I thought I’d rather be nowhere but Xanadu Roller Arts (262 Starr St.). Either I’d bask in the tears of those I mildly disagree with, or I would’ve successfully hedged my bets in a race that policy wonks thought would be close. It ended up being an absolute blowout.

“If you’re crying, I want you to get it out, and go get a beer,” Brooklyn Borough President Antonio Reynoso said later, but no one had cried, and no one seemed worse off than tired. After being on¹ line to sign a skate waiver, there was a sense inside that it was already over, and it was after about sixteen minutes.

After waiting a little over half an hour for Reynoso to appear (he was due anytime after 9, a staffer said), the Spectrum News NY1 broadcast declared that Assemblymember Claire Valdez won New York’s 7th Congressional primary at 9:26pm. She will almost certainly be our next congresswoman. The watch party was over. They turned off the broadcast and pulled the screen up. Xanadu was never anywhere near capacity.

Great catering, though. The churros weren’t too sweet, and the nacho cheese tasted real, and I didn’t know anyone still cultivated jalapeños that had any kick. A few skaters rolled around, too. The boyfriend of a Reynoso staffer wasn’t sure who they were. They certainly had the space to skate around; Reynoso had advertised the event as an official watch party, something Xanadu understated.

Staff later shooed away the skaters for Reynoso to take the stage, backed by his loyal endorsers, including Jennifer Gutiérrez (his successor in City Council), State Attorney General Tish James, and Councilman/Attempted Hasidic Wrangler Lincoln Restler. For them, this was just politics, a bad day at work absolved via humiliation ritual. Sometimes you bet on the wrong horse. The neighborhood’s other councilmember, Sandy Nurse, who also endorsed Reynoso, did not appear on stage. 

Reynoso delivered a polite concession speech, with kudos to his campaign staff and volunteers (“Tens of thousands of doors in every single corner of the district”) and only one foray into the ahistorical (“We spread joy and love at all times, even when the race was being dragged through the mud.”).

He admitted his son was thrilled to have him staying in town. Reynoso thanked his mother, too, because for many, Brooklyn is for family, and for being a Nets fan. (For people like me, Queens is for family, and I was a Knicks bandwagoner for game five.)

In a nod to 2010s-era identity politics he came from, Reynoso praised the district’s many identities, its Muslims, the Hasidim, “The Puerto Rican that is concerned whether or not they have clean water for their mother in Puerto Rico, and the Dominican that came here in the 1980s to make a better life for themselves.” He also mentioned “other community members” (maybe the two ride-or-die Transplants for Reynoso).

His loss means he’ll recede back to his local presidency (term-limited by 2030). He promised to “continue to do everything in [his] power to make this world and our city a better and more equitable place.” And there’s no reason to believe he won’t try: as a councilman in North Brooklyn, he fought for zoning reform in Bushwick, and as Borough President he has visions for land use and zoning reform. He’ll try to make the city better by someone’s definition (that of a YIMBY; take that for what you will).

“Regardless of how we feel, there are people in another building celebrating tonight,” he continued, referring to Valdez’s victory party down the street in East Williamsburg. “I want you to know that you are a part of that celebration. You are a part of that movement. And when it’s all said and done, we’ll come together and look to a brighter New York City.” Reynoso even quelled a few boos after finally saying Valdez’s name.

For outgoing Congresswoman Nydia Velázquez, who stood beside Reynoso, this was a strike against her legacy, her first national attempt at kingmaker being a complete failure. She worked for decades to stake a claim on her territory, only for the kids to come up from behind and redraw the whole map.

When Reynoso previously told NYT that the DSA represented “a population that is not representative of the entire district,” he was right: in the last ten years, its Hispanic population decreased by over 20% while its Bushwick’s white population has doubled, but the latter is still less than a quarter of the population.

Despite their minority status, downwardly mobile baccalaureates now dominate local politics, as shown in these primary elections, which locally confirmed that Zohran Mamdani was still Mayor of Bushwick. The body is no longer rejecting its transplants. An art student from Texas is our presumptive congresswoman. This land is their land now. Over at 99 Scott (99 Scott Ave.), DSA was lifting their bazookas to intifada the heavens.

Earlier in the day, I toured a half-dozen polling stations, dead in the afternoon rain, mostly to harass Erik Dilan canvassers into giving me a free t-shirt. I never got one, and that’s probably a good thing: like his father, Dilan couldn’t help but lose, this time to Christian Celeste Tate, just as his father did to State Senator Julia Salazar. 

Losing was in the air across North Brooklyn and Ridgewood: down ballot, Mamdani and the DSA ended up sending Eon Huntley (Bed-Stuy), David Orkin (Ridgewood), Samantha Kattan (Ridgewood), and Aber Kawas (Ridgewood) to Albany. The incumbents and primary rivals will be forgotten as fodder in a bloodbath of handwringers and phone-in politicians.

(Uptown, Darializa Avila Chevalier upset Adriano Espaillat in a race that became such a distinctly Latin American flavor of racist as to prove that New York City, like any part of America, is still just two bleeding hearts boxing against five bigots in a trenchcoat.)

Now, the DSA, like any real party, has a chance to fail, and I wish them the best in trying hard not to.

“Claire was there,” they chanted there, and she was. As a slogan, it’s so passive (“was” is only stative), presenting her history of organizing and work in Albany as a participation trophy. Reynoso’s been somewhere in Brooklyn for twenty years, then sure, but fairness is immaterial when a man like Mamdani enters the political realm and reorients its gravity around him. Valdez was there, from the beginning, beside our local god, and New York’s 7th is her manna. “Nobody living can ever stop me,” someone’s humming right about now.

Photos by Andrew Karpan. Article updated 6/25 to correct the implication that Claire Valdez’s “Claire was there” slogan only related to her early endorsement of Mamdani.

---

1. Trying very hard to practice indigeneity here. ↩︎