Antonio Reynoso on Mamdani, Immigration, and His Campaign for Congress in New York's 7th District

The New York Editorial Board's interview with Brooklyn Borough President Antonio Reynoso, a Democrat running for Congress in New York's 7th District.

The New York Editorial Board spoke with Brooklyn Borough President Antonio Reynoso about his campaign in the Democratic primary for New York’s 7th Congressional District (parts of Brooklyn and Queens) on the morning of May 1, 2026. Reynoso is among the candidates running to succeed retiring Rep. Nydia Velazquez, who has endorsed him as her preferred successor. The primary election will take place in June. (photo by Juan Manuel Benítez)

Participating journalists: Juan Manuel Benítez, Nicole Gelinas, Josh Greenman, Christina Greer, Ben Max, Akash Mehta, Myles Miller, Harry Siegel, Ben Smith, Liena Žagare.

Full Transcript

Ben Smith
Thanks for coming in. I always say this at the top, but I feel like it’s worth saying, just we’re in this world where elected officials and politicians don’t actually need to talk to journalists anymore and some just don’t. It’s important that you do and we appreciate it.

Antonio Reynoso
Thank you.

Ben Smith
Chrissy?

Christina Greer
Yes, I’ll kick it off. I’ll echo what Ben said, thank you. Can you just tell us what you think are the biggest concerns in the district, and how you view them, as a [potential] congressman, and not a borough president?

Antonio Reynoso
It’s affordability. I think the biggest issue in our district is the high cost of rent. We have an affordability crisis that’s really broad, but housing, or ability to have an apartment, I think, is the one thing that people are most struggling with in the district. It’s a district that has been significantly gentrified. Outside of being in a NYCHA development, a Mitchell-Lama, or rent-stabilized housing, you’re in a market-rate unit in arguably one of the most expensive parts of this city. Affordability on housing is the most daunting issue that we’re dealing with now.

How I want to solve for that is, there was a time during FDR’s time, after the Great Depression, after World War II, just like any opportunity, or any time we had a crisis of housing, the federal government was a big player in solving for those issues. We built NYCHA, we got funding for Mitchell-Lamas, for 202 housing for seniors, Section 8 vouchers, or Section 8 based housing. All those things existed and they don’t exist anymore. The Faircloth Amendment pretty much made it so that we can’t build what we call social housing, which I call NYCHA. We can’t do that anymore. Section 8 has been frozen for decades now, and people haven’t had access to it.

What I want to do is see if we can get to the federal government and start unlocking a lot of these levers that used to be able to help us solve for the housing crisis in the federal level. Right now it feels like we’re leaving it to the state and city, who have very limited resources and can’t do big things like build NYCHA developments all over again, but the federal government can. We have trillions of dollars that we could unlock to really support local government to solve for that problem. That’s my goal to get there.

Josh Greenman
Can I just ask one thing about that? That’s been a goal of people to get a lot more money from the federal government for NYCHA and other things for decades under Republican and Democratic administrations. What’s different now, if anything, that leads you to believe that you can do that? Or are there new methods or new ways of getting funding that haven’t been contemplated that you’re talking about?

Antonio Reynoso
I think there are several things that are happening now. I do think we need to rename half of these programs because the politicization of the programs has polarized our ability to actually enact them, to fund them. I think that the Republican-Democrat fight makes it so that it’s very hard to find compromises. Maybe we need to rename them and remake them to some degree so that it’s palatable for both sides of the aisle.

I think what’s changed is that it’s a crisis now — it’s been a crisis for a while, but it’s getting worse. I think the affordability crisis is hitting everyone across this country, not just in New York City. I think about an affordable homeownership program for the middle class, for example. That’s something that I think you can sell to Republicans and say, “Hey, this is not just for New York, this is for all of us.” If your average median income in your state is $80,000 a year, can we take 30% of that income, stretch it out over a 30-year mortgage, and allow for the federal government to give out low-interest loans for homeowners and rebuild the American dream, and the middle class in America, by supporting that, and making it about the American dream?

That middle-class effort, for example, is something that I think can be attractive to somebody in the Republican Party. I want to be clear, it’s what’s hurting all of us. The Republicans will lose the House, we could get close to winning the Senate, and that seeds panic. When panic happens, I think people are more willing to negotiate for the greater good, and I’m hoping that when we get to Congress, we can do that and leverage the crisis to actually have a crisis-level solution for it.

Myles Miller
You’ll come into Congress as a—

Antonio Reynoso
A freshman.

Myles Miller
A freshman. A backbencher as they could say—

Antonio Reynoso
No, no, no.

Myles Miller
—with an office that’s far from everything. How do you come in and build coalitions quickly to get this kind of thing done?

Antonio Reynoso
I want to talk about two things. First is my experience. I’ve been a freshman [City] Council member. I think I was the only class of freshman Council members that came in because the, and I’m sorry, I still haven’t had my coffee, so my thoughts will gather…but term limits when they got extended made it so that when I came in, there was a group of people that were going to do 12 years, and I was only going to do 8. I was technically a freshman in that time. What you have to do is figure out ways to just be effective. I think something that I am very good at is finding ways to make things happen when they’re very difficult.

I’ll talk about the Right to Know Act a little later, but there are places where people didn’t want to put their necks on the line, and didn’t want to do the work, where I was able to insert myself and actually effect meaningful change. We talk about commercial waste zones, which is something that hadn’t been done since like the 1970s. There had been no reforms or no changes or regulations to the private sanitation industry, and I was able to get that done. We did a waste equity bill where we reduced the amount of capacity in three of the neighborhoods that are handling the city’s most trash. We did that and that was very controversial and very hard to do, but I always felt like I was really good at bringing people together, building basic commonalities or common denominators as to why we should be doing this and bringing people along. I want to be able to do that.

Another thing is, I don’t think that the Speaker of the House should solely rely on seniority in the future. I think the Republicans have already done this, from what I understand, but the Democratic Party should be highlighting some freshmen. I want to make the case that I should be one of those people. Some freshmen that are good communicators, that look like the people that are hurting, that are children, middle class, have kids — I’m a dad, immigrant parents, grew up poor. It’s just like, people just trying to make it that want the American dream to work for me.

You should be putting those people front and center in oversight in committees all over this country, and it doesn’t happen. Seniority is the sole bearer of that. I want to make the case to the Speaker that there should be a handful of us freshmen reps that should chair committees, and in doing so, allow us to build more power, more influence to actually get things done. I don’t want to be a freshman doing nothing. I want to start being effective immediately, and I’m already drawing up plans as to how I can insert myself in rooms and make sure that I’m influential.

I also think that I’m part of a progressive brand that I think is deeply important. I think that there are centrist and moderate Democrats across this country that don’t feel like New York City understands the hardships that they’re going through, and how purple states are one, and that we just want to push all these progressive policies. I also come from a place that has a socialist mayor in our city, and I feel like I’m someone that can help bring those things together, really have a conversation on how we could continue to build off of the progressive movement, which I think is the direction this country should be moving towards, but making it something that is practical, something that we can message, and that we can build a narrative around so that it is something that could be consumed by a larger mass.

