On the morning of December 18th, a group of community advocates and city and state legislators gathered in front of downtown Brooklyn’s municipal building to endorse City Comptroller Brad Lander’s primary challege to two-term Congressman Dan Goldman, a staunchly pro-Israel Democrat and heir to a fortune from the Levi Strauss clothing company. The gathering was a warning sign for Goldman: All eight politicians who took turns speaking were either current or former representatives of parts of Goldman’s Tenth Congressional District, which runs from lower Manhattan to west and south Brooklyn. Normally, elected officials support an incumbent from their own party, but here, they were denouncing Goldman as someone who, in the words of Assemblyman Bobby Carroll, “turned a cold shoulder” to constituents concerned with the suffering of Palestinians in Gaza. Carroll contrasted this with the attitude of Lander, a progressive who “co-endorsed” Zohran Mamdani last summer while running for mayor himself, and whose support was ultimately instrumental in building the left-liberal coalition that helped elect the democratic socialist in November.

The presence of one elected official was especially noteworthy: City Council member Alexa Avilés. Avilés had weighed her own run against Goldman, and had picked up the endorsement of the New York City chapter of the Democratic Socialists of America (NYC-DSA) in October. With the group’s field operation having powered Mamdani’s winning campaign, its endorsement was expected to carry more weight than ever in 2026. But things got complicated for Avilés when Lander, who’d been expected to take a spot in Mamdani’s administration, decided to jump into the NY-10 race. Thanks to his long-time advocacy for tenants, immigrants, and labor—and the big boost he’d given Mamdani—Lander would have substantial support on the left, especially in a district he’d partly represented on the city council for 12 years. Still, Lander, whose days of active DSA membership were long over, wasn’t going to win the NYC-DSA’s nod, not least because he’s a liberal Zionist—a strong critic of Israel’s bombardment of Gaza, but nonetheless a believer in Israel as a Jewish state and an opponent of the DSA-backed Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions (BDS) movement.

With Lander in the fray, progressives began to fear a repeat of the 2022 election—when the left split the vote in a Democratic primary and Goldman ended up with a narrow victory. Consequently, some of DSA’s elected officials began coming out for Lander—none more important than Avilés herself. In a December 10th statement announcing she would not run, Avilés wrote that a “split field” runs the risk of allowing Goldman another “damaging term” in Congress. In a subsequent statement endorsing Lander on December 18th, she wrote that her district needed “a fighter in Congress who will put the needs of working-class people above the interests of corporations and AIPAC.” (The pro-Israel lobby is a supporter of Goldman, while Lander’s first campaign video featured a swipe at the organization.) Lander, Avilés wrote, “will fight for New Yorkers in a way that our current representative does not.” “I believe that I’m the candidate best suited to bring that coalition together and defeat Dan Goldman,” Lander told Jewish Currents in an interview the following day. The political moment, he said, calls for “a popular front if we are going to defeat Trump and build something better here, and make progress defending the human rights, dignity and self-determination of Palestinians.” With NYC-DSA’s candidate bowing out, Lander’s candidacy will be a test of whether the progressive alliance that came together in 2025 can do it again.

Challenging Goldman, who this month received backing from Governor Kathy Hochul and House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries, has become an increasingly urgent priority for New York progressives. The former assistant US attorney rose to prominence as a cable-news commentator and lead counsel for the first impeachment of Donald Trump in 2019. He ran for Congress in the progressive district in 2022, barely defeating state assembly member Yuh-Line Niou, who split the vote with other contenders on Goldman’s left. Progressive discontent with the congressman grew as Goldman vocally backed US support for Israel’s onslaught on Gaza following October 7th, 2023; pro-Palestine protests became a fixture outside his congressional office in Brooklyn. “Goldman has always been an ardent defender of the Israeli government,” said Grace Mausser, the co-chair of NYC-DSA. “He maintained his stance even as more and more Americans recognized the situation in Palestine for what it is: a genocide.”

In Avilés, the socialist group saw a credible threat to Goldman, and a chance to have another DSA leader join the small group of democratic socialists in Congress that includes Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Rashida Tlaib. “We believe a socialist with a strong history in movement politics and who has consistently taken a brave stance on Palestine is the best candidate for this district,” Mausser told Jewish Currents after NYC-DSA officially endorsed Avilés on October 25th. NYC-DSA had a steady base of 2,000 members in the Tenth district, its second-largest contingent in the city; it could also mobilize a citywide membership of over 13,000 behind its candidate. And these volunteers had a potent message to use against Goldman: He had refused to endorse Mamdani for mayor, despite the democratic socialist winning the district handily in the primary.

Multiple progressive challengers, however, could dilute that message. Avilés had been in conversation with NYC-DSA leaders about the race since the summer; during that time, according to reports in Gothamist and The New York Times, Lander had indicated that he wanted to be Mamdani’s deputy mayor. (Lander allies, however, told the Times he had never assumed he would get the job, and had been thinking about a potential congressional run since last spring). But according to the Times, Mamdani had informed Lander in late October that he would not be getting the deputy mayor job; instead, the mayor-elect wanted to support Lander in a run against Goldman. About six weeks later, on December 10th, Lander officially entered the race with a Mamdani endorsement—along with endorsements from Senators Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren. This changed Avilés’s and DSA’s calculations. “DSA didn’t want to play spoiler when there’s clearly a much stronger candidate in Brad Lander, given he’s been in office for so long in Brooklyn,” said Ross Barkan, a writer who covers New York City politics for New York Magazine and the Times. “In the district’s vote-rich neighborhoods, he’s just much better known.”