By George Caldwell, The Daily Signal | June 25, 2026
After three hard-left candidates endorsed by New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani defeated more establishment-friendly candidates in House Democrat primaries, congressional Democrats are debating whether the results mean the mayor is taking hold of the national party.
“Obviously, this is a New York story more than anything else,” Sen. Chris Murphy, D-Conn., said Wednesday. “But … the voters are clearly telling us they want us to be bolder. Bolder in the policies we’re proposing and bolder in the tactics we use to fight authoritarianism.”
On Tuesday, two Mamdani-backed primary challengers unseated incumbents backed by House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries, D-N.Y.
“The kind of people that they’re trying to run out of office, I mean, they’re just good traditional kinds of Democrats,” Sen. John Fetterman, D-Pa., said on Fox News as the results came in.
“It’s just become the dancing days of the dirtbag Left … Some of these candidates are outrageous. You have candidates [who want to] abolish [Immigration and Customs Enforcement], abolish the police, abolish the border.”
In New York’s 13th Congressional District, Darializa Avila Chevalier, a member of the Democratic Socialists of America, narrowly defeated Rep. Adriano Espaillat, the chair of the Congressional Hispanic Caucus.
Chevalier, 32, had accused Espaillat of being ineffective in his tactics opposing President Donald Trump’s deportation policies, and of being excessively pro-Israel.
Throughout the campaign, she was questioned on social media posts that appeared to support the abolition of prisons and police, as well as the seizure of the means of production. She dismissed them as being from a previous stage in her life.
“I’m not sure about the context of those tweets or where they are coming from,” she told one reporter when asked about posts in which she said the United States was a “disgrace” and had bullied Russia.
In New York’s 10th Congressional District, former New York City Comptroller Brad Lander, an ex-DSA member, defeated incumbent Rep. Dan Goldman by a roughly 30-point margin.
Goldman, once a star of the Democratic Party for his role in Trump’s first impeachment trial in 2019, received criticism from Lander over his pro-Israel stance, his wealth, and alleged insufficient progressivism.
As the cherry on top, New York Assemblywoman Claire Valdez, a DSA member, won the election to succeed Rep. Nydia Velazquez.
She handily defeated Brooklyn Borough President Antonio Reynoso, whom Velasquez had endorsed as her successor.
Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., who helped increase the prominence of “democratic socialism” in the Democratic Party as a two-time presidential candidate, argued on Wednesday the results show the new direction.
“We’re living in an economy that’s rigged,” Sanders told reporters. “Sixty percent of the people in this country [are] living paycheck to paycheck, can’t afford rent, can’t afford food, can’t afford health care,” he said.
“And they know that something is fundamentally wrong and they’re now prepared to say … we’re sick and tired of billionaires and their super PACs buying elections,” Sanders continued. “We want … candidates who represent working people. That’s happening in New York. I think you’re going to see that all over the country.”
Of course, the candidates who won Tuesday will be the Democrat nominees in some of the deepest-blue congressional districts in the country.
It remains unknown how much success Sanders-aligned candidates such as Senate candidates Abdul El-Sayed in Michigan and Graham Platner in Maine might have among voting blocs more representative of the country at large.
Murphy acknowledged the difficulty of extrapolating the Big Apple’s results to national politics.
“I don’t want to bend over backwards to extrapolate too much based off one state’s elections. Obviously, in New York, the mayor and [Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez] have enormous power inside the Democratic Party,” said Murphy.
“I’m not sure … those elections would reproduce themselves in every other state. But yeah, I think you’d be silly not to read something in yesterday’s results,” Murphy added.
“I think we can see from each of these candidates that they have exactly what it takes to succeed and we’ve heard from Republicans time and again that they’re going to try to make these candidates the face of the Democratic Party,” Mamdani said Wednesday. “To them, I say that we are ready for that.”
Speaker of the House Mike Johnson, R-La., who beyond leading Republicans in the House, plays a major role in fundraising and message coordination during the midterm election cycle, is already targeting what he calls “mini Mamdanis.”
“This upcoming midterm election is not the midterm election of years ago. It’s going to decide the direction of the country,” Johnson said in reaction to the results.
“Are we going to maintain our status as a constitutional republic on our 250th anniversary, or are we going to make a new choice and go down some road towards a communist utopia?” he continued.
Before the results came in, Jeffries denied he was at loggerheads with Mamdani.
“I don’t think we’re on opposite pages. You can ask him whether he thinks we’re on opposite pages. He doesn’t believe we’re on opposite pages,” Jeffries said of his relationship with the mayor.
“A handful of primaries that go in one direction or the other in a given state or two aren’t going to reshape who we are as House Democrats.”
Since the results came in, Jeffries has not denounced the Democrat nominees, although he has suggested he has differences of opinion with them. Instead, he has chosen to focus on the Democratic Party’s larger battle with the president.
“I’m happy to talk about primary elections in one of the bluest cities in the country,” he said in an interview on CNBC on Tuesday. “At the end of the day, listen, our focus is going to be on ending this national nightmare in this country that America is suffering.”
George Caldwell is a correspondent for the Daily Signal.
Original article link
