mondoweiss that draw attention to the secret spending that AIPAC’s doing and exposing it. And then that becomes the issue. It became an issue in the Valdez versus Reynoso race. It certainly became an issue in the Espaillat-Chevalier race.
And their desperation was so great in the Espaillat race that we saw the most intense and atrocious racism used against Avila Chevalier, implying that her ethnic background was was Haitian rather than Dominican, as if Haitian is a slur, using a version of great replacement theory to fearmonger that Mamdani and Avila Chevalier were trying to push out the longstanding Dominican community. Thankfully this was rejected, but it just shows the desperation that as much as AIPAC and its allies scream racism — claiming that Mamdani was attacking Jews when he called AIPAC “dark money monsters” — they are totally comfortable using racism if that’s what they think they need to do to win.
It’s an incredible sign of changing times that, while AIPAC has to hide its hand and avoid any mention of Israel, a successful candidate for Congress like Claire Valdez would air a TV ad that is all about Palestine. I don’t think anyone would have believed this even two years ago. I think it has a lot to do with why she was able to defeat a solid, popular progressive like Antonio Reynoso, who was supported by most labor unions and the Working Families Party.
Let’s talk about Lander, who was endorsed by Mamdani and has criticized Israel, despite referring to himself as a Zionist and equivocating on some of these issues. How do you see him governing?
I think we have to see what Brad Lander is going to do, because he won overwhelmingly.
And I think he proved that there is an upside to being many things to many people. We talked earlier about Mamdani’s “team” approach. One of the most interesting things that happened was Mamdani going to great lengths to co-brand the three candidates he was endorsing, including in a very powerful ad that linked all three and ran during the Knicks finals. The ad showed him passing the basketball to Lander, who then passed it to Avila Chevalier, who then passed it to Valdez.
But Lander, trying to appeal to everyone and thread the needle, had to disavow any endorsement of Avila Chevalier. He had let it be known that he left DSA after their Twitter feed promoted that October 8th rally. And of course, Avila Chevalier was at that rally. I passed by a canvass last week in Tompkins Square Park where the volunteers presented Lander with a t-shirt that showed the basketball ad imagery of all four, Mamdani and the three candidates. Lander sheepishly folded it up and said that he’d be giving it to his son, but he wouldn’t be wearing it.
So, Lander is the poster child for all the contortions that liberal Zionists have to go through this new political environment. But he’s a very talented politician. Lander really leads a charmed life. He came in a distant third for mayor, but managed to convert that into a congressional seat. That’s about as impressive an accomplishment for a politician as we’re likely to see. So he’s one to watch.
He’s also very ambitious. I wouldn’t rule out Lander running for Senate — probably not in two years, it’s too soon for him to go up against Schumer, but maybe in four years against Kirsten Gillibrand, who should be feeling very, very nervous right now. She shares all of Schumer’s liabilities and has managed to skate under the radar. She said horrifically racist things against Mamdani last year. She proudly serves on the Senate Abraham Accords Committee. I don’t think that’s going to fly in 2030. And she’s very lucky that she’s not up for reelection sooner than that.
Michael Arria
Michael Arria is Mondoweiss’ U.S. correspondents. He is the author of Medium Blue: The Politics of MSNBC. Follow him on x at @michaelarria.