Juan Manuel Benítez
Going back to the housing affordability thing, do you have any new creative ideas? This is not only a countrywide problem. This is happening in major cities across the world. People who grew up in those cities cannot afford living there anymore. Your main opponent in the race, Claire Valdez, last week, she spoke about a model program in Barcelona, which is a little strange because Barcelona might be the poster child of housing unaffordability at this moment. I have a friend who just moved there. She told me she just found 14 apartments in the whole city that she can afford, and of a decent size right now, out of the whole city. Is there any new creative idea for a city like New York that would not only spur development and create new housing but also affordable housing that average New Yorkers can afford? We’re not only talking about low-income, we’re talking about middle-class New Yorkers.

Antonio Reynoso
I think we’ve got to play to the market, right? We have to have an honest conversation about our ability to build a million new units over the next 10 years. Like if we’re really going to talk about the amount of housing that we need to build, there’s no way that the city and the state can build that — there’s no way they can build that without the federal government. Right now, the federal government is not a partner in being able to help us build that. I just want to say that we can’t solve for the housing crisis on just relying on subsidy and affordable housing development. We need a significant amount of market-rate development to meet the goal.

In the market-rate development, right now we have MIH [Mandatory Inclusionary Housing] that allows us to get some level of affordability in it. I’m talking about playing the market as building so much housing that landlords start fighting for tenants, not what we see now, where it’s tenants fighting for an apartment. I want to change that conversation. We don’t need a model in Barcelona. We have one in the United States of America: Minneapolis has seen rents decrease in their housing market; Austin saw it as well. A lot of people are concerned because it meant that they just threw so many apartments and so many units in those cities that landlords were negotiating with tenants that they didn’t want to go somewhere else because they had options. Instead they were negotiating, saying, “Hey, instead of $2,500, you can go in for $2,300. I’ll give you free parking. I’ll make sure that you have a fully furnished apartment.” They started negotiating to keep tenants in their home because they had more apartments than they had tenants.

We have to do the best we can to have a significant amount of development happen over the next 10 years. Right now, I think we’re having too many conversations that are about incremental progress on an issue that is a crisis. We’re putting band-aids to try to solve for this housing crisis, and I think we’re way off to where we need to be.

Harry Siegel
You brought up gentrification as a concern before in your district. Can you talk about how that squares with having lots more development?

Antonio Reynoso
The problem with development during the— I want to have the de Blasio and Bloomberg era, they only built in poor Black and brown neighborhoods. That’s the only thing they did. The burden of the development and the housing growth in New York City fell on a few Black and brown poor communities, and that is it.

Josh Greenman
Well, Bloomberg upzoned Williamsburg.

Antonio Reynoso
Williamsburg is a Latino district.

Josh Greenman
Well, waterfront, OK.

Antonio Reynoso
Even in the waterfront, it was just manufacturing. When [City Council Member] Diana Reyna represented it when she first got in there, it was 68% Latino, right? That is a Latino district that saw a significant reduction in the amount of Latinos that were there after we developed the waterfront. The problem is, we didn’t develop Sheepshead Bay, Bay Ridge — we didn’t go anywhere. There was not even modest growth. We didn’t see one-family housing go into three-family housing, or three-family housing get to five units, or transportation-oriented development near train stations. We didn’t see any of that happen. We just left it right there.

Then we got new residents coming into these neighborhoods, they’re only going to go to the places where new housing is happening, and they just happen to be around where all the Black and brown people are because that’s where we rezoned. If anything, we made it even harder to build in white, more affluent areas with downzonings by Bloomberg, right? Those downzonings, for us to have to undo that, the amount of work and political capital that it is going to take is significant, but we need to talk about it. Then we have to talk about landmarking. We’ve landmarked a bunch of white affluent areas that will never see housing growth in the places that have the most opportunities, where if you put a poor family into Park Slope, they will thrive. They have the best jobs, they have the best roads, the best schools, the best parks. That’s where we want people to live.

Josh Greenman
What will the feds do about that?

Antonio Reynoso
The feds? Well, so I think the feds is about unlocking a ton of money so that we can build a ton of housing. We have a lot of work to do locally at the city level to be able to solve for that. I’m just trying to explain—

Ben Max
The feds could attach conditions to that money.

Antonio Reynoso
We saw it happen with [Governor] Kathy Hochul when she did the Housing Compact, it was an attempt to have like a stick and a carrot to try to get housing built. We’ve seen that type of work, but the thing here is that it’s an all-hands approach to solving for this issue — but what he asked was about gentrification, I was explaining gentrification on a local level because that’s how it was introduced.

Ben Max
On that front, hopefully we don’t rehash half a dozen conversations we’ve had over the years, but you know that there’s a lot of people who appreciate that you’ve become one of the sort-of pro-housing voices in the city, but people who’ve been around a little while also still criticize you for not getting to ‘yes’ on a Bushwick rezoning.

Antonio Reynoso
That’s just not true. Right now, go to the DCP [Department of City Planning], go on their website, and you will see the Bushwick rezoning. The mayor’s office has to trigger the rezoning. They have not done it. They didn’t do it. We didn’t say no. What we wanted to do—

Ben Max
They walked away, right?

Antonio Reynoso
Exactly. I’m here with [City Council Member] Rafael Espinal in a five-year plan for the rezoning of Bushwick, which was not one of the 10 districts that de Blasio wanted to rezone. We voluntarily told the city we want to talk about rezoning. Look at that rezoning. The community’s model is exactly what we voted for in the City of Yes. It’s transit-oriented development, going up from a commercial site that can’t build any housing along Broadway to 12- and 14-story buildings in those areas.

There were some contextual zonings on mid-blocks that the city was pushing back against, but the overall development growth within the community was going to happen, but it was what I call moderate growth. Every single apartment unit wasn’t squeezed out by the City of New York. In that time, and this is part of why people don’t trust our ability to work on development, how are we going to get Sheepshead Bay, Bay Ridge, and all these places? It’s moderate growth. It isn’t extreme growth, and we were doing this 10 years ago. We were talking about this before this housing crisis was as apparent as it is.

What we did is the community was willing to vote and support the local elected officials in moderate growth. I just want to give an example on numbers. The equivalent of our rezoning by the community would have given us 10,000 units. The City of New York wanted 18,000 units. That was the fight we were having, so start the process--

Ben Max
And those are just examples, by the way, because they were smaller numbers in that—

Antonio Reynoso
Sure, it’s an example, but why didn’t they proceed? If they proceed, then I and Rafael Espinal, we have to negotiate to get to a number that we can all agree to. But the city didn’t even want to insert it and put it in, so we can do that right now. Even right now, Mayor Mamdani could start the process of unlocking the Bushwick rezoning if he wanted to, but the city stopped it, not us.

Ben Smith
What do you think: Mamdani, I saw one of his supporters say it’s like there’s a sort-of socialist in the front and kind of abundance in the back quality to his housing policy. I think the jury is, it’s unclear still exactly how far he’s going to go. You still have this kind of like “Unleash the private market, let the chips fall where they may” mostly approach. He’s said a lot of different stuff. What do you think he’s going to do? Like what is your read on his actual approach here? And how close to— a million units would be a lot. That’s a big number. How close is he going to get.

