New York’s Smorgasbord Primary

Upstate, Republicans Brawl

Republican House Member Elise Stefanik opted to retire rather than stand for reelection. Her 21st District in upstate New York touches both Vermont and Canada.

Anthony Constantino is a former boxer, a sometimes rapper and a sticker magnate. He faced off against Robert Smullen, a former Marine and current state assemblyman.

Smullen did three tours in Afghanistan and might have bested Constantino in a normal matchup, as someone who presents himself as more electable in November. He appealed to different factions of the party by, for instance, touting minor appointments he received both under former President George W. Bush and under Trump. Smullen has some political experience and emphasized his achievements that came from working with others.

That is not Constantino’s general approach to politics – or life, based on many stories. At a question period during one of Constantino’s political events held in June, a man took the mic and recounted an insulting exchange they had had on social media, Politico reported.

The disagreement had to do with human trafficking and closed borders. The man had said that Constantino’s more restrictionist approach would only make the problem of human trafficking worse, and Constantino had not taken that well.

“When I brought that up, you challenged me to a fight and said that I was a fake gangster”, the man said.

The candidate replied: “It’s clearly illegal, human trafficking. And anyone who supports that, maybe you do need to get beat up a little bit.”

Security intervened and quickly ejected the man from the event to prevent an actual brawl from breaking out.

Trump weighed in on the race to endorse the former boxer. Enough Republicans followed the president’s lead to make the difference.

With most votes counted, 59.3% of the GOP votes went for Constantino against 40.2% for Smullen. He will now try to hold the seat against Democratic nominee Blake Gendebien, a farmer, who had his ticket punched with 64.7% of the Democratic primary vote in the district.

NYC’s Democratic Socialist Hopefuls

The New York City chapter of the Democratic Socialists of America pushed two candidates for the US House extra hard and prevailed in both primaries.

Darializa Avila Chevalier, in District 13, was described by the DSA as a “working-class Afro-Latina organizer, [United Auto Workers] member, and the daughter of Dominican immigrants who has spent years fighting for her community”.

Chevalier’s own family’s struggles with “immigration issues, economic hardship, and structural racism”, had “shaped her commitment to justice”, the DSA assured. She is running for Congress to fight for “babies, not bombs, housing for all, and to abolish ICE”.

District 13 represents upper Manhattan, including Harlem and Spanish Harlem and the western part of the Bronx. It is frozen blue, with approximately 373,000 registered Democrats against about 25,000 brave souls who are willing to register as Republican.

To call the district a lock in the general election for a Democrat is close to a sure bet. The incumbent Congressman Adriano Espaillat, whom Chevalier beat out in the primary by a few thousand votes, had held the seat since 2016. His worst general election showing was 83% of the vote.

Claire Valdez, in District 7, had been a union organizer and is a freshman assemblywoman. She is also an artist and a member of the Ysleta del Sur Pueblo Nation, a Native American tribe in Texas.

In Albany, Valdez has “fought to tax the rich, protect tenants, and empower working people”, the DSA assured progressive voters. If elected to Congress, she is expected to “fight for unions, for housing and Medicare for All, and to end U.S. complicity in genocide and apartheid”.

District 7 includes parts of Queens and Brooklyn. It is a tick less Democratic than District 13 but the party still enjoys an overwhelming advantage there. It is the 29th most Democratic district in the nation, according to Ballotpedia calculations.

Socialist Revolution, with an Asterisk

These and other victories are currently being used to bolster the reputations of Mayor Mamdani, Senator Sanders, the DSA and similar progressive influence figures.

Ross Barkan is a prominent progressive media figure who writes a popular political newsletter and edits The Metropolitan Review. His unsuccessful 2018 campaign for a Democratic Party nomination to the state Senate was run by Mamdani, and he was and remains a booster of the New York City mayor. So it should not surprise anyone that Barkan rushed out a newsletter to label Tuesday night’s results “The New Socialist Revolution”.

“There are elections that not only realign politics but change how we understand concrete reality”, Barkan began, and he predicted that the triumph of several candidates on Tuesday would eventually have that effect.

Barkan bookended his analysis by imagining a glorious socialist future, or at least the chance of one.

“For a century, since successive Red Scares squelched socialism in this country, the left has been in a defensive crouch”, he lamented, and: “Only now can the socialists hit back. Only now can they escape the margins. They found their generational talent [in Mamdani]. It’s a fair fight, at last.”

But all extrapolations of a socialist future based on one night’s primary results also come with an asteroid-sized asterisk. The New York primaries of 2025 saw a significant surge in turnout. This year, vastly fewer people bothered to vote.

The numbers are still coming in, but the early voting numbers were way down. This year saw 172,743 early votes cast in the primaries, against 735,317 in last year’s primaries, or a 76.5% drop, according to analysis by The City Reporter.

Valdez’s Opponent Gets Creative

Valdez’s District 7 bid for Congress has drawn an opponent in Melvin Rivera, who stood unopposed for the Republican Party nomination. He is pitching himself as a community activist, tenant organizer and an advocate for working families.

According to Rivera’s campaign website, he has worked over several decades to “protect rent-stabilized tenants from illegitimate rent increases, defend homeowners from predatory real estate speculation, support families displaced by Hurricane Maria, and organize communities around housing, public safety, economic opportunity, and environmental justice”.

If that does not sound like your typical Republican, then Rivera’s messaging is working. New York’s unique ballot laws allow candidates to be endorsed by multiple parties, giving voters several chances to vote for the same candidate. If you like the candidate but not the party, then you can choose another line to cast that vote. This lends clout to minor parties that manage to deliver critical votes.

New York City Republicans can very occasionally use the endorsements of smaller third parties to counter the Democrats’ registration advantage in a district. In this case, Rivera’s name is expected to appear on the Republican, Conservative, No Kings Party and Arts & Culture Party lines.

If Rivera wins in November, it would be a political earthquake of at least comparable size to the current democratic socialist primary victories. It would also almost certainly not come on the strength of votes cast for the party line of President Trump, a former New Yorker.