Three Democratic candidates for House seats in New York prevailed on Tuesday night in a massive rebuke to the party establishment. Though each race was representative of a broader dissatisfaction with incumbents and specific district-level dynamics, the US relationship with Israel and funding from big-money lobbies, including AIPAC, became central components in each of these races.

Following in the footsteps Zohran Mamdani’s victory in the New York City mayoral election in 2025, Brad Lander (NY-10), Claire Valdez (NY-7), and Darializa Avila Chevalier (NY-13) all scored wins in Tuesday’s primaries, putting them on a glidepath to Congress in November. Both Lander and Avila Chevalier defeated sitting House members.

Particularly in the 10th District, where Lander won nearly two-thirds of the vote, those questions were seen as central. As Politico put it, the challenger knocked out the “two-term lawmaker after a bruising campaign that focused heavily on their differences over Israel.”

“There is very little daylight between Brad Lander and Dan Goldman ideologically, except when it comes to Israel,” Adam Carlson, a Democratic pollster, told Responsible Statecraft (RS). “Yes, Lander has a long tenure representing much of the district, but he won by a nearly 2:1 margin because Goldman is deeply out of touch with the base of the party on Israel—and his association with AIPAC.”

“Some have criticized my supporting progressive insurgents. Tonight shows we have a new party.”

In a sign of how much the discourse of the Israel’s war in Gaza and US support for it has shifted since October 2023, Valdez, who ran for an open seat, criticized her leading opponent, Antonio Reynoso, for not calling the war a “genocide” until he announced his run for Congress. Nydia Velasquez, the popular incumbent who held the seat for more than three decades, endorsed Reynoso before Tuesday’s election.

In the 13th District, meanwhile, Avila Chevalier, who centered her opposition to US policy toward Israel, shocked Adriano Espaillat, the current chairman of the Congressional Hispanic Caucus. Avila Chevalier has said she would support the “Block the Bombs” Act that would halt arms shipments to Israel and made headlines for attending a protest one day after the October 7 attacks, which she said was in recognition of “a pattern in which whenever there is an incident, the state of Israel engages in a response that is often disproportionate and creates a greater loss of life.”

Her victory was seen as notable not only because it pitted an outsider with no prior elected experience against an established incumbent, but also because she won in a less affluent, less white district. As Alex Kane wrote in........

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