Antonio Reynoso
Yes, it is. No, a million units is not realistic. I’m just saying if we really want to lower the cost of housing, lower it, we need like a million units. If we don’t do a million units, we’re slowing down [rent] growth, right? It’s the slowing down and maybe stunting it for a couple of years where we don’t see significant [rent] increases — that’s what a million does.

Ben Smith
Yes, what are you seeing from City Hall at the moment?

Antonio Reynoso
I think that the data and the information is…incontestable. It’s something you can’t challenge. The data shows that when you build a ton of units, you start lessening the pressure on the housing market and it lowers. I think he saw that. It took me 10 years to go from being open to negotiate with the city on some housing but not being like being all-in. Like being all-in, it took me 10 years to get there, right? I want to say that I’ve learned and I grew. I educated myself, I used data to be able to come to a position that I have now. He did that flip in less than six months because it doesn’t take a lot. Once the data’s in front of you, you see that it works and that it’s real, and that the work that we’ve been doing so far, what we do.

Another thing that I think a lot of people are tired of, we’re big on advocacy and we are huge on like, “Hey, we want everybody to get a housing unit.” Absolutely. We all agree in this city that everyone should have a unit that’s within 30% of their income so that everybody has housing. We all agree with that, but then we have to start talking about how to get there. There are too many people that just want to draw a line, and it’s like we either get it all or nothing. We won’t negotiate, we won’t make progress, and I don’t think that that’s the way to go when it comes to housing.

Myles Miller
Wait, can I ask you just a quick follow-up on that, on what you were saying broadly, which is basically, that the mayor was able to switch on a dime, and knowing you over the last 15 years, you can be immovable on certain topics.

Antonio Reynoso
Yes. Which I want to say is a quality that we should like.

Myles Miller
…I just wonder how you feel like you’ll find consensus in Congress in a place where everybody seems immovable?

Antonio Reynoso
Yes, it’s going to be tough. I want to be honest. I’m going to try my best. I really am, and I think I can do a lot of work, and just be one of the members that just shines light into Congress, and allows for people to see that there are some people working to try to get things done. I think our ability to communicate, because we’re younger, we know how to use social media a little better, is going to show the general public that we’re trying.

Look, I think until Trump is gone, and even shortly after that, there’s going to be a lot of reconciliation work that needs to happen. We are not in a good place. Right now, people are really seeing this as a Republican-Democrat challenge. I think it is a class challenge. I think it’s the rich versus the poor. I think these populist conversations are going to continue to grow and be more and more popular. I want to be honest. I’m going to try my best. I think I know how to work with people, but I don’t want the burden of trying to figure that out by myself. To be honest, I think I’ll be lying to you guys right now to say that I’m going to be able to bring bipartisan work to Congress just by myself. I am going to be a person that wants to see legislation pass. That is a goal that I want to achieve, and I’m going to be a player in trying to make those things happen.

Christina Greer
Really quickly though, if you get to Congress, would you support Hakeem Jeffries as Speaker?

Antonio Reynoso
Yes, day one. I think it would be a waste of time [otherwise]. Hakeem Jeffries got voted unanimously during the fight with [Speaker] Mike Johnson. Mike Johnson, 100 times, he didn’t become Speaker. The entire Democratic caucus stood with him. It was one of the few moments of strength. We showed strength, we showed unity. That’s what people want to see from us. That’s what they want to see. For me to go to Congress and tell you that somebody that inevitably will be the next Speaker of the House, that we’re going to give him a hard time — we got too much work to do. Let’s get him in and then start pushing him to where he needs to go.

Juan Manuel Benítez
When was the last time you spoke to him?

Antonio Reynoso
Maybe three weeks ago I spoke to him. The thing here is that [City Council Speaker] Melissa Mark-Viverito and [Mayor] Bill de Blasio are allies of mine. When we got to the City Council, I helped her get elected without county support. Well, we got Brooklyn County, but in an unusual way to become Speaker. The Right to Know Act was stalled. It wasn’t moving. I discharged the Right to Know Act against her, and against Bill de Blasio, and put pressure on them to eventually bring it to the floor, and they did do that. I was able to pull back my discharge and we finally got the hearing and the vote on the Right to Know Act. Those are my friends, and I was able to push them because I didn’t think they were moving the progressive agenda forward fast enough, and I did that—

Josh Greenman
Can I ask one more on housing before you move on.

Antonio Reynoso
I guess I just wanted to end on this is what I’m going to do is I’m not going to fight Hakeem on being the Speaker, but when he’s there, I’m going to push him to the direction that I think this party should be going.

Ben Smith
The last housing question.

Josh Greenman
In the Claire Valdez interview, we asked about her personal living situation and whether it was exemplary of the affordability challenges that she was talking about for others. Can you talk just for a second about yours, and if it is the exception to the rule that you’re describing, why it’s the exception, or if it’s not, why it’s not?

Antonio Reynoso
Why? What is the exception?

Josh Greenman
Your personal living situation, your apartment, whether you feel the pressures, and if you don’t feel all the pressures as intensely as your neighbors, why you don’t?

Antonio Reynoso
I feel the pressures. I’m a dad, and raising a family in this environment is practically impossible. I don’t know how anyone does it. I am currently raising my kids technically, or arguably in the same conditions that I was raised in. I live in a two-bedroom apartment, I was raised in a two-bedroom apartment. My sisters and I shared one of those bedrooms, so it was three of us until I was 18 years old. College saved me. I had to get out. My kids are currently living in one of the bedrooms as my two boys are being raised. I think it’s like 750, 800 square feet. I don’t know numbers too well, but my mom, we were raised in a 750, 800 square foot.

Josh Greenman
Market-rate?

Antonio Reynoso
I live in a market-rate apartment. My mom lived in Section 8 housing, but as a middle-class family, I’m not getting support from the government for a subsidy in any way. I’m paying market-rate housing. I don’t have a rent-regulated apartment. I don’t have any of that stuff.

Josh Greenman
Would you share what your monthly rent is?

Antonio Reynoso
Yes, I pay $2,250 a month.

Let me tell you how I got that. It was the hustle. I moved in there nine years ago and it was $2,500 a month, and I was dying. How my wife and I made it work for the first two years that I was there for $2,500 was huge. Then COVID happened, and the guy next to me was renting the same house, because it’s a two-family house. It’s exact same house for 2,100 bucks. I called our landlord and I was like, “I’m moving next door, so this is my last payment. You could keep the security deposit. We’re calling the moving guys right now.” He panicked, he called us right away. He was like, “Hey, 2,250, can we do that?” I was like, “I don’t know, let me talk to my wife,” but we were elated, joyful. We did that. Since then, I have not signed a new lease with him. I am month-to-month in my apartment because I know if I call him to sign a lease that he’s going to increase my rent. I’m risking it right now and it’s like my little New York hustle in hopes that it doesn’t happen.

Ben Smith
He does not subscribe to our substack.

Juan Manuel Benítez
Has he asked for favors?

Antonio Reynoso
No, exactly. My landlord loves us because we’ve been there, we pay our rent on time, but also, he makes me turn off the water in the winter. I have to upkeep the front yard. Indoors, I’ve had to do plumbing work. I had to do so much work in the house, but I do anything to keep him out.

