Pauly Denetclaw
ICT
New York state could elect its first known Indigenous member of Congress.
Claire Valdez, Ysleta Del Sur Pueblo, is the Democratic nominee for New York’s 7th Congressional District — it crosses two of New York City’s boroughs, Brooklyn and Queens.
She currently serves as an assemblymember in the New York state legislature.
Valdez went against three other Democratic candidates in the June 23 primary to replace U.S. Rep. Nydia Velasquez, who wasn’t seeking re-election. Valdez won with 55 percent of the votes.
She is now headed to the general election on Nov. 3 where she faces three other challengers.
“Representation is incredibly important. For so many Native people in the United States, we’ve been completely forgotten about. There’s been a long history of intentional erasure, of assimilation, and trampling of political and sovereign rights,” Valdez told ICT. “It’s really important to have representatives who understand that and want to go to Washington to stand up for our communities’ particular political situation.”
“I think that responsibility extends to much broader anti-colonial struggles as well. This district, New York seven, has a long history of Puerto Rican diaspora making their homes in Williamsburg and Bushwick,” Valdez said. “There’s a real responsibility to other colonial territories that are under