In the weeks after he was elected mayor of New York City last fall, Zohran Mamdani worked behind the scenes to torpedo a bid by one of his allies, a charismatic young democratic socialist, to challenge the reelection of House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries in Brooklyn. Such a high-profile primary fight, Mamdani reportedly argued at the time, could slow his agenda for the city.
In light of what happened last night, Mamdani’s intervention might have saved the political career of a man who could become the nation’s first Black House speaker next year. Mamdani picked other primary battles across the city, and he won them all. Candidates whom the mayor backed defeated two House Democratic incumbents: Representative Dan Goldman in Manhattan and Brooklyn, and Harlem Representative Adriano Espaillat, the chair of the Congressional Hispanic Caucus. In an open-seat race, the Mamdani-endorsed state legislator Claire Valdez swamped a Democrat who had the support of much of the party’s local establishment.
The insurgent victories exposed a striking dynamic with significant implications for national politics: America’s two most powerful Democrats, Jeffries and Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, both hail from New York City, but they are not the dominant force in their own hometown. For the moment, that distinction belongs indisputably to Mamdani, the 34-year-old whose winning mayoral campaign last year took both men—and almost everyone else—by surprise.
Mamdani first endorsed Brad Lander, a rival turned ally in last year’s mayoral race. Lander trounced Goldman, a second-term Democrat and an heir to the Levi Strauss fortune, largely by playing up their differences over Israel in a district that includes some of the city’s most progressive neighborhoods. The mayor made a much bigger bet in backing Darializa Avila Chevalier, a 32-year-old democratic socialist challenging Espaillat, a five-term incumbent whom Mamdani had initially promised to endorse. Avila Chevalier has taken positions that could make her the most far-left Democrat elected to Congress in the past decade; she has said that “all deportations are wrong,” describes herself as a prison abolitionist, and attended a rally on the day after Hamas’s October 7, 2023, attack on Israel that was widely perceived as expressing support for the attack. (Lander, who now accuses Israel of committing genocide in Gaza, condemned the event at the time.) Avila Chevalier narrowly defeated Espaillat, who had the support of Jeffries and New York Governor Kathy Hochul, among other establishment figures.
[Read: The liberal district that could oust a Trump-defying Democrat]
“Mayor Mamdani made a calculation that this was a moment where we could get progressive fighters into Congress,” Rebecca Katz, a Democratic strategist whose agency made ads for Mamdani’s campaign last year, told me. “He took that risk, and he is reaping that reward.”
The wins by Lander, Avila Chevalier, and Valdez reflect the recent success of the left in deep-blue areas across the country. Last week, the democratic socialist Janeese Lewis George won the Democratic nomination for mayor of Washington, D.C.; in Los Angeles, Nithya Raman advanced in a primary to challenge Mayor Karen Bass in November. The Senate candidacy of Graham Platner in Maine will test how well leftist candidates can do in more closely divided and rural areas.
[Read: D.C. progressives’ great socialist hope]
Republicans are—unsurprisingly—trying to use the left-wing victories to paint the entire Democratic Party as captive to extremists. The National Republican Congressional Committee headlined a press release last night, “The Democrat Party Officially Belongs to the Socialists.” It also included a photo of condolence flowers placed at Jeffries’s office door. “Every House Democrat, in safe and competitive districts alike, will now answer to the radicals calling the shots,” the NRCC spokesperson Mike Marinella said in the press release. “And Americans should be terrified by where the Democrat Party is headed.”
In New York, the influence of a new mayor at the height of his popularity seemed to be as big a factor as any last night. Establishment candidates fared better in races that Mamdani chose to sit out. In a Manhattan contest that became one of the nation’s most expensive House races, Micah Lasher prevailed over Alex Bores; President John F. Kennedy’s grandson, Jack Schlossberg; and George Conway, a former Republican who is one of President Trump’s biggest critics. Lasher won with the support of both retiring Representative Jerry Nadler and former Mayor Michael Bloomberg, who is not popular with left-wing Democrats in New York. North of the city, in New York’s Hudson Valley, the moderate Cait Conley easily defeated a more progressive opponent in a GOP-held district that Democrats will contest aggressively this fall.
Whether Mamdani can sustain his clout remains to be seen. His moderate predecessor, Eric Adams, flamed out quickly after an initial political honeymoon; Adams’s bid for a second term last year ended before Election Day. The three previous New York City mayors—Rudy Giuliani, Bloomberg, and Bill de Blasio—all failed badly in their campaign for the presidency. (Lest we get ahead of ourselves: Mamdani is constitutionally ineligible to become president, because he was born in Uganda, and no New York City mayor has risen to higher office in more than 150 years.)
Yet it’s clear that Mamdani is a more powerful broker in New York than either Schumer or Jeffries, whose decisions as national party leaders have often put them at odds with Democratic-base voters back home. “If I’m Hakeem Jeffries or Chuck Schumer, and I’m looking at 2028, I would be somewhat nervous—especially Hakeem,” Christina Greer, a political scientist at Fordham University, told me.
Jeffries’s team has been dismissive of would-be left-wing challengers, referring to them as “Team Gentrification.” After last night, progressives told me, that attitude has to change. “It’s time for Leader Jeffries to recognize the left as a part of the bigger Democratic coalition and start building with it, not around it,” Katz said. “That’s how we win.”
Jeffries has said that he and Mamdani have a good working relationship, and he told reporters yesterday that he and the mayor had simply “agreed to strongly disagree” on the primary races involving Espaillat and Goldman. “A handful of primaries,” he said, would not “reshape” the Democratic caucus in the House.
Allies of Jeffries defend his relationship with progressives and insist that he is much better positioned to withstand a primary challenge in 2028 than was Espaillat, pointing to frequent appearances he makes in his district.
Schumer has kept even more distance from Mamdani, which some New York progressives see as a sign that he might not seek a sixth Senate term in 2028, when he’ll turn 78. The Senate leader, who lives in Brooklyn, did not endorse Mamdani even after he won the Democratic mayoral nomination, and he stayed out of this year’s primary fights entirely. (His office did not return a request for comment.) The left’s preferred successor to Schumer is Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, but she could instead run for president in 2028. Ocasio-Cortez won her House seat by toppling a Democratic leader in a primary, but she declined to endorse in any of this year’s competitive congressional races.
The progressive movement is a considerably stronger force within the five boroughs of New York City than it is in the rest of the state, and the past few years have demonstrated that it’s not particularly hard to mount a serious challenge against an incumbent in the city, where turnout for House primaries is frequently low. Jeffries, who is hoping to make history in a few months, would certainly not want to spend his early tenure as speaker fighting both Trump in Washington and a Mamdani-backed opponent in Brooklyn.
New York City’s ascendant left might not care, however. At Valdez’s victory party, which took place not far from Jeffries’s own district, the crowd began booing when Jeffries appeared on TV screens. Then it began chanting: “You’re next!”
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