Ben Smith
I think Juan Manuel meant political favors.

Antonio Reynoso
Oh, no. He lives in Long Island. He doesn’t care about any of that, so no favors. Look, I did call him because my wife wanted to add a dishwasher. She was like, “We will need a dishwasher.” Let me tell you, if you got two kids and if you don’t got a dishwasher, God bless your soul. I was like, “Babe, I don’t want to call the landlord, because if we call him and tell him we’re going to install this dishwasher, he’s going to raise our rent.” She was like, “We’ve got to do it. We can’t add this type of appliance and not tell him.” I call him and I’m like, “Hey, we would like to do this.” He says, “Antonio, everybody’s struggling right now. Don’t worry about it, I’m not going to raise your rent. Add the thing.” Freaking nicest guy in the world, and I would love for you to meet this guy.

I haven’t seen him in two years, and that is a full effort that I am putting to never see him. I will take care of that house all the way so long as he’s not there. I just want to say I’ve had my rent at $2,250 for about five years now, and God willing, I could keep it for another 20 this way. I’m not going anywhere.

Akash Mehta
Your race has become a proxy battle between the Working Families Party and the DSA [New York City Democratic Socialists of America], between more established progressive groups and affiliated electeds, and the newer socialist wing. What do you think of as the differences between those two wings of the party?

Antonio Reynoso
The DSA and Zohran Mamdani and Bernie Sanders versus the WFP, and like Tish James, Jumaane Williams, the group of progressives that have been doing a lot of work for a long time. The difference I think for me is that I’ve had time in helping lay the groundwork, or tilling the field for progressive politics to thrive in New York City, and that the DSA are the fruits that are bearing because of the investments that people like Jumaane, Tish, me, Nydia, all those people, the [City Council] Progressive Caucus movement. All that work. It was only six people when Jumaane Williams, Brad Lander, Jimmy Van Bramer, and all those folks, Danny Dromm, they were alone. That was not a happy time. They looked like they were crazy. Then all the young people got elected that next term when there were term limits, and we got in, and we helped bring that up to, I think it was 16 of us.

The progressive movement, people are shortsighted that they think that we’ve been progressive for a long time. We have not. I remember Carlos Menchaca and I being the only progressive members on the [City Council] transportation committee. When we said that we wanted to do safety over parking, people lost their minds. The New York Post called me a “red raider” or something like that because I wanted to do something for biking for cycling. People don’t remember that, but we did that work, and now progressive transportation policy is common talk. It is a centrist position now.

What I see is that the WFP is a party that’s been fighting a long time to get to where they are. To see somebody like Zohran Mamdani be able to thrive, they’ve been working on that since Jon Kest and Bertha Lewis were talking about the introduction of the WFP. Many of these folks that we’re talking about right now don’t even know who Jon Kest and Bertha Lewis are, so I’m just saying that we are here. We’re fighting the good fight, we’re having these conversations. We appreciate a lot of the work that the DSA is doing, and I think that they’re a meaningful piece of the movement, but the WFP helped prepare this city for what we’re seeing right now and for a win with Zohran Mamdani.

Akash Mehta
I think maybe some of how Claire Valdez’s supporters might think of it is, yes, the WFP and related groups have been organizing for a long time, and they were losing, and they don’t have the energy, they don’t have the chutzpah, and the affiliated progressive non-profit foundation-funded groups just don’t have the dynamism and are captured by the status quo in ways that limit their effectiveness. That the energy of, for instance, someone like Zohran Mamdani, who was outspoken on something like what he would call the genocide in Gaza, and his supporters like Claire Valdez who were outspoken on that before, for instance, you were. That that energy and hold-no-bars approach is what is really going to move the needle more than the decades-long progressive non-profit strategy.

Antonio Reynoso
I think we’re only having that conversation because Zohran won, obviously. I just think that Zohran’s win was like a perfect storm. I talk about this all the time. A lot of these elected officials think that they got here because they’re talented and they work hard, and that was how we did it. It’s so much BS. Luck is so much a part of how we get to where we are. The timing has to be right. You have amazing, qualified people that run and lose because the timing isn’t right, and people that don’t belong in politics at all will win because everything gets straightened out. There are people that get elected to office because the person that they’re running against, that was the favorite got caught with like a sexual harassment scandal, and that the only people running against them was this scrappy person that we never heard of, but they’re the only ones on the ballot and now they’re elected.

It’s just, like, the circumstances are always a part of the conversation, and Zohran’s circumstance was real. I don’t want to, I don’t want to do this, but I want to be as honest and open as possible. Brad Lander is somebody that just couldn’t meet the moment in a citywide race in the way that maybe the progressive movement wanted, and which the WFP might have wanted. We think of him as somebody that is very smart, can push the progressive agenda forward, does bold things, and pushes it a little further than maybe you wanted to be pushed, and is somebody that could’ve led this city, let’s say. He couldn’t catch fire. He couldn’t resonate with a significant amount of people, so Brad doesn’t do well. On the other side, we have--

Myles Miller
Do you think [Lander] does well in this congressional race [in NY-10]?

Antonio Reynoso
I do think he’s going to do well in this congressional race, yes. That is something I believe.

Then you have Andrew Cuomo and Eric Adams on the other side. That’s not the progressive lane. This wasn’t a fight between the WFP and the DSA at the city level. The WFP worked together alongside all the progressives and did a slate, which was very smart. They didn’t go with one person. They went with three people and they were just like, “Pick any one of these three. We have ranked-choice voting. Let’s work together.”

For me, it’s just like, I think the moment really makes it so that they can make that argument, but AOC won, and when she won, it was all the rave in that time. Then right after, we saw a dip in this energy that was really targeted to a very talented and hard-working person that was a great communicator. I say this because when Eric Adams won, the freaking country thought he was a new face in the Democratic Party, right? It was just like, “Are we going to say that the reason he won is because the progressives don’t seem to ever win?” It’s not like that. We’re always in the middle, right? We’re the people that the people always want to throw shots at. The DSA wins, and now they want to throw shots at the progressives. Eric Adams wins, they want to throw shots at the progressives. It’s like, no, I think that the progressives are a practical, idea-building group that actually moves the agenda forward and have done it for the last 10 years. It’s us. We’ve done that work in a real way.

Josh Greenman
Can we get to policy and federal policy, we’ll get back to that in a sec?

Antonio Reynoso
Yes.

Josh Greenman
Immigration, you talk a lot about it. You want to abolish ICE?

Antonio Reynoso
Yes.

Josh Greenman
What ought the standards of deportation be? Who should we be deporting?

Antonio Reynoso
The people we were already deporting before 2002. Before ICE even existed, which were just people that were going through our criminal justice system that have committed crimes and that a judge didn’t see fit to stay in this country, and deported them either after they served their time or immediately to their country.

