00:00The 2026 New York primary election is coming up on Tuesday with a lot of important seats up for
00:04grab. Early voting opened on June 13th and as of this morning, according to Vote NYC, the total
00:09number of early check-ins for the primary is already over 135,000. Joining us now for more
00:16on what to expect from that upcoming primary is Politico New York state politics reporter
00:20Jason Beferman is here in the studio. All right, Jason, we've been knee-deep in Iran and
00:25Mideast politics for quite some time. So catch us up. What are the races that are important?
00:30What do we need to be watching here? I think the theme for Tuesday is going to be Zoran
00:35Mamdani's influence. We have a bunch of congressional races, particularly in New York City, where
00:41it's a battle between the Democratic Socialists of America and Zoran Mamdani and, you know,
00:47kind of like the Democratic establishment. So we have Claire Valdez, who is a longtime ally
00:52of Zoran, up against Antonio Reynoso in Brooklyn. We have Dan Goldman, the incumbent, up against
00:59Brad Lander. He was supported by Zoran in the mayoral and, again, for the congressional.
01:03And we have Adriano Espaiot, the chair of the congressional Hispanic caucus, up against
01:09a late surging, potentially a big upset in Daria Lisa Avila-Chaviler, and she was also endorsed
01:16by Zoran. So it's a real test of Mamdani's influence, and we're going to find out.
01:20Let me stick with the New York 10, my congressional district, Brad Lander, out and about at the
01:25Prospect Park Soiree last night, where I might have been in attendance.
01:28There's some pictures of that?
01:29You know, I'm not going to show them on television. It was a revelrous night.
01:32But I bring it up because Christina rightly asked me, we're talking about Iran, we're talking
01:35about foreign policy. This is a race, one of several, I think, where issues of foreign
01:39policy have had a huge influence on sort of what voters are voting for when they go to the polls
01:43this week.
01:43That's right. And it's not just Brad Lander's race. It's also, even in Claire Valdez versus Antonio
01:49Reynoso, you have two people who both call Israel, what's happening in Gaza, a genocide.
01:55But Claire is saying to Antonio, well, you didn't call it a genocide soon enough.
01:58And that's really kind of like, I think, describes the mood in Brooklyn right now, where you have
02:06this surge of progressive voters that came out for Zoran, and they are really animated by
02:10this issue. Even in Espyat's district, you have people accusing super PACs of being funded
02:17by AIPAC. Or if you took money from a donor who also donated to AIPAC, then all of a sudden
02:22that money is tainted. And you're right. It is an extremely animating issue, almost more
02:28so than domestic issues like benefits or public housing, things like that. It's wild.
02:36It's so interesting. The opposite of all politics are local. At the moment, all politics are
02:41everything. I'm also wondering, we've been talking a lot throughout this primary season
02:44about the Trump endorsement and whether or not these Republican moderates getting primary
02:49to the right is going to hurt them in the general election. I think I want to ask the reverse
02:52question to you. Is getting the Mamdami endorsement may get you the primary, but is that going to
02:58become a liability for Democrats when they go to run the bigger race?
03:01You know, Zoran hasn't endorsed any Democrat who's facing a competitive general election.
03:08We have some competitive general elections, particularly in New York 17, Mike Lawler in
03:13Westchester and Rockland. We have Laura Gillen and Tom Swasey on Long Island. But I think Zoran,
03:20first of all, they're not socialists.
03:21These are mostly seats where it comes down to who gets the primary win and then you're pretty
03:24much a fait accompli going to win the seat.
03:26Yeah. And it's almost like the favorite or the competitive Democrats in those battleground
03:30districts. Zoran's not going to want to endorse them anyway because they're not anti-billionaire,
03:37socialist, free buses and grocery stores. So there's probably multiple reasons why they're
03:43not going to endorse each other.
03:44Let's hear from the mayor himself. We have a clip of him talking about his slate of candidates,
03:47the Our Team, Our Year slate. Let's take a listen to what he had to say.
03:50Now, people often ask me what I think of the state of the Democratic Party. This slate here today
03:58is our answer.
04:05The Democratic Party must change because the party of the past will not be what leads us
04:13into the future. For we need a Democratic Party with backbone.
04:20Jason, here we are, not even a year in his mayorality. And I'm curious of what we know now about
04:25Mayor
04:25Madani as kind of a larger Democratic figure. There is this tendency during the primary and
04:29the general election to say, like, is he the leader of the Democratic Party? What role is
04:32he playing here? But as he amasses this slate of candidates and talks about, in broad philosophical
04:37terms, what the party should be doing, how is he filling that vacuum? What is the role that he's
04:42playing now with the Democratic Party broadly?
04:44You know, it's not just in Congress in D.C. It's also in the state legislature here in New
04:48York. He's backing a number of state lawmakers to try to change the makeup of the state legislature,
04:54the laws we pass in New York. And, you know, I think he sees his ambitions as broader than
05:00New York. He's going on streams with Hassan Piker and, you know, the Washington Post reported
05:06that he was going to meet with the Colombian president, Petro. So he sees his project as
05:12bigger, but he's definitely, he's not afraid to get into the weeds and back the local assembly
05:17candidate or the local state senator. And I think he really wants the New York Democratic
05:23Party to be more socialist, more like Bernie Sanders' vision.
05:27You mentioned Mike Lawler, who we've had on the show a couple of times. How vulnerable is
05:31that seat?
05:31I would say it's one of the most vulnerable seats in the country. And he knows that, or
05:35we, it seems like he knows that, you know, he's only one of-
05:38Why? Why do you say that?
05:39He's only one of three Republicans that held onto their seat when their district voted for
05:44Kamala Harris. A lot of these battleground congressional districts, when you break it down, they voted
05:49for Trump in 2024. His district voted by Kamala Harris by a hair. And Cook Political Report,
05:55they used to say, was lean Republican. Now it's a toss-up. So they've assessed that it's even
06:01more competitive than just lean Republican. I think he's scared he's getting involved
06:05in that Democratic primary. He's meddling a little bit. He wants to pick his opponent.
06:10We'll see if that works out for him. It's a gamble.
06:12We've got about a minute left, but this is a very crowded primary in that congressional district.
06:15We've got five candidates who are vying for the chance to go up against him. Is there a clear
06:19frontrunner?
06:21Kate Conley.
06:22Yeah.
06:22She's an Army veteran. She's from D.C. She used to work in Biden's White House in
06:28counterterrorism. She's getting attacks from Lawler. Lawler's trying to attack her. All the
06:33other Democrats are attacking her. The problem...
06:35So it might seem like she's the biggest competition.
06:37It seems like that. One liability she has is that she moved to the district just a month before
06:43announcing her campaign. So I'm sure that when we get to the general, if she wins,
06:48she's going to get a lot of carpetbagging accusations.
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