Can Claire Valdez unite socialists and labor unions?

Assembly Member Claire Valdez’s congressional campaign was endorsed by both New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani and United Auto Workers President Shawn Fain on Friday, just a day after she formally launched her campaign to replace retiring Rep. Nydia Velázquez. The two-for-one highlights the central aspiration of Valdez’s campaign: a united front between the socialist left and organized labor.

Valdez herself is a product of both political tendencies – a former leader of UAW Local 2110, which represents clerical workers at her former employer Columbia University, and an active member of the New York City chapter of the Democratic Socialists of America. She is running on an unabashedly socialist and pro-labor platform, which includes Medicare for All, the PRO Act (which would make it easier to unionize), the HOMES Act (which would create a public option for housing), full funding for NYCHA and an end to all aid to Israel.

She is one of two major candidates in the 7th Congressional District vying to succeed Velázquez, who is retiring after 33 years in Congress. The other is Brooklyn Borough President Antonio Reynoso, a progressive who launched his campaign in December and has already garnered endorsements from Public Advocate Jumaane Williams and a handful of left-leaning City Council members. He is also widely expected to receive Velázquez’s backing.

Valdez ran with DSA’s support for her western Queens Assembly seat in 2024, now sits on DSA’s State Socialists in Office committee and is all but guaranteed to receive DSA’s endorsement (though Reynoso has also applied for it) along with the support of DSA’s other elected officials in the state Legislature and City Council. But it could be difficult for her to draw sharp ideological distinctions with Reynoso.

Valdez’s strategy is to highlight her experience as a union organizer. Her campaign is pitching her as a transformational candidate in the mold of Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez – someone who can chart a new path forward for a demoralized Democratic Party. But a big question is whether Valdez can attract significant labor support beyond her own former union, especially from the major unions that dominate New York politics – such as District Council 37, 1199SEIU, 32BJ SEIU and the United Federation of Teachers.

City & State Editor Peter Sterne, a former member of DSA, caught up with Valdez for a brief conversation on Friday. This interview has been edited for length and clarity.

The mayor and UAW have endorsed you. What other endorsements are you hoping to get?

We're having conversations with other labor unions, other progressive groups, and hope to make some more announcements next week.

How important is it to you that this campaign is a left-labor coalition?

It's incredibly important. UAW has been leading the fight for workers around the country, organizing in the south, leading the stand-up strike in 2023, really charting the path for what militant labor energy can win. Shawn Fain has put out the call for a strike in 2028. It’s an incredibly important organizing horizon for so many people in the labor movement, and we need that energy across all of organized labor. UAW has taken on the bosses at the Big Three (automakers), against Columbia University, NYU here in New York. And the vision of this campaign is exactly that – that organized labor can stand with leftists because our goals really are the same: taking on corporate power and winning an affordability agenda for New Yorkers.

What’s the difference between organized labor standing with socialists versus standing with the kind of liberal or even centrist Democrats they normally support?

I think it's important that they stand with the left, in part, because of a shared economic populist agenda around affordability, fighting for universal programs like Medicare for All, universal child care. Organized labor has been leading the fight for things like the programs we take for granted now: Social Security, Medicare. These entitlements that have been cut down over the succeeding generations by corporate interests. And labor has to be part of the fight in winning them back. Here in New York City, the Democratic Socialists of America have been a big part in popularizing universal programs and making the city more affordable for everyday New Yorkers.

In his endorsement speech, UAW President Shawn Fain said we need to elect working-class candidates instead of sending millionaires or billionaires to Washington. But you’re running in this primary against Brooklyn Borough President Antonio Reynoso, who is hardly a billionaire businessman. So what do you think differentiates your campaign from that of a non-socialist progressive like the borough president?

I bring to this campaign the experience that President Fain and (UAW Region 9A Director) Brandon Mancilla and Zohran Mamdani just spoke about – being a labor organizer and being somebody who has worked paycheck-to-paycheck, worked minimum wage, nights, unpaid overtime, just to get by, but whose life was transformed by by the labor movement. I'm deeply indebted to it, not only for training me how to be an organizer, but for showing me that everyday people can achieve really incredible things when you come together. 

So that's the experience I'm bringing to this race. I have a track record now of standing up for Palestinian human rights. I was a leader on a letter demanding Mahmoud Khalil’s release early last year. That's the kind of moral clarity that I think NY-7 deserves and is part of Nydia Velázquez's legacy, too – standing for people who have been ignored by the federal administration, deliberately, in many cases; the people of Puerto Rico and the victims of forever wars abroad.

If Velázquez endorses Reynoso, how will you appeal to people who respect her and her legacy, while still trying to argue that you are the best candidate for NY-7?

Again, we're foregrounding the importance of the labor movement in this campaign and my experience as a labor organizer, and we'll be fighting to make sure that every single worker has a union, has health care and housing. So that's the central message of this campaign. I think it will resonate.

You’re applying for the DSA endorsement. Why do you think that endorsing in this congressional primary is important for DSA and the larger socialist movement?

NY-7 is one of the most left, if not the most left, districts in the entire country. It went for Zohran Mamdani by 40 points, I believe. (Mamdani beat Andrew Cuomo by 44 points in the first round of the Democratic primary in the district, per Competitive Advantage Research.) It's a stronghold for the kind of politics that DSA represents and is represented at the state level, in almost every corner, by a member of the Democratic Socialists of America. This is a constituency that I think is really ready for representation at the congressional level by somebody who shares those priorities for making sure that people can stay in their homes long-term, that we're fighting back against the bad bosses who have deprived us of the living wages that we deserve, deprived us of the benefits and the time off that we deserve as workers. And that's the agenda we're going to be running on.