NYC Socialists Are Trying to Expand Their Electoral Wins
Months after electing Zohran Mamdani as mayor, New York democratic socialists have an ambitious slate of candidates for this month’s Democratic primaries: one for the state legislature in Buffalo, seven in the city, and two for Congress.
NYC-DSA is aiming to use its momentum from electing Zohran Mamdani as mayor to elect a large slate of state legislators and congressional candidates. (An image of the slate, courtesy NYC-DSA. Not pictured: Illapa Saritupac)
When I arrive at the new headquarters for Eon Huntley’s socialist campaign for state assembly, a small crew is hard at work painting the space, a storefront on a lively block of Bedford-Stuyvesant’s Tompkins Avenue. The window is festooned with the candidate’s commitments: signs promoting universal health care, rent controls, and “ICE out of NYC.” When the candidate arrives, fashionably tieless in a black jacket and khakis — Huntley works in high-end clothing retail, an industry in which he has been a labor organizer — we sit down and talk about the New York City Democratic Socialists of America (NYC-DSA) slate of local and federal candidates, the group’s largest ever, of which his campaign is a part.
It’s been a big couple weeks for that slate leading up to the Democratic primary elections on June 23. On May 15, Bernie Sanders endorsed the whole crew: the two congressional candidates, Darializa Avila Chevalier for NY-13, a district comprising both Harlem and parts of the Bronx, and Claire Valdez of NY-7, encompassing a swath of what’s been called the “Commie Corridor” of Brooklyn and Queens for its high percentage of Zohran Mamdani voters and general openness to left politics; state assembly challengers Christian Celeste Tate for parts of Bushwick and East New York and Conrad Blackburn in Harlem; Aber Kawas and David Orkin in Queens; Diana Moreno in Mamdani’s former Queens district; Samantha Kattan in Valdez’s former Queens district; Illapa Sairitupac in Chinatown and the Lower East Side; and Adam Bojak in Buffalo. And Eon Huntley, who smiles calling himself a “Bernie bro.” The Sanders endorsement was “an amazing moment for me,” he says. “He’s part of why I’m here.”
About an hour after Huntley and I spoke on Thursday, Mamdani endorsed Chevalier, an organizer now working as an investigator with Neighborhood Defender Service of Harlem, in a contentious race against longtime incumbent Adriano Espaillat. The same evening, socialist congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez endorsed three of the NYC-DSA challengers: Tate, Orkin, and Huntley.
This article is for subscribers only. Please login or subscribe to access our full archives and beautiful print and digital magazine starting at just $3 a month.