Brooklyn’s Antonio Reynoso Enters NY-7 Congressional Race as Velázquez Plans Exit, Stakes Rise

Antonio Reynoso’s bid for Nydia Velázquez’s Congressional seat will test both the durability of New York’s progressive legacy and the city’s appetite for generational change.

A rare political opening has arrived in New York’s fabled corridors. In 2025, for the first time in more than three decades, the 7th Congressional District—an archipelago of working-class neighbourhoods stretching across Brooklyn and Queens—will not have Nydia Velázquez on the ballot. The dawn of a new political era was confirmed last month when the trailblazing lawmaker said she would forgo re-election, giving her blessing to a succession contest certain to jolt the city’s left flank.

Antonio Reynoso, Brooklyn’s forthright and reform-minded Borough President, lost no time in declaring his intent to succeed his long-time mentor. On June 6th, he became the first to make his campaign official, lauding Velázquez as a “progressive pioneer” and promising continuity, yet insisting the fight for working families has, if anything, grown fiercer. With challengers from the city council and state legislature already circling—among them Tiffany Cabán and Kristen Gonzalez—the race will be neither uncontested nor tepid.

The 7th, gerrymandered through two boroughs and roughly 770,000 denizens, sits at the tangled heart of both city and national politics. Its voters, a kaleidoscope of working-class Latinos, Asian immigrants, and scrappy creative types, have reliably delivered victories to the left for generations. Mr Reynoso, a Bushwick-born Democrat of Dominican descent, boasts enviable name recognition inside the district’s western swath, having represented it on the City Council from 2014 to 2021. His triumph in the 2021 Borough President’s race—winning over 72%—betrayed a sizable base, while this year’s improved margin signalled entrenched strength.

Yet, as any New York operator will confirm, glory in borough-wide contests does not always translate to Capitol Hill. Brooklyn’s presidency offers a bully pulpit, not real legislative muscle. Mr Reynoso’s portfolio has showcased a bias for issues that resonate in NY-7: he launched a Maternal Health Task Force, funnelled dollars into perinatal care, championed equitable development and, more recently, began assembling the sort of policy blueprints—Comprehensive Plans for Brooklyn—admired by city wonks. Whether such initiatives have sufficiently galvanized the district’s eclectic voters is unclear.

For New Yorkers, the passing of Velázquez—who in 1992 became the first Puerto Rican woman in Congress—invites more than nostalgia. She was, and remains, a symbol of the city’s demographic churn and Democratic longevity. City Hall, already quivering from the titanic midterm skirmishing underway elsewhere, now has another flashpoint. The succession contest will serve as a de facto referendum on the left’s priorities: equity in housing, health, and immigrants’ rights.

The consequences will echo beyond ballot boxes. Whoever prevails must confront national headwinds threatening to sap the district’s buoyancy. Congress appears increasingly fractious and unresponsive to urban needs. The district reels from rent spikes, subway malaise, and an influx of asylum seekers that has exposed the city’s anaemic safety net.

An uncertain torchbearer for a city in flux

In this crucible, Reynoso’s pitch is simple, if ambitious: he will carry on the “pioneer’s” torch. But the field likely to coalesce around him will be anything but docile. Ms Cabán, a council member and outspoken progressive, commands attention in the Queens precincts, while young leftist legislators smell opportunity. All bring their own followings, alliances, and rhetorical sharp elbows. What emerges may be a test—not merely of legacy or identity, but of whether Manhattan’s ascendant left can forge a durable, multi-ethnic coalition at a time of mounting economic anxiety.

The race also throws a spotlight on New York’s evolving, and often fractious, progressive movement: a loose confederation stitched from protest caucuses, party insurgents, and neighborhood fixers. Nationally, left-leaning cities from San Francisco to Chicago have witnessed similar generational shifts, though not always with sanguine results. Anxious moderates whisper of civic breakdown, citing rising disorder and shrinking tolerance for dissent within progressive tribes themselves. The next representative of NY-7 may need to transcend not only the city’s famous parochialism but also the internecine squabbles of her own party.

There is precedent—and peril. For every “pioneer” like Velázquez, whose congressional career was marked by patient coalition-building, New York politics also recalls episodes of progressive self-cannibalisation: bruising primaries, ideological schisms, and pyrrhic victories that delivered little beyond headlines. Mr Reynoso must now convince not just the faithful but the broader electorate that his brand of leftism can still govern in practical terms. Affability and local pride will only go so far.

If past is prologue, national actors will take an interest. As Congress convulses in the run-up to the 2024 general election, the appetite for new faces is strong, but so is fear of ideological excess. Republicans, viewing New York’s supermajorities with alternating envy and scorn, have warned of one-party decay. Yet outside the city, progressive muscularity remains patchy. Local donors and unions may throw in for Mr Reynoso or rivals; Washington’s kingmakers will watch for signs that either the moderate coalition or the insurgent left can deliver under pressure.

We reckon the district—gerrymandered, diverse, and intimately aware of the stakes—will deliver a verdict not just on Mr Reynoso, but on an entire generation of New York progressives. Will the city’s cosmopolitan left sustain its momentum, or has it already reached the apogee of its influence? Voters will weigh nostalgia for Velázquez’s tenure against the gritty exigencies of governing in a fractious era.

Either way, the contest offers a window onto New York’s broader struggle: a city seeking to reconcile its post-pandemic challenges with enduring dreams of fairness and growth. For all the familiar talk of “passing the torch,” much will hinge on whether candidates can translate lofty rhetoric into policies that truly budge the city’s stubborn inequities.

As another rambunctious primary season beckons, we suspect the city’s future will be shaped, not just by who inherits the progressive banner, but by who can wield it with grit, pragmatism, and the rarest political resource of all: patience. ■