Josh Greenman
So Obama’s deportation strategy was a bad—

Antonio Reynoso
Yes. Look, I’m Dominican, and let me tell you, Obama was not good for a lot of our folks in our time. And I love Obama, he was the one that inspired me to run for office and really get into this, but I think he did a terrible job when it comes to immigration overall, for a different reason than what people would talk about now. But, in 2002, when they created ICE, it was mostly to do surveillance for Muslim immigrants here in New York City. That’s what it was born to do. What happens, we get somebody like Donald Trump that is more tyrannical in nature. He uses this little niche agency, and turns it into a militaristic force to do nothing. They don’t have anything to do, so what are they doing? They’re going after five-year-olds, they’re going after students, they’re going after people in churches and hospitals. Why? It’s because they don’t have anything to do, because the real deportation system and apparatus happens through the court system, and it’s already working. It’s just something that the Republicans have to do because they have terrible policies, and they can’t pitch a brand or a narrative that is sexy enough for them to win the midterm election so they’ve got to plan something.

Juan Manuel Benítez
You’re saying that you’re Dominican American, but you know that a lot of Dominican Americans in the city voted for Donald Trump in 2024 because they liked his immigration platform.

Antonio Reynoso
Yes. I want to say this, I love my people, but I think this happens a lot, and I think they’re learning. We come from a country where the social principles that we have are not relevant and prevalent in the Dominican Republic. The Dominican Republic is a monolith when it comes to the type of people that live there. They’re all Dominicans. The discrimination doesn’t necessarily happen.

Juan Manuel Benítez
Some Haitians.

Antonio Reynoso
Yes. Well, I was going to get there. The Dominicans are all Dominicans, and there’s no discrimination when it comes to a Dominican, so you don’t have systemic racism and systemic systems in place, and make it harder for like dark-skinned Dominicans, the light-skinned Dominicans. It just doesn’t exist. Are those systems in place against the Haitians? Absolutely. That is a discrimination that happens and that’s what I fight against with the Dominican Republic all the time.

In this country, there is a history of slavery, there’s a history of laws and policies that have been in place to make it so that a Black person didn’t have the opportunities to advance as white people did in this country. The conversation that Dominicans bring when they come here and as immigrants is very different. They’re like, “You’re supposed to work hard, you’re supposed to study, you can’t do crime, you can’t do this. If you are in the circumstance that you are, that is a choice you made,” because in DR, everybody’s born the same, we all look the same, and the laws are all applied.

In New York, they just assume that, “Oh, if you are a poor Black person, it was a choice, you didn’t work hard enough. Then you, you’re the problem.” They have a mentality that’s a lot different than people that have been born here through generations, or they see something like, where like, “Hey, listen, the circumstances by which these folks are being supported in this country don’t exist, or if anything are being hurt,” and because of that, we’re trying to build equity in the system to allow them to have the opportunities that everybody else has. That education is very hard for us to do to with Dominican people. That’s why I think there’s a disconnect between how they feel about Trump, and why they voted for him, not being able to disconnect their relationship to the island and how people are being raised there.

Liena Žagare
Do you think more broadly, is there a level of immigration that is politically unsustainable in this country?

Antonio Reynoso
I don’t know. Let me see. I could get a little more radical on this one. Listen, I think that the nationalism is hurting us deeply. When you have a global economy, global trade, diplomacy, and open conversations, there are great opportunities for us to invest in each other’s countries and invest in other countries to make sure their economic and social progress is happening. It makes it so that if we’re investing in Venezuela in a real way, we’re not putting sanctions on them, and building diplomatic relationships that those people don’t have an economic hardship that makes it so they want to leave and come to America.

If we stabilize these countries and help them through I think economic leverage, we could see advancements. As soon as we insert ourselves in international relations in ways that are like regime change, which we’ve seen in Latin America happen all throughout, I guess we could see advancements, right? My thing is, as soon as we continue to insert ourselves in international relations in ways that are like regime change, which we’ve seen in Latin America happen all throughout and it’s never been a positive outcome.

For me, the first thing is, I think that diplomacy, having economic interests and ties, being able to do trade can allow for these countries to stabilize themselves and not have a mass wave of immigrants coming to America, but we interfere, we insert ourselves.

The collapse of Venezuela came from the sanctions that were imparted by America because they had political disagreements with Venezuela, and put out economic sanctions that ends up hurting not the government — the government and the people on top of Venezuela are eating very well and driving nice cars — the people that suffered are all the people in Venezuela. Now that burden is falling upon us when we see this mass migration. I’m just saying if we do a better job at building international relations, we won’t have to deal with the mass migration moments that we’re seeing in our country.

Juan Manuel Benítez
The rate we saw during the Biden administration, the influx of migrants in cities like New York City, do you think that rate is sustainable?

Antonio Reynoso
I do think it’s sustainable. It’s practically sustainable, right? It’s absolutely sustainable. We have the money, the infrastructure, the space to make it work, but because we have policies that are—

Juan Manuel Benítez
The space we were talking about, housing, and—

Antonio Reynoso
No, but we have— there’s more than enough. Let’s say a Republican state is bearing the brunt of a lot of migrants, if the government was to come in and say, “Hey, we need to help Texas out, and build a plan, and a system by which we can make it so that when immigrants are coming in we’re sending them to different states or maybe they’re states that need more, larger workforce because we don’t have it” or if we have a communal conversation that is not based on politics, and is based on outcomes, we can absolutely solve for this problem.

Josh Greenman
But if people who don’t come legally— I think what you were saying, correct me if I’m wrong, is, unless they don’t commit a crime, they shouldn’t be actively deported. If they commit a crime, and they’re convicted, they should be actively deported. Let’s assume they come illegally, don’t commit crime, then what happens? They just stay and they work in the grey economy, black economy for their whole lives and they don’t get sent back?

Antonio Reynoso
No, we need comprehensive immigration reform, which we don’t do because it’s political. We can solve for this problem. There are solutions to the housing problem, there are solutions to our economic hardship problems.

Josh Greenman
So I’m saying, anyone who comes illegally and they don’t commit a crime, they should all basically by law be regularized, every one of them?

Antonio Reynoso
Every one of them.

Josh Greenman
Anyone who comes illegally should eventually be regularized?

Antonio Reynoso
Yes, there should be a system by which, if you are here, and you got here not through the proper channels, but you’re here and you spend 10 years in this country already building a life, showing that you’re contributing to this country, why not start the process of naturalization? I think that is something that we should talk about. It would make a huge difference.

Akash Mehta
Immigration potentially elected Trump for his second term and has just killed left and center-left parties all over the West. You were talking earlier about how to make progressive policy more palatable to centrists and conservatives, how do you talk about this to—

Antonio Reynoso
I just disagree with the premise that immigration is what is hurting all this left policy. I think it’s a class warfare conversation that we have. This country has seen the greatest wealth transfer over the last five years that it’s ever seen in its history. We’re talking about days of deregulation and no regulation where people own steam trains and own oil and so forth. In that time, there wasn’t as great a wealth transfer than what we’ve seen over the last five years. There’s a group of people in this country that are doing very very well, and they’re thriving, and they need to keep the focus away from them.

While all 80% of us are struggling, they need to figure out a way to make sure that the people with little are fighting against people with less. What they do, they tell a bunch of poor white people that the reason they’re struggling isn’t because the rich haven’t built the system that is equitable, but instead it’s that these poor people that have no political capital, that can’t vote, have no say in it, don’t have any legislative positions that can build policy that means something, those are the people making your lives impossible. They won a narrative war not a practical war.

