Lander spent years<\/a> in the New York City government, most recently as comptroller overseeing the city\u2019s finances. After losing to Mamdani in the 2025 Democratic mayoral primary, he backed Mamdani in the election.<\/p>\nBut Lander\u2019s congressional campaign against incumbent Goldman brought him national attention, with Israel and Palestine emerging as the defining issue in the race to lead a district with one of the largest Jewish populations in the United States.<\/p>\n
Lander has described Israel\u2019s military campaign in Gaza as genocide and its occupation of Palestinian territory as apartheid. He also identifies as a Zionist who embraces pro-Palestinian activism, arguing that the positions are not mutually exclusive. Lander has long supported a two-state solution.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s straightforward that some approach to more shared safety for Israelis and Palestinians and for Jews and Muslims and everybody else here makes more sense,\u201d Lander said. \u201cI also want to be able to listen across those divides and have thoughtful policy debates.\u201d<\/p>\n
Two weeks before Tuesday\u2019s election, Israeli forces detained Lander in the occupied West Bank while he was volunteering to help with the olive harvest. Israeli authorities have since revoked his travel documents for a planned return visit.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe main story I come home with is not the story of my detention or the revocation of my travel authorisation,\u201d Lander said. \u201cThe main story that I come with is the ethnic cleansing of Palestinians in the West Bank, which I just saw with my own eyes.\u201d<\/p>\n
Lander has also long called for ICE to be abolished, including during President Donald Trump\u2019s first term in office.<\/p>\n
Pro-Palestinian activism\u00a0<\/p>\n
Avila Chevalier\u2019s political rise was similarly shaped by immigration and Palestinian rights, though she has taken a more uncompromising approach.<\/p>\n
After interning at a youth organisation in Nablus in the occupied West Bank in 2014, she returned to the US and became an advocate for Palestinian communities.<\/p>\n
Her \u201cBabies Not Bombs\u201d platform calls for redirecting military spending, including aid to Israel, towards domestic priorities such as childcare and healthcare.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s important for us to see our budgets as moral documents,\u201d Avila Chevalier told Al Jazeera. \u201cOur resources should be going towards the things that make our lives dignified and make our communities thrive \u2013 not towards war, not towards ICE or things that are harming our communities.\u201d<\/p>\n
Valdez, meanwhile, came to progressive politics through the labour movement. A former union-organiser-turned-state-assemblymember, she supports stronger labour protections, including federal legislation such as the Protecting the Right to Organize (PRO) Act to make union organising easier.<\/p>\n
Valdez also backs national rent control and a government-run healthcare system to provide wider healthcare access than the country\u2019s private-sector insurance model.<\/p>\n
\u201cPublic programmes and entitlements have been under attack by the right,\u201d Valdez told Al Jazeera as she exited a polling location in her district on the first day of early voting. \u201cI think not just clawing those back but really advancing a vision for what those things should be will be top priorities.\u201d<\/p>\n
Abolishing ICE and ending military aid to Israel are lofty, ambitious goals, and neither is likely to be achieved without navigating competing interests in Congress and the White House. With the balance of congressional power potentially shifting towards Democrats in the midterms, the newcomers will have to decide which priorities to pursue first.<\/p>\n
That means looking for more immediate wins comparable to Mamdani\u2019s move to fill 200,000 potholes when he took office as mayor, according to progressive political strategist Nomiki Konst.<\/p>\n
\u201c[Get] on the same page about an issue that we all agree on and leverage that in the Democratic Congress because there\u2019s no better time than the beginning,\u201d Konst told Al Jazeera.<\/p>\n
For Lander, one such measure is banning members of Congress from trading individual stocks.<\/p>\n
\u201cMaybe that restores a little bit of trust,\u201d Lander said. \u201cPeople say that\u2019s gross that members of Congress trade stocks. At least this new Congress is doing something, you know, to show me they\u2019re not just all in it for themselves.\u201d<\/p>\n
Lander also sees an opportunity to restore enhanced government subsidies that expired at the end of 2025, raising premiums for many people who buy their private-sector insurance plans individually.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe can say we\u2019re not going to pass a budget that doesn\u2019t do that and force Republicans to vote one way or the other and see what Trump does,\u201d Lander said.<\/p>\n
For Avila Chevalier, an early priority would be her \u201cBabies Not Bombs\u201d agenda, redirecting funding towards domestic needs. Valdez wants to pass the PRO Act.<\/p>\n
Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez sets a precedent<\/p>\n
The three would not be the first progressive New Yorkers to enter Congress promising major change.<\/p>\n
Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez won her legislative seat in 2018 by defeating longtime incumbent Joe Crowley. Since then, she has occasionally worked with Republicans on shared priorities.<\/p>\n
In 2025, Ocasio-Cortez introduced legislation with Republican Representative Anna Paulina Luna of Florida to cap credit card interest rates at 10 percent, echoing a proposal from Senator Bernie Sanders of Vermont and Republican Senator Josh Hawley of Missouri.<\/p>\n
The question, Konst says, is whether Mamdani\u2019s endorsed candidates can turn ideological commitments into legislative results. Doing so will require compromise, including setting aside some priorities to advance others.<\/p>\n
Avila Chevalier is under the microscope after calling for New York City Police Commissioner Jessica Tisch to resign over a man being shot in his car by ICE while his child was in the backseat. Avila Chevalier said she was later shoved to the ground by New York City police officers during protests following the shooting.<\/p>\n
Mamdani reportedly appointed Tisch on the recommendation of Governor Kathy Hochul, whose support was important to Mamdani\u2019s mayoral campaign. An Atlantic magazine report suggested that her endorsement of Mamdani, whose more progressive platform included universal childcare and government-operated grocery stores, hinged on Tisch\u2019s appointment.<\/p>\n
\u201cEverybody wants to have their agenda passed, right? I think being really thoughtful about when to hold fire, when to fire, when to be bold, when to hold back, and when to say what you feel so you\u2019ll get the most support,\u201d Konst said.<\/p>\n
But Avila Chevalier said she is willing to work with anyone to advance her priorities.<\/p>\n
\u201cThere is always something that two people can agree on. And that\u2019s where I plan on starting because I think organising is about meeting people where they\u2019re at,\u201d Avila Chevalier said.<\/p>\n
\u201cThere are so many folks who really want to see healthcare transformed in this country, who really want to see a moratorium on data [centres]. That is a bipartisan issue for so many.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"In June, New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani stood before a packed house of voters, rallying support for…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":391810,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[1106,609,45260,9,24,55,54,12,56,87,901,2272,105560],"class_list":["post-391809","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-new-york-city","tag-features","tag-government","tag-labour-rights","tag-new-york","tag-new-york-city","tag-new-york-city-headlines","tag-new-york-city-news","tag-news","tag-ny","tag-politics","tag-united-states","tag-us-canada","tag-us-midterm-elections-2026"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/391809","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=391809"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/391809\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/391810"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=391809"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=391809"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=391809"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}