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MAMDANI’S WIN  
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Surina Venkat
November 29, 2025
The Hill
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_ Has progressives eyeing New York City House seats. _

Zohran Mandami entered the mayoral race last October as a socialist
outsider with almost zero name recognition., Derek
French/UPI/Shutterstock

 

New York City mayor-elect Zohran Mamdani’s
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progressives to target House seats across the city, including some
currently held by Democratic heavyweights. 

New York City Councilmembers Chi Ossé and Alexa Avilés are
reportedly weighing bids to oust House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries
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sought the backing of the city’s DSA chapter to do so. And left-wing
challengers have emerged against Reps. Ritchie Torres,
[[link removed]] Adriano Espaillat
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Experts have called some of the campaigns long shots, while organizers
believe Mamdani’s momentum can help them overcome the odds. Mamdani
was famously polling at 1 percent before surging to win the primary
and general elections. 

“Mamdani’s win absolutely has energized and put a set of
excitement for not only socialists and left-leaning people or
progressives, but anybody that is desirous of a change,” said Andre
Easton, a Party of Socialism and Liberation member who launched a
campaign against Torres.

Mamdani’s November win saw the city’s highest voter turnout in
almost a century. He outperformed former New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo,
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candidate after losing the Democratic primary, in nine of 13
congressional districts, including those held by Jeffries and Torres.

“We’re seeing that Zohran really picked up a lot of areas that
many would say underperformed in the primaries,” said Sebastian Leon
Martinez, coordinator of the Democratic Socialists of America’s
(DSA) New York City chapter’s youth branch. 

The DSA led aggressive on-the-ground campaigns for Mamdani this cycle
and Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez
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incumbent Rep. Joe Crowley, [[link removed]]
a moderate Democrat, in 2018. 

The Justice Democrats, another organization key to Ocasio-Cortez’s
win, just endorsed a Harlem-based organizer, Darializa Avila
Chevalier, who is primarying Espaillat. 

“I think that Zohran’s win convinced so many on the left that this
is possible,” Avila Chevalier, a former Columbia student, told The
New York Times
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earlier this week. “And I think we have to build on that momentum,
because if we let that momentum go, then we did all that work for
nothing.”

Rep. Grace Meng [[link removed]](D) has drawn
a challenge from the left in Chuck Park,
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worker who most recently worked at the New York City Economic
Development Corporation. He has attacked Meng for taking corporate
donations and called her out of step on affordability, the main theme
of Mamdani’s campaign.  

Grace Mausser, one of the New York City DSA’s co-chairs, said the
organization’s membership had doubled in the past year to over
12,000 people — enabling them to potentially support more
candidates’ campaigns in the 2026 election cycle. 

“Now that we have a citywide elected official who is coming into
office with a very strong mandate, we think we have the opportunity to
elect quite a few people who are aligned,” Mausser said. 

“And if we don’t, even when there’s no opportunity to put a new
person into office, we are going to be able to leverage Zohran’s
electoral success to pressure electeds to align with some of the
policy ideas that he needs to implement his agenda,” she said.

But opposition to primarying elected officials has come from Mamdani
himself. The mayor-elect discouraged the DSA from endorsing Ossé’s
bid against Jeffries, saying
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it would be detrimental to implementing his affordability agenda. The
DSA voted against
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endorsing Ossé last week, leaving the future of his campaign
uncertain.

Mamdani also reportedly said
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he would endorse city comptroller and former mayoral candidate Brand
Lander in a race for Goldman’s seat — which both experts and
organizers believe is particularly vulnerable to a primary since he
won his initial election to Congress
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with less than half his district’s vote. 

With the exception of Goldman, Lupe Todd-Medina, president of
Effective Media Strategies and a political consultant, said incumbent
Democrats in New York City were particularly popular in their
districts.

“The comparison to what happened over the course of this past year
with the election of Mamdani to mayor, is going to be very different
than these races,” said Todd-Medina, who formerly worked with
Jeffries as a political communications director.

She also called Mamdani’s lack of endorsements so far in
congressional primary challenges strategic.

“I think that’s smart of him,” she said. “He can’t get
involved in this. I mean, he has to put together an administration.”

Jack O’Donnell, a veteran campaign strategist and managing partner
at O’Donnell & Associates, said it wasn’t unusual to have “folks
in activist and more progressive communities pushing back” 

He noted that Jeffries and Torres seemed to enjoy strong support in
their districts, likely making them safe from primary challenges. And
having worked on Schumer’s past campaigns, he warned against
counting out the senator even if Ocasio-Cortez does mount a primary
against him in 2028. 

The retirements of two longtime congressmembers are poised to kick off
more political turbulence — and opportunities for progressives to
expand their power in New York City and Washington. 

Rep. Jerry Nadler and Rep. Nydia Velázquez announced they will retire
next year, both citing the need for generational change within the
party. Nadler’s seat has already drawn nine challengers, with
Velázquez’s seat likely to inspire similar competition.

“There are certainly some open seats in New York that are drawing a
lot of candidates and attention right now,” said Justin Chae, CEO of
New York-based Supernova: Creative & Crisis, who is working with
candidate Cameron Kasky, who hopes to succeed Nadler. 

Even if some of the socialist and progressive candidates fail to
recreate Mamdani’s electoral success, the pipeline for future
challengers is also expanding.

Martinez noted that the NYC-DSA’s youth arm had inspired more
colleges in New York City — including Columbia University — to
create their own YDSA chapters. 

“You’re going to see a lot of these young organizers who were
activated by the Zohran campaign moving on to other races, whether
they’re local, state, or federal, and I know that they’re going to
play a crucial role in building up true working-class power,”
Martinez said. 

 

* Zohran Mamdani
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* DSA
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