Akash Mehta
Absolutely. How do you counter, it’s a very effective narrative won.

Antonio Reynoso
No, it’s not. I don’t think it is. I think we win the presidency if we are right on Gaza, for example, as a Democratic Party, and then we’re not having the same conversation, but because the Democrats made other mistakes, now they’re using this one as one of the reasons why we lost, but they’re not letting us know exactly why they did their little report [the 2024 DNC autopsy] and said why we lost. They’re not letting us know because we know exactly what it is, and immigration is not going to be the number one issue. It’s going to be the war on Gaza, and the fact that a bunch of young people really felt that the Democratic Party abandoned their move.

It’s just like, we just got to be careful that, like, I don’t sit here, I would never justify that the Republican Party had a good narrative on immigration because that’s not the case. They’ve done everything they can right now. Immigration is pretty much— no one’s done more to stop the flow of illegal immigrants into this country than the Republican Party right now. They’ve done it. And are they going to lose the midterm elections? Absolutely. Are we not going to say that immigration— We’re not going to use immigration. We’re going to find some other reason as to why we do it. The core crux of it all is economic policy.

Ben Smith
Do you think the asylum system was working well?

Antonio Reynoso
No. I don’t think— I think we need comprehensive immigration reform. I think we had a chance under Barack Obama to get it to happen when we [Democrats] were the Congress, the Senate, and presidency. We could’ve had a meaningful conversation, leveraged a ton to make it happen, and we didn’t. I think the asylum, TPS, the Temporary Protective Status, DACA, all these conversations, we need to talk about being able to naturalize a lot of these folks and we’re not having those conversations.

Josh Greenman
That was the bargain, and he deported people in an attempt to lay the ground for the immigration reform. If you say we’re not going to deport anybody, don’t you undercut—

Antonio Reynoso
I didn’t say we’re not going to deport anybody. I never said that. I said we’re going to deport the people that are criminals. Absolutely. If you’re here—

Josh Greenman
If you significantly reduce deportations, don’t you make it harder to actually make a deal?

Antonio Reynoso
How are you significantly reducing deportations. Barack Obama deported more people than anyone in the history.

Josh Greenman
Right, which you disagree with.

Antonio Reynoso
Well, I disagree with it for different reasons. I don’t disagree with getting rid of the criminals in this country. If you committed a crime, then you shouldn’t be here. I think the problem I have is with, like, an expansion of ICE that’s going after people that their only crime is getting here without papers, and that I don’t think should be—

Josh Greenman
I did think you said that Obama’s deportation levels were unacceptable, and you should go to much, much lower deportation.

Antonio Reynoso
Yeah, I think that there were cases in Obama’s deportation effort that I disagree with. I think that he expanded the parameters by which people would be deported from this country that I think might have not been necessary. Just like misdemeanors and smaller crimes like jumping over turnstiles could get you deported and things like that, and I just thought that we should be going after violent criminals, and the people that are really causing harm in this country.

Ben Max
That was actually going to be my question. You keep saying deport criminals, is it all crimes? Do you have a line of severity?

Antonio Reynoso
I do. If it’s something that should get a desk ticket, you jumped over a turnstile, and things like that, I don’t think that those are things that we should be deporting people for.

Myles Miller
How do you get past the very nature of federal law that there’s the crime of reentry?

Antonio Reynoso
I just principally disagree with it. The whole premise of that law. I just think that it’s something that we shouldn’t be doing in this country, and I would work to legislate it, to solve for it, and have a conversation about it. I think when people are struggling and they’re hurting, this country should be a country that receives those types of people. It’s been a country that’s always done that, but now because people look like me, now it’s a conversation we want to have that’s a lot different than when the Italians and the Irish people were getting here. I just think that we have a whole different—

Josh Greenman
Deportation for only violent crimes, what about significant financial crimes?

Antonio Reynoso
Significant financial crimes as well, yes. White-collar crimes as well, yes.

Ben Smith
Can I go back to Venezuela for a second, and then Harry had something about your opponent. A lot of Venezuelan exiles in Brooklyn, I think right now feel cautiously optimistic about what Trump did, even if they were initially pleased to have Maduro out, political prisoners released, and I’m sure you talked about things like that. What do you say to them?

Antonio Reynoso
I’ll give you another story, because there’s all going to be stories here. There’s 1,000 Jewish refugees from the Holocaust, came to the Dominican Republic. It was one of the few countries in the entire world that accepted Jews from the Holocaust to save them. They got there, and now you go to Sosúa, and you’ll see a thriving Jewish community, and we made it their home. The circumstances by which they got there were horrible because Trujillo in that time had a war— not a war, a massacre of 20,000 Haitians along the border. He was about to get international sanctions imparted on him by the international community for him.

Juan Manuel Benítez
He also wanted white people to come into the country, right?

Antonio Reynoso
Yes, but he didn’t negotiate bringing the Jews to evade the Holocaust. Then the international community was like, “None of us want to take the Jewish people. Give it to Trujillo and we don’t give him sanctions, but he’s going to have to take 100,000 Jewish people.” So he agreed to 100,000 Jewish people being able to come to the Dominican Republic. Only 1,000 of them made it, which is a sad, sad story, but those 1,000 people’s lives forever changed in a positive way.

Venezuela— And I say that because, one, the hardships and the economic problems in Venezuela, I think were orchestrated by the United States. They put in a fire, and then they’re trying to put it out. Maduro being gone is a great thing. I don’t think that that’s something that many people would argue against, but if you think for one second that Trump’s interest was the liberation of the Venezuelan people, then you’ve got to be out of your mind. I tell them, “Yes, you got Maduro out, but what was left over? The same regime, the vice president is still in charge, nothing has changed systematically in there, but it gives them an opportunity to enter, rebuild the oil infrastructure in Venezuela, and be able to extract like colonists do, extract like the United States and its imperialistic energy.” To Venezuelan people, congratulations on Maduro, but the circumstances haven’t changed one bit, and so I just think that they’re wrong.

I just say that story because good things could happen under the guy, or terrible things happen, and you can see a silver lining in it, and this is an example of that.

Harry Siegel
So, you have two opponents in the race, neither of them are from New York City originally. One of them was raised in Texas, and is a member of the DSA, that your predecessor [Eric Adams], as borough president described as like a group of gentrifiers and transplants. City and State wrote that your race is, “The latest referendum on who is a real New Yorker, and who has the right to represent the district in Congress?” How do you want the voters in your district thinking about all that?

Antonio Reynoso
Yeah, I don’t like the conversation of what makes you a real New Yorker. I’m an OG New Yorker. I’ve been here a long time, so I feel like I’ve been here a long time, and the time just makes it so that I’m a New Yorker from a long time ago, but if you’re new here, and you just put your roots down, and you’re about to start your life here, you’re a New Yorker too. I don’t want to make that about that.

