Assemblywoman Claire Valdez trounced Brooklyn Borough President Antonio Reynoso by a 2-1 margin in fundraising in their Democratic primary in the NY-07 district as early voting was set to start Saturday in four contentious NYC congressional races, federal disclosure reports revealed.
Rep. Adriano Espaillat retook his edge in the money race over progressive challenger Darializa Avila Chevalier in upper Manhattan’s NY-13 while Alex Bores held a financial lead over Micah Lasher in NY-12 and Rep. Dan Goldman retained his big-bucks advantage over Brad Lander in NY-10.
Valdez, who is running with the influential endorsement of Mayor Mamdani, raked in $564,000 since April 1, more than doubling up on Reynoso, a fellow progressive, who raised just $253,000 in the same period as they vie for the deep-blue district now represented by Rep. Nydia Velazquez.
The first-term state lawmaker has raised a total of $1.3 million, which she boasts mostly comes from small grassroots donors, and has $418,000 on hand going into the home stretch of the race. Those figures outpace Reynoso, who has taken in $858,000 during the entire campaign and has just $312,000 in his coffers.
Valdez holds a narrow lead in polling of the race that analysts see as a test of Mamdani’s popularity in the district that includes progressive strongholds in western Queens and northern Brooklyn.
The fundraising figures came in supplementary filings to the Federal Election Commission ahead of the June 23 primary covering the second quarter up to June 3.
Elsewhere, Espaillat bounced back in Q2 to score a $741,000 to $546,000 fundraising win over Chevalier in the district stretching from Harlem to Inwood and a slice of the Bronx.
The five-term incumbent stumbled in the first quarter as his rival outraised him, but retains a much bigger war chest for the final days of the race.
Bores, an Upper East Side assemblyman, outpaced Lasher, who represents the Upper West Side, by a similar margin in the same period, while Kennedy scion Jack Schlossberg raised about $600,000.
Polls show Lasher with a slight lead in the battle to replace longtime Rep. Jerry Nadler, who like Velazquez is retiring.
George Conway, a strident critic of President Trump, handily beat all of them with $1.4 million in donations and kicked in $2 million of his own money to boot. But he is trailing badly in fourth place in recent polls.
In NY-10, Goldman continued to raise far more cash than Lander, raising 1.4 million compared to 871,000 for the former comptroller and losing 2025 mayoral candidate. The wealthy heir to the Levi-Strauss fortune also gave his campaign $2 million in cash.
Despite the financial advantage, Goldman appears to be a long shot to keep his seat as Lander holds a wide edge in polls of the district spanning lower Manhattan and a big chunk of western Brooklyn.
The three races in NY-07, NY-10 and NY-13 are all being closely watched as proxy fights for Mamdani’s popularity because he has won the City Hall race handily in all three districts and has sought to put his thumb on the scale to aid progressive allies.
In NY-13 and NY-07, that has meant snubbing Latino establishment figures who preferred Espaillat and Reynoso, meaning Hizzoner has taken some political risk with those endorsements.
Mamdani underlined his role in the races by joining Lander, Chevalier and Valdez in a Knicks-themed ad calling on supporters to back his “team” of progressive candidates.
Early voting starts Saturday and continues through next weekend with regular election day set for a week from Tuesday. All four winners of the Democratic primaries are expected to cruise to easy election in the November general elections over only token Republican opposition in the deep-blue districts.