Three socialist candidates won their congressional race primaries in New York on Tuesday. All three benefited from the same dynamic that helped propel socialist Mayor Zohran Mamdani into office: large immigrant populations.
For decades Americans were told that mass migration would have little effect on the nation’s political character, and yet New York is increasingly showing that that claim was never true. The city’s transformation and adoption of socialism have unfolded against a backdrop of decades of demographic change driven by immigrants. Mamdani’s own victory provides the best example, given that data and exit polls are still rolling in from Tuesday’s primary.
Mamdani’s best performances were in neighborhoods with high rates of foreigners and their children. In Queens, where roughly 48 percent of residents are foreign-born, Mamdani saw decisive margins. Jackson Heights, where roughly 60 percent of its residents are foreign born, delivered approximately 60 percent of its vote to Mamdani. Elmhurst and Corona, where roughly two-thirds of the residents in each area are foreign born, also backed him decisively. Bushwick, which is heavily populated with immigrants and first-generation populations, delivered Mamdani another massive win.
Meanwhile, former Gov. Andrew Cuomo, who challenged Mamdani, performed better with native-born populations.
It’s hard to ignore the reality that Mamdani’s coalition was strongest in the very same areas radically transformed by mass migration, and that same dynamic appears to have helped his slate of endorsed candidates. In New York’s 7th Congressional District, DSA candidate Claire Valdez won in a jurisdiction that’s roughly one-third foreign born, including areas of Bushwick and other areas Mamdani himself did well in. In the 10th Congressional District, former City Comptroller Brad Lander beat incumbent Dan Goldman in a district with large immigrant populations in Brooklyn and parts of Manhattan. In the 13th Congressional District, DSA organizer Darializa Avila Chevalier defeated longtime incumbent Adriano Espaillat in a community with a heavy immigrant population.
Every city that takes in a large number of foreigners eventually sees political change that corresponds with that demographic change. Alexander Hamilton cautioned as much in 1802, saying that foreigners will “entertain opinions on government congenial with those under which they have lived.” Even if they “should be led hither from a preference to ours, how extremely unlikely is it that they will bring with them that temperate love of liberty, so essential to real republicanism?”
The races in NYC only prove that. While affordability and housing (that is, the promise of free housing and groceries) were issues, debates over Israel, Gaza, colonialism, and international identity politics took center stage. Lander unseated Goldman, a Democrat who votes in lockstep with the radical left of his party except for when it comes to Israel. In fact, Lander’s official campaign announcement attacked Goldman without naming him: “I’m running for Congress because the challenges we face can’t be solved with strongly worded letters or high-dollar fundraisers, and not by doing AIPAC’s bidding in a district that knows our safety, our freedom, our thriving is bound up together.” Lander also skipped the Israel Day parade, saying he would not march “alongside government ministers in Netanyahu’s government like Bezalel Smotrich, a war criminal who called it moral and just to starve Palestinians.”
Valdez herself pledges to cosponsor the Block the Bombs Act, support an arms embargo, and said she was “going to be a champion for Palestinian human rights and stand against the U.S.-funded genocide in Gaza and the Israeli apartheid state.”
Avila Chevalier alleged Espaillat was complicit in Israeli “genocide” in Gaza and framed actions of Jewish settlers as a parallel to gentrification in the United States.
Issues that would have been the last thought on the mind of a New York voter a generation ago are now central topics in the races of one of America’s biggest cities — and none of that is by accident.
As Thomas Jefferson once warned, immigrants “will bring with them the principles of the governments they leave, imbibed in their early youth,” and that, as a result, they “will infuse into [our legislation] their spirit, warp and bias its direction.” Jefferson recognized that a careless approach to immigration would eventually reshape America away from her founding character — and now his warning is our reality.
