Brooklyn’s Reynoso Joins Congressional Race as DSA Eyes Velázquez’s Seat

Brooklyn’s battle for Congress signals how New York’s political tides are turning—again.

When political weather sweeps across Brooklyn, the aftershocks rarely confine themselves to Kings County. On June 15th, Antonio Reynoso, the Brooklyn borough president, declared his candidacy to succeed Representative Nydia Velázquez in New York’s 7th Congressional District. By his telling, the post-Velázquez era beckons “progress with pragmatism.” Yet Mr Reynoso, no backbencher, is widely expected to face a formidable challenge from the Democratic Socialists of America (DSA), whose activists have steered New York politics leftward over the past half-decade.

Velázquez’s impending retirement marks the close of an era. The first Puerto Rican woman elected to Congress, she personified the gradual advance of working-class and immigrant New Yorkers into city and national politics. Now, the contest to fill her seat in a district sprawling from Williamsburg through Bushwick and the Lower East Side is shaping up as a reckoning—not only for New York’s patchwork progressives, but for the Democratic Party’s strategy nationwide.

Mr Reynoso, 41, is not quite the old guard he is sometimes made out to be. Formerly a City Council member, he has made his mark promoting affordable housing and investing in public health. His record is orthodox-progressive: ambitious but not agenda-driven. In a city where some see the DSA as either the tribune or the bane of “real” progressivism, this places him at the party’s soft centre—a fact both asset and liability if the primary becomes a left-versus-left slugfest.

His most likely opponent, yet unnamed but certain to draw on the DSA’s organising muscle, will seek to replicate Alexandra Ocasio-Cortez’s 2018 upset (in which a socialist toppled Joe Crowley, another Democratic stalwart) on the streets—and social media feeds—of Brooklyn. DSA-backed city officials, such as Tiffany Cabán and Zohran Mamdani, have bucked conventional expectations, galvanising younger and nonwhite voters with telegenic calls for rent control, decarceration, and a “Green New Deal” for New York. The group’s insurgent brand has nettled traditional Democratic power brokers, none more than the Brooklyn machine Mr Reynoso himself once defied.

The implications for the city are immediate. Should DSA-aligned operatives capture the seat, New York’s congressional delegation could tilt sharply towards positions at odds with both Wall Street and City Hall. At stake: approaches to economic development, federal funding for public housing, and the city’s standing in the Democratic caucus. For Brooklynites, the subtext is whether the borough’s shifting demographics favour community-rooted coalition builders such as Reyonoso, or activists championing policy maximalism.

For the broader Democratic Party, the contest threatens to reopen old fissures. A spirited primary could again pit leftist idealism against the centrists who command most levers of local and state government—yet whose grip on a fractious coalition seems ever more tepid as rents climb and social stresses mount. “Progressive” no longer means quite the same thing from block to block: DSA firebrands have clashed with unions, Latino activists with the upstart left, and older constituents with the digitally savvy.

The city’s economy, meanwhile, lies in an uneasy balance. A leftward swing in Congress could embolden fresh efforts to raise federal investment in public housing, transit, and climate resilience. Not all in the city’s business community are enthused. Some recall the Amazon “HQ2” debacle of 2019, when DSA-led opposition quashed a deal many saw as a pillar of economic regeneration. City leaders fret, perhaps unduly, that New York’s reputation for political stability—a not-insignificant draw for capital—may become as patchy as its subway service.

A fight revealing more than Brooklyn’s political identity

More broadly, Brooklyn mirrors national urban trends. Across America, urban Democratic primaries have become battlegrounds for visions of who the party is for: upwardly mobile gentrifiers or the vulnerable poor; public sector unions or rent-burdened gig workers; incremental reform or abrupt rupture. In Los Angeles, Chicago, and Boston, socialists have pinched out surprising wins—testing whether their brand can marshal the turnout the party musters every November. The answers remain ambiguous: local triumphs have often proved difficult to translate into broader legislative gains or presidential momentum.

New York, ever the junction of ambition and tradition, magnifies these tensions. The city’s progressive base is robust and well-mobilised. But New Yorkers, for all their appetite for change, are detached in their doggedness: few cheer for radicalism that is all posture and little payment. The city’s next representative from the 7th District will need not only broad ideals but also a capacity to translate aspirations into appropriations—preferably without torching ties to Speaker Hakeem Jeffries, himself a Brooklynite, or blowing up coalitions in Washington.

As political winds shift, each side will invoke Velázquez’s legacy. Yet her career, if any lesson is to be drawn, is a monument to incrementalism. Building alliances matters in Congress; so, increasingly, does digital mobilisation. New York’s left may be buoyant, but the voters will remind them that platforms speak louder when paired with pragmatism.

We reckon the race in Brooklyn is less about left-versus-centre than the discipline required to deliver results. New York is wary of performance politics—voters remember which reforms endure after the applause fades. Whether Mr Reynoso’s moderation or the DSA’s fervour prevails, what matters is more than which faction wins: it is how, or if, Brooklyn’s next representative can turn bumper-sticker slogans into concrete improvement.

The watchful eyes of New Yorkers, and those far beyond, will be on this contest—not as a simple referendum on socialism, but as a weather vane for the Democratic Party’s future. If the city that coined so many political fads can once again produce a model for urban governance, it will bode well for the country. If not, the nation’s most populous city risks a tepid stalemate, with all the urban policy drift that entails. ■