The New York City left is on the electoral ascent right now. New York City Democratic Socialists of America (NYC-DSA) member Zohran Mamdani entered the mayor’s office on January 1, the culmination of nearly a decade’s worth of socialist organizing and institution-building in the city. New socialist candidates are regularly announcing campaigns to challenge incumbent members of the state legislature, aiming to join the seven already there. (A potential eighth, Diana Moreno, will be immediately joining them if she wins a special election to replace Mamdani’s district in the state assembly next month.)

And NYC-DSA has its sights set even higher: in the case of Claire Valdez, to Congress.

Valdez, thirty-six, has just announced her campaign for New York’s 7th Congressional District, a seat that includes parts of Brooklyn and Queens and that will soon be vacant upon longtime representative Nydia Velázquez’s retirement. She will be running against Brooklyn Borough President Antonio Reynoso. Valdez was a rank-and-file organizer in the United Auto Workers (UAW) Local 2110 in New York City and an active member of NYC-DSA. With the organization’s endorsement, she won a state assembly seat in Queens in 2024; on January 14, NYC-DSA will hold an endorsement forum weighing whether to endorse her campaign — part of what the organization characterizes as its “thorough, democratic, and lengthy” endorsement process. That endorsement would bring Valdez a major degree of grassroots campaign firepower, the kind that Mamdani’s top campaigners credit with delivering him the mayoralty.