The problem I have is that when I was organizing for ACORN, and helping childcare providers be a part of the UFT, that was 20 years ago. The people that are now in this city that are about to vote, 20 years ago were like four years old. They don’t know my history. They don’t know that work that I’ve done. Their political lifespan is like five years or four years. What I’m contending with is doing the best I can to inform, educate, get my message out there to let them know that I was doing a lot of work while you were in middle school, and high school, that is deeply meaningful to the movement that you care about and that’s something that I got to work toward. My thing is less about whether they’re transplants, or whatever it is, it’s just like: effective leadership, it exists here, I’ve done it, I’ve been a part of that, and I’m hoping that when June 23rd comes, I’m the choice that they make.

Juan Manuel Benítez
For most of your life, you’ve been represented in Congress by the same person, Congresswoman Nydia Velázquez. More than 30 years in Congress. Do you think there’s something wrong with that?

Antonio Reynoso
It’s a double-sided sword. Sometimes there is, sometimes it’s not. Sometimes having somebody that understands the community deeply, that understands its history, people that are effective, I think it adds a lot of value. You can tell Nydia about any block in the district, and she knows exactly what it is, who lives there, and all the troubles that that block has had, and there’s value in that. Then there’s other elected officials that just win because of name recognition, and incumbency, that don’t do work and that haven’t been effective, and I think that there should be a way to take them out. I would say this, I don’t necessarily think it’s a problem. What I do think is a problem is that we don’t have a public financing system in Congress to allow for younger people that don’t have money to be able to have a shot at being able to run against incumbents that we might not like.

Josh Greenman
What’s her biggest accomplishment?

Antonio Reynoso
Nydia’s biggest accomplishment? I think Nydia’s biggest accomplishment really came from when she was the ranking member and the chair of the small business committee during COVID. Nydia did a lot of work in unlocking a ton of grant money and funding to businesses all over the country. She was central in that work. If you look at the bills or the policies passed by Nydia Velázquez during COVID, you will see that she earmarked for extremely small businesses, small businesses of people like Green Card holders, and just looking for ways to close the gap, and allow for non-corporate style businesses to get a shot at being able to survive COVID, and not just these large corporations and these big banks getting bailouts. I think that that’s one of her biggest accomplishments in the small business committee.

Ben Max
Coming back to the prior part of the conversation, why weren’t you able to convince the mayor, given the track record you were talking about, to stay out of this race or support you or push the DSA to stand down? They’ve obviously recruited into the race someone who’s sort-of a movement figure who hasn’t been around very long—

Antonio Reynoso
A movement figure?

Ben Max
Yeah, a figure of their movement, of like a DSA organizer figure—

Antonio Reynoso
I think this is also something that’s like a lot of insider baseball stuff here when it comes to this issue.

Myles Miller
We want to hear it.

Antonio Reynoso
I would love to tell it but, let me see. I’m going to tell you as much as I can.

Myles Miller
It’s the reason you’ve come here.

Juan Manuel Benítez
How was that conversation when you sat down with the mayor and you were like—

Antonio Reynoso
It wasn’t good.

No, no, I was going to come out before he did that, so it was like a Monday, I was going to say that I was running for Congress on a Tuesday. He called me Monday and he was like, “We need to meet quickly.” I was like, “Sure, no problem.” He was like, “Oh, I want to talk to you about other opportunities you may have that are not running for Congress.” I was like, “I don’t think that’s going to work. This is something that I really want to do. I’ve been talking to Nydia about it. I’ve been born and raised in this community. I think it’d really mean a lot for me to get your support in this race.”

He was like, “Well, I think I’m going to go somewhere else.” He mentioned Claire, and I really don’t know Claire. I was like, “Claire Valdez?” He says, “Yes.” I was like, “Well, I don’t think Nydia knows her. I don’t think a lot of people in the community know her. I don’t know her, so I just think that maybe we should think about whether or not she’s the best person for this seat,” but he was convinced.

I think what ended up happening is he went against Chi Ossé on Hakeem Jeffries, he went against Alexa Avilés in supporting Brad Lander. I think the Darializa-Espaillat conversation is going to be something very interesting. He’s running out of opportunities to push back against the DSA. He needed to throw them a bone. This is an open seat, it’s not an incumbent. He’s not going against me, he’s supporting the DSA. I think that’s how he saw an out.

Juan Manuel Benítez
What other opportunities did he offer?

Antonio Reynoso
No, he didn’t offer opportunities. Every time I do things like that— I want to be honest to you, I tried to play that type of game twice in my life in politics, and both times it went terribly wrong. I just don’t try to do that.

Ben Smith
Can you tell those stories?

Myles Miller
Give us one example, come on.

Antonio Reynoso
I almost compromised trying to build relationships on the issue of styrofoam in the City Council. Somebody in the City Council’s policy division told us that it’s recyclable. I was like, “There’s no way.” They went to Ohio and saw a styrofoam factory, brought back a brick, and were like, “Look, this is what you can do with it.” I was like, “Oh, man.” I was getting a lot of pressure from people to make styrofoam a recyclable entity in New York City. I’m an environmental justice person. I was like, “There’s no way.” There was a court case happening, and the court case was going to determine whether or not styrofoam was recyclable or not.

I had a hearing on it. It was a terrible hearing because it just reaffirmed that I shouldn’t be doing this. We were going to put it up for a vote, maybe three weeks later. The hearing came out two weeks before that vote, and the judge said it’s not recyclable, and it saved my life. It’s just an example of me trying to be nice to people I care about or that care about me. It’s just like, always just do what’s in your heart, what’s in your conscience. If I would’ve done that, it would’ve discredited my entire environmental justice, who I am at my core. I was almost willing to do that. I was just thinking back, “Be careful.”

And voting against the budget when there was too much money going into the police department was an example of me just voting my conscience and being who I am, regardless of the politics and the play.

Juan Manuel Benítez
What did it mean that the mayor told you, like, “Oh, you shouldn’t run for Congress,” knowing that you wanted to run for Congress since you were a little kid?

Antonio Reynoso
He doesn’t know that. Zohran just met me.

Juan-Manuel Benitez
What did it mean to you?

Antonio Reynoso
What do you mean?

Juan Manuel Benítez
When the mayor, who you supported really early in his campaign last year, said, “Oh, you shouldn’t run for Congress.” Knowing what running for Congress meant to you, personally.

Antonio Reynoso
I don’t think he knows me. I don’t think he knows what my history is. I think I was good enough to be in citywide Spanish media for him. I was good enough to do a commercial in all of Brooklyn for him, supporting his candidacy. I think that we were aligned because I’m a WFP pup, I’m a kid that’s always been with the WFP. He’s seen a lot of the progressive work that I’ve done, and he knows me as Antonio, maybe that way as a politician, but he doesn’t know my history. He doesn’t know where I come from. I think maybe to him, one, he thinks that I could be transactional in that way and offered me an opportunity to do something different, and found out that that’s not who I am. Or two, he maybe didn’t think I cared about this enough, and that it was something that we could figure out in another way.

Ben Smith
Do you think that’s a political flaw of his? Do you think he’s disloyal?

Antonio Reynoso
I think he is disloyal. And I want to say this, not to me so much. He’s DSA, he’s loyal to the DSA. I respect that. I’m not going to be mad at that.

