Your last-minute guide to the 2026 Democratic primary elections

Last year we all had fun hating on Andrew Cuomo and doing our part to drag New York City into its red future. But the calendar doesn’t stop, and here we are with another primary election in front of us. As you may have gathered from a bunch of the commercials you saw during the Knicks’ journey to becoming NBA CHAMPIONS, there are some elections with actual stakes during this primary season. Thanks to early voting the election is happening right now and will wrap up on actual Election Day on June 23, so if you haven’t voted yet, this is your big chance to get caught up on who you’re choosing among this year.

This year there’s one statewide race we all get to weigh in on, and past that, depending on where you live you may have Congressional or state-level races to vote in as well.

Some of these elections will even be close, so yes it’s important even if there’s no citywide positions up for grabs this year.

She’s losing comptrol

Last year, it looked like Governor Kathy Hochul was going to pick up a primary from her left from her own former lieutenant governor, Antonio Delgado. But Delgado’s campaign ran out of steam by February this year as the institutional left looked at the playing field and decided the centrist they knew was better than shaking things up, especially once Hochul and Mayor Zohran Mamdani played nice. Meanwhile, you either need to be suicidal or have the world’s most annoying humiliation fetish to challenge Attorney General Letitia James in a Democratic primary for attorney general in the year 2026.

So the statewide leftist vs. institutional angst has moved to the campaign for state comptroller, a position so unheralded that everyone just ignores the fact that you call the comptroller the “controller” even though it’s spelled c-o-m-p-t-r-o-l-l-e-r. 

The incumbent comptroller is Tom DiNapoli, who’s had the job since he took over for Alan Hevesi in 2007 after Hevesi resigned for being too corrupt for Albany in 2007, though he was hardly alone in that era. Since then, DiNapoli has led a steady but boring career in the position, doing whatever it is a comptroller does. Those things are managing the state’s pension funds to ensure a good enough return for the state to actually pay out its pensions, reviewing contracts that the state signs to ensure they’re on the level and auditing every state agency to ensure the people’s money is being spent wisely.

This is the first time DiNapoli has ever faced a primary after close to 20 years of comptrolling, and to make things more interesting, it is a triple threat match. Drew Warshaw, a nonprofit housing executive and former chief of staff at the Port Authority, and Raj Goyle a former legislator in Kansas and co-chair of the 5Boro Institute. Both insist they will be more muscular, activist and progressive stewards of the state’s pension funds, with promises to direct tens of billions of dollars of pension funds into affordable housing efforts and auditing offices even harder, while DiNapoli is taking the line that he is plenty progressive but the pension fund and audit powers are not a plaything. 

Warshaw and Goyle’s runs at DiNapoli from the left have not actually won them the support of the heavy hitters in state politics, but they have mustered up a smattering of support of both the interesting (Abundance NY is going with Warshaw) and utterly fucking exhausting (Elon Musk Democrat Ro Khanna is backing Goyle). The Working Families Party is sitting the race out entirely, while DiNapoli has a long list of not just city endorsements but crucial statewide support as well.

The circus tent (Congress)

Some of you live in places where no one is attempting to join the prestigious ranks of those clowns in Congress, some of you live in districts where a primary exists but it isn’t very competitive. And then some of you live in a district where every time you open the mailbox you’re getting papercuts from the mailers shooting right out at you, where every phone call you get is a push poll and every text message is asking for your thoughts on politics from a survey group.

Presumably you don’t need me to remind you of the election in your district if you’re in the latter camp, but just in case, here are a few of the most high-profile Congressional races in the city:

Brad Lander vs. Dan Goldman (Congressional District 10, stretching from Sunset Park to Lower Manhattan)

Lander went from well-meaning progressive Park Slope guy who wouldn’t fight me to folk hero who wouldn’t fight me when he co-endorsed Zohran Mamdani last June. Then spent the last month or so of the Democratic primary insisting that Mamdani would not actually institute a series of pogroms if he was elected (turns out Lander was right about that). After Lander talked himself out of getting a job in the Mamdani administration, the mayor promised Lander his support if the former City Council member and city comptroller took on replacement-level liberal Dan Goldman in a district that seems tailor-made for Lander to represent. 

Goldman won his seat in 2022 in a fractured primary field, driven mostly by his former career as someone who worked on the first Trump impeachment. He is otherwise seemingly out of step with the much now left-leaning district’s demands to name the genocide in Palestine (and do something about it) and to fight for Mamdani’s policies in Washington. Lander said he will do those things. .

