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On a grey, blustery day in Bushwick, Brooklyn, Mayor Zohran Mamdani and Shawn Fain, the international president of the United Auto Workers, announced their endorsement of former UAW member Claire Valdez for congress in District 7. A New York State Assemblymember, Valdez credits her political awakening to UAW Local 2110, a union she joined when working at Columbia University.
Before joining the UAW and eventually becoming the union’s unit chair for Columbia administrative employees in 2022, Valdez worked at a combination of Taco Bell and Pizza Hut Express, she told The Chief in a 2024 profile. Valdez received an endorsement from UAW Region 9A during her 2024 campaign for assembly and from Fain, who Valdez helped elect to the union’s top post in internal UAW elections in late 2023 and early 2024.
"When workers and people from all walks of life, union or not, stand in solidarity with one another, when we elect our own by electing people who understand the struggle of paying bills every month, when we look after each other, when we care for each other, when we guarantee that everyone has an equal shot at a good life, when working-class people stand up together and fight for what we deserve, when working class people elect leaders like Claire Valdez, we can move mountains," Fain said in his endorsement speech in Maria Hernandez park. "That's why on behalf of the UAW I am so proud today to endorse Claire Valdez for Congress to send her to Washington D.C. to move mountains for working class people from all walks of life.
The endorsement from Fain and Mamdani came on the second day of Valdez's nascent campaign for Congress. She’s running to fill the seat of the retiring Nydia Velasquez who has been in Congress since 1999 and has represented a district that spans across portions of Brooklyn and Queens since 2013.
Velasquez’s endorsement is highly coveted in the race, but it may go to Valdez’s opponent, Brooklyn Borough President Antonio Reynoso, a progressive who’s been in office for far longer than Valdez. Both candidates running to represent what may be the most left-wing district in the United States are campaigning on progressive policy positions, including medicare for all.
Valdez, an ardent unionist, is also pledging “unions for all” as one of her campaign slogans.
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