I think it’s what he did to Nydia more so than me. I think he’s doing what he’s got to do for his people, and he doesn’t need to be with me, and it doesn’t bother me one bit. Even if I endorsed him, I get it. I think Nydia was asking him to sit down and come to an agreement and saying, “Hey, it doesn’t need to be Antonio.” I’ll be honest, I’ll tell you right now that I was hearing through the grapevine that she thought that [City Council Member] Tiffany Cabán was the compromise.

And that she [Nyida Velazquez] went and said that the amount of political capital that she will have to expend to get me out of the race and then communicate to the people of this district that I’m not the one, because she’s going to have to do damage control on that because a lot of people want me to run and care about me. She was like, “I’ll do all that work because I think we have a Puerto Rican woman and a DSA candidate, and a DSA member, and we could combine it. And my history with Antonio and how much he knows I care about Puerto Rican representation and leadership, and women representation, I think I can make that pitch to him. I’ll sacrifice all that to find a compromise here, to build as a partnership.” And he said no to her. She was the first Congresswoman to endorse him before any of the DSA Congresspeople.

Ben Max
You would have stood down in that situation?

Antonio Reynoso
I don’t know, but I respect Nydia so much that I wanted to have that conversation. I want to be honest, I don’t know if I win that race necessarily. I’m not stupid. I know what this is. Now unions, the WFP, a lot of the electeds that supported me, now it’s all up for grabs. Tiffany Cabán has a lot of history here, has done a lot of good work. She is a legitimate person that when you hear her name, you know she’s done a lot of work. Claire Valdez was supposed to be the labor candidate, and I have all the labor, and she’s still pushing that she’s the labor candidate. I am the labor candidate.

My thing is, with him, he should have had a conversation with her. He wouldn’t have had a fight; he would have had a DSA victory, he would have still been friends with all of us, with Nydia, and all of them. We wouldn’t even be having this conversation right now.

Ben Max
You come out of reform politics in Brooklyn, you’ve been at this so long, DSA is relatively new. Many people see you as the underdog in this race.

Antonio Reynoso
I am the underdog.

Ben Max
You have all the labor, you have Nydia, you’ve been working in Brooklyn politics forever now. How is that possible? Isn’t that a failing of you and Nydia?

Antonio Reynoso
No.

Ben Max
How can you be the underdog then, if you have all the labor, you have the Congresswoman, you’ve been doing all this work?

Antonio Reynoso
I want to say this: the average age of the voting population in the district is 34 years old — 34 years old is the average age of this district. Over 51% or 52% of this district have less than 10 years living in the district. This is a significantly gentrified community that has really changed over the years. Of which, many of those people have supported me. Zohran Mamdani is a celebrity-status, inspiring figure at the levels of AOC and Bernie Sanders. He is a movement and is deeply important.

If it was just me and Claire and Zohran doesn’t endorse her, we’re not even having this conversation. It’s over, but Zohran means something. He is deeply popular. He has like an 80% favorability rating in this district. This district was the one he won with the biggest margin against Andrew Cuomo, 70% to 22%. Those are real statistics. That’s why it’s a toss-up. That’s why it’s going to be a tight race. It’s because we have those people that don’t know me from the Right to Know Act; don’t know me from Commercial Waste Zones; Black maternal health is not something that was central to the work that they were doing; fighting against county party in that time is not something they saw. Founding NKD [New Kings Democrats], working for ACORN, none of that stuff is—

They’re voting for the first time, many of them, 34 years old. This is their first big election for a lot of these people. It’s not so much my record or failure of media, and all that stuff. I won this district by like 82% when I ran for borough president. People very clearly liked me in this district. Now, I’m going against Zohran Mamdani’s popularity, and that is a real thing.

Christina Greer
How has your strategy changed? Claire Valdez, she’s got the big celebrities who come into town, some may or may not [live] in the district. She’s got Bernie Sanders on the front of her website. How has your campaign strategy changed this time around?

Antonio Reynoso
It hasn’t changed. The people that are going to elect me are very diverse and broad. While they’re having a glitzy fundraiser, I’m having 100 people meeting with Lindsay Park and talking to those residents in the Mitchell-Lama. I was at MUNA talking to Bangladeshi immigrants in Cypress Hills. Talking to the Hasidim about issues that are important to them and whether or not I would be the person that they would be interested in. Talking about long-term Dominicans that we need to get from 6% to 8% in voting population. I’m just death by 1,000 paper cuts.

I’m moving through this district, meeting a ton of people and building a coalition of the other, to challenge the population that’s going to be voting for her. I want to be clear. When you see the people that are supporting me, when you get into the victory party, or you see anything that I’m doing, all these people are Black, brown, poor folks. Every single NYCHA tenant association president has endorsed me. Even the ones in Queens that represent them. I got supported by Queensbridge houses. Ravenswood has a 501c3, so they can’t officially endorse, but go ask their leadership what they think about me.

These are people that I met through the campaign trail because I never represented them. What I’m doing, I’m going to all the places that people traditionally don’t go. I’m going to be in NYCHA, I’m going to be in the poor neighborhoods, I’m going to do it the hard way, and I’m excited about it. I think my team has been excited about it, and we’re going to show people when it’s over.

Myles Miller
I was just wondering if you could quickly talk about the changing demographic of Hispanic representation in New York. You are going up against another Hispanic person, but I think when you look at the assembly and those races, it looked much different than what they were in the last 10, 15 years.

Antonio Reynoso
I pride myself--

Christina Greer
Is she Hispanic?

Antonio Reynoso
She’s Mexican. Univision wants to have a debate, and we’re really looking forward to being able to have that debate with her on Univision. We’ll see…we’ve agreed to it. We’re seeing if she wants to do that. Also, NY1 wants to have a debate; we’re really excited, and we’re hoping that she wants to be there too. We want to be in as many debates as we possibly can be.

Myles Miller
Do you think you’re banking on Dominicans and Puerto Ricans in Williamsburg and the surrounding areas?

Antonio Reynoso
Everybody. All other. The Chinese population in Lindsay Park, the Black population in the southern portion of the district in Fort Greene, the middle-class white population in Concord Village — everywhere, everybody. We’re going after everybody. If we don’t do that, and we don’t get the numbers up in those areas, we’re not going to win this race. It’s what I have to do. Latino representation. I say this, that I pride myself on being somebody that has been elected to office, not through identity politics. The only way that Latinos are really— we talk about Latinos citywide. Freddie Ferrer is the last shot we got at a citywide elected official really doing some work.

It happened because Freddie was resonating outside of his identity. Latinos are not going to win. Of course, we’re going to win in Washington Heights and in the South Bronx because that’s where all of us live. Are we going to have representatives that are winning outside of those demographics because of their policy and their work, and then being able to build a coalition with them as well, an identity, long-term? What I tell a lot of these elected officials that are Latino is, “Hey, those are your people. If you’re in a majority Latino district, make sure that people see you in them, but you have to build a record outside of identity so that you can have an opportunity outside of that.”

[City Council Member] Chris Marte has done that and is an example of somebody that’s not representing a largely Latino community. We have these moments in this political world where we’re starting to move away from identity politics, and I think that’s deeply important for us to do.

Ben Smith
Thank you so much for taking the time.

Antonio Reynoso
Thank you. I’ll see you guys in the tweet comments on all this stuff.