Claire Valdez vs. Antonio Reynoso vs. Julie Won (CD-7, from Downtown Brooklyn to Long Island City and Williamsburg to Ridgewood)

Valdez, an Assembly member in Ridgewood, has the backing of Mayor Mamdani. Reynoso, the current Brooklyn borough president, has the backing of the retiring Rep. Nydia Velazquez. The split between the mayor and Velazquez has become a hot topic in city politics, as Velazquez considers Mamdani’s choice to back someone else to succeed her as a betrayal of her early support for the mayor. Reynoso is from the left flank of Brooklyn politics that just barely predates the rise of the DSA, while Valdez herself is from literally the DSA.

Ultimately there’s pretty slim daylight between the candidates to the point where both Abundance NY and Jews for Racial and Economic Justice see good value in both, so this comes down in some degree to which political machine you like better and whether you want to risk a special election allowing someone terrible to become Brooklyn Borough President in Reynoso’s place. Also for some reason, City Council Member Julie Won is there.

Micah Lasher vs. Alex Bores vs. Jack Schlossberg vs. George Conway (CD-12, Midtown Manhattan and the Upper East and Upper West sides)

Lasher and Bores are a pair of Assembly members representing different types of progressive but also pretty establishment Democratic politics who would be perfectly cromulent heirs to retiring Representative Jerry Nadler. The knock on Bores is he’s a former Palantir goon, the knock on Lasher is he carried the Assembly bill to ban protests around houses of worship. 

The other two big names here are Jack Schlossberg and George Conway, grifters both. The former is leaning on the fact that his uncle, JFK Jr., heroically crashed a plane off the coast of Massachusetts and also lists his $30,000 per year preschool on his campaign flier. The latter is an exhausting Never Trump Republican who was literally married to Kellyanne Conway well into the first Trump term.

Darializa Avila Chevalier vs. Adriano Espaillat (CD-13, Harlem and Inwood)

The third Congressional race Mamdani has gotten himself involved in is also his biggest risk. Chevalier is making a DSA-backed run to unseat Espaillat, a Harlem and Bronx power broker who himself made multiple unsuccessful attempts to unseat Harlem macher Charlie Rangel before beating Rangel’s handpicked successor in 2016 and becoming the first non-Black representative from a district since the 1940s. 

Chevalier has caught some flack due to old Twitter posts where she called Joe Biden a “rapist” and a “war criminal” and Bill de Blasio “a piece of shit,” but she’s still up in recent polling on the race. Politics ain’t beanbag, but one can imagine Espaillat being pretty mad about the Mamdani snub and finding a way to get some revenge for it if he manages to return to Congress.

You also have a Congressional primary if you live in Congressional district (incumbent in parentheses): 3 (Tom Suozzi), 6 (Grace Meng), 9 (Yvette Clarke), 14 (Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez), 15 (Ritchie Torres), and while these races have less juice in terms of media attention or battling endorsements or narratives, be sure to vote in them anyway.

State (legislature) and Main

And of course there are your state legislative, judicial and county committee races, which all matter but also become increasingly obscure to anyone who doesn’t live directly in the district.

The mayor has gotten himself involved in five Assembly races where he’s endorsed candidates, though as Hell Gate points out, he was careful not to endorse in any of the contentious efforts to unseat incumbents, possibly as a way to keep up a friendlier relationship with Speaker Carl Heastie.

Still you can imagine that he is at least keeping an eye on the races involving DSA-backed insurgents David Orkin, Christian Celeste Tate, Conrad Blackburn and noted anime fan Eon Huntley.

You can imagine that in part because Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, who doesn’t need to worry about keeping up good relationships with some piddling Assembly speaker, endorsed Huntley, Orkin and Tate. And for good measure, Ocasio-Cortez also took a side in the Battle of the Jackson Heights Jessicas, endorsing Assembly Member Jessica Gonzalez Rojas in her fight against State Senator Jessica Ramos (a decision that was presumably driven by more than just Ramos’ endorsement of Andrew Cuomo last year).

The rules for judicial elections still apply as I wrote them last year: at the very least withhold a vote from someone who gets cross-endorsed by a party you can’t stand.

Who should I vote for??

You may be reading all of this and saying to your screen, “Okay fine, just tell me who to vote for, you were on TV I’ll do whatever you say.” But I cannot do that. I don’t live in any of the districts with the really big races, and I simply haven’t paid enough attention to details of those races because I’ve been watching basketball all year. Don’t look at me like that, it paid off.

However, I can point you in the direction of multiple voter guides and endorsement lists, which as you read them maybe you will notice a kind of ideological through line, and you may even think I would tell you to vote for every state committee member the New Kings Democrats tell you to vote for. Hey, not my problem if that’s why you wind up thinking. 

Anyway, happy voting. Early voting continues today and every day through Sunday, Election Day is Tuesday, June 23. You can check to make sure you’re registered here, and find your sample ballot, early voting and Election Day polling place here. Tell ‘em Dave sent ya (do not do that the poll workers have enough going on).