Packed into the Ridgewood Democratic Club (60-70 Putnam Ave), a century-old room about the size of a 19th century schoolhouse, the likely next congressperson for the eastern reaches of New York City, proceeded on a Sunday afternoon to field questions from a gangly and well-meaning Cornell med school grad in suspenders, joined by a pair of low-level political consultants. The room was modestly filled out, if not incredibly so.

“You get me here on a Sunday. I’m going to dress comfortably,” said a departing Antonio Reynoso, chosen candidate of departing current office-holder Nydia Velázquez. He was wearing a soft blue sweater and Air Max 97s; at 42, he has been a figure in local politics since his early 20s, when he co-founded New Kings Democrats, which maneuvered him into power around the fall of Bushwick political boss Vito Lopez (RIP). His strongest opponent to emerge so far was Claire Valdez, 36, a DSA functionary and career organizer from Texas, herself elevated to elected office when scandal took down a different local Democrat, Juan Ardila (RIP). 

If their paths to power and their politics were both remarkably similar, so were their chances: the race is being dictated, at least publically, by a poll from earlier this year that put Reynoso ahead by just four points, and has him losing by 13 points, when voters are purportedly informed that Zohran Mamdani is supporting Valdez. This has turned the contest between two soft-spoken outerboro politicians into a proxy fight over the popularity of their far more charismatic mayor. 

Zohran knew this too. A day earlier, the mayor was shaking hands alongside Valdez inside the Weylin (175 Broadway), the historically domed former branch of the HSBC bank in Williamsburg, and had gathered assorted Brooklyn-style celebrities like Michael Stipe, Kal Penn, Lili Taylor and James Murphy, per an extensive spread in Interview magazine. He was preparing Valdez for something; she had been an important gatherer of votes in the Ridgewood area, which turned out 80% for Zohran in last year’s primary. It would be the low-turnout primary voters in June who would decide exactly what job that would be. (She had already keenly ditched running for another term holding office in faraway Albany.) 

For a certain kind of pundit, the race was between Reynoso and Valdez and reflected a generational or cultural divide between old style, Obama-era Democrats and the new style of DSA-era Democrats. Ross Barkin called it “the Most Interesting Race in New York City” and City & State head Jeff Coltin called it “the latest referendum on who’s a real New Yorker,” while admitting “we all acknowledge there aren’t major differences between [Reynoso] and Valdez.”

Complicating matters were competing candidacies from Julie Won, who was both a former IBM consultant and, currently, a councilwoman from Long Island City, and Vichal Kumar, a public defender whom the local Young Dems group decided to invite to fill out a seat at the debate as well, among the various non-politicians who also have thrown their hat in the ring for Velázquez’s abandoned seat. (Paperboy Prince et. al.) 

Kumar was by far the most likable of the bunch and spoke movingly about the public charity work that is his chosen career, though he freely admitted, “I’m not the candidate with the most money [or] most powerful friends,” the two measures of success in American political life. Meanwhile, Won, at one point, promised that “We’re not going to fund wars, except for Ukraine.”  

Regarding foreign policy, Won and Reynoso both made commitments to the international order of 20th century politics. (implicitly: NATO, UN, et al.) Valdez took a more leftward stance, twice saying the “immiserating the working class around the world” in reference to the standard U.S. foreign policy that she positioned herself against. These were radical gestures, relatively speaking, and reflected the changing politics of the Brooklyn and Queens area, the so-called “Commie Corridor.”

“We’re running to win medicare for all, unions for all, housing for all, to end the forever wars and the genocide in Gaza,” Valdez said, marrying the last decade of political sloganeering into a single, if airy, sentence, making her the only candidate to bring up the ongoing genocide. (Per the trades, her campaign is being run by Zohran advisor Morris Katz and former Zohran communications director Andrew Epstein, and doubles as a referendum on their abilities as political image-makers.) Later, Valdez took aim at “oligarchs, billionaires, robber barons who have stolen the wealth that we have created through our labor we have made for them,” a more knottily-crafted line that only trips her up a little bit. 

Naturally, Reynoso was the first to say “Tax the rich,” a Zohran-by-way-of-AOC sentiment that all the candidates competed among themselves to echo. More locally, the move by Zohran to potentially revive a now $21 billion plan to pave over Sunnyside Yards, with the apparent support of President Trump, came up too. All spoke in favor of more housing, though Kumar was the only one to raise concern about AMI requirements for housing. Won echoed complaints I heard her make at a town hall about this a month ago in Sunnyside, that it would be decades before any new housing would be seen in the area, and that there was nowhere appropriated in the federal budget where this money would come from. 

A once-ambitious abstract artist, Valdez’s relative lack of extensive political experience comes off as charming and relatable. She lives in Ridgewood, after all, and had attended the right events there. (Per a recent ‘hit piece’ in the Post: “the other three big wins from her one year in office in the state Assemblywoman are that she rents an apartment, is a member of a union — and was an early backer of Mamdani when he ran for mayor in 2024.” If we’re being honest, me too.) 

Reynoso has been in office longest, but talks less often about his own accomplishments during two terms on city council, where he represented Bushwick and East Williamsburg. On the stump, like he did over the weekend, he largely touts his signature legislative success, back when he was chair of the city council’s Sanitation Committee: the Waste Equity Law, which purportedly forced garbage trucks to drive less frequently in four different neighborhoods, including East Williamsburg, the implementation of which has been, by one account, “slow or non-existent.” 

His time in that office was otherwise known for fighting over the DeBlasio administration’s efforts to rezone former industrial spaces in Bushwick, an explosive, unpopular political fight that contentiously ended nowhere. He was more successful in pushing to rezone vast swaths of East New York, which turned out to be only an economic failure instead of a political one. (“Only 600 of 6,500 expected homes have been built” one of the real estate trades would later report.) Half a decade later, faced with the controversial “Brooklyn Marine Terminal” rezoning that Eric Adams was pushing in Red Hook, Reynoso didn’t talk about it much and folded quickly. 

Nobody talked about Nydia Velázquez, the outgoing ranking chair of Congress’ Small Business Subcommittee, a position of less seismic importance or significance than neighboring congressman Hakeem Jeffries, currently the chamber’s Democratic Leader, or AOC, thought to be a presidential hopeful, or even the similarly outgoing Jerry Nadler, who once ruled over the Justice Committee.

But there are worse fates in Brooklyn politics. Velázquez had taken her seat from Stephen Solarz, most notable for writing hundreds of checks on his House of Representatives bank account that bounced; Solarz himself had taken the seat from “Bert” Podell, whose career ended in flames when he pled guilty to charges of taking over $40,000 in bribes from a small Florida airline. 

In the crowd that afternoon, I spotted Phil Wong, a councilman who narrowly beat his fellow longtime city hall staffer Alicia Vaichunas for a city council seat in a race that notably ended with Vaichunas reportedly in tears and crying betrayal; later, she apparently agreed to work the same job for Wong, just like she did for his predecessor. It’s true, people can get over anything; or maybe, we all just want a job. 

I asked who Wong was supporting in the race. He said he was just there to listen.  

---

Photos by Andrew Karpan.