Brooklyn borough president will run for Velázquez’s House seat as socialists circle
- The San Juan Daily Star
- 8 hours ago
- 4 min read
By NICHOLAS FANDOS and BENJAMIN ORESKES
Antonio Reynoso, the Brooklyn borough president, said Thursday that he would run for a New York City House seat being vacated by Rep. Nydia M. Velázquez, setting the stage for a potential clash with a growing democratic socialist movement.
Reynoso, 42, is the first major candidate to declare a campaign for the left-leaning district. While not a socialist himself, he has a long progressive record, a high-profile role in the city’s most populous borough and a close relationship with Velázquez.
In an interview, Reynoso said he was motivated to run to check President Donald Trump’s attempts to curb immigration and federal safety net programs, and that he would seek to “decorporatize the Democratic Party.”
“I want to be a voice to push the party to the left,” he said.
Yet in a sign of the party’s rapidly shifting mores, Reynoso appears to be headed for a showdown with the Democratic Socialists of America, a farther-left faction that has been emboldened by Mayor-elect Zohran Mamdani’s victory in November. Now, the group and Mamdani himself are eager to test their political muscle — and have privately signaled that Reynoso is not their choice.
The Brooklyn and Queens district, New York’s 7th, may provide one of the best opportunities to grow the DSA’s ranks in Congress. It contains neighborhoods including Greenpoint, Williamsburg, Bushwick and Ridgewood, where young voters have regularly elected socialists to state and local office in recent years. The district, which is more than one-third Latino, also voted overwhelmingly for Mamdani, a DSA member.
Several democratic socialist lawmakers are actively exploring runs, including council member Tiffany Cabán, state Sen. Kristen Gonzalez and Assembly member Claire Valdez. (State Sen. Julia Salazar, one of the New York City DSA chapter’s first officeholders, also contemplated running for the seat but said she had ruled it out.)
The local chapter, which counts 3,000 members in the district, is expected to vote in January to endorse one of them and put its formidable field operation behind the pick.
Velázquez, 72, stunned New York’s political class last month when she announced she would retire after 16 terms in the House. The first Puerto Rican woman elected to Congress, she had spent decades cultivating a younger generation of political leaders on the left, including several of her potential successors, and said it was time to let them take over.
The fight for her seat is far from the only one roiling Democrats in New York, as voters in the city and nationally grapple over the party’s direction amid Trump’s aggressive maneuvering.
In the heart of Manhattan, roughly 10 candidates are vying to succeed Rep. Jerrold Nadler, including a Kennedy scion. In a neighboring district that also includes parts of Brooklyn, Brad Lander, another progressive ally of Mamdani, is preparing to launch a primary campaign against Rep. Dan Goldman, a more traditional liberal. And challengers from the left have also picked primary fights with Reps. Ritchie Torres in the Bronx and Adriano Espaillat in upper Manhattan.
More than the other contests, the race to replace Velázquez pits different factions of the left against one another.
The son of working-class Dominican immigrants, Reynoso began his career organizing child care providers to join the teachers’ union. He helped found New Kings Democrats, an organization dedicated to uprooting the more moderate Brooklyn political machine. And as a City Council member, he served as a co-chair of the body’s Progressive Caucus.
He was elected borough president in 2021, succeeding Eric Adams, the current mayor. The role comes with a visible platform but limited power. In 2023, he announced he would invest his office’s entire capital budget for a year, about $45 million, in maternal health programs.
interview, Reynoso said he had dreamed of becoming a member of Congress since he was a college student, and that he was particularly motivated to try to protect programs such as food stamps and Section 8 housing vouchers that his family had relied on.
He stressed that though he was not a socialist, he was not antagonistic toward the DSA and had backed Mamdani as one of three preferred primary candidates in April.
“I have been doing this work as a reformer, as a progressive, for a long time before the DSA had a single candidate they were supporting,” he said, adding that he hoped to build a broader coalition in the diverse district.
He rolled out his campaign Thursday with the support of four progressive City Council members whose districts overlap with the congressional district: Lincoln Restler, Shekar Krishnan, Jennifer Gutiérrez and Sandy Nurse.
Reynoso met with DSA leaders in recent weeks to gauge if they might support his candidacy, but he said it was clear the group wanted to run one of its own members.
Cabán, 38, is perhaps the best known potential entrant. A former public defender, she narrowly lost a race for Queens district attorney in 2019.
Gonzalez, 30, is in her second term in the state Senate, representing parts of Brooklyn, Queens and Manhattan.
Valdez, 36, is a former labor organizer with the United Auto Workers who took office only this year.
Gonzalez declined to comment, as did representatives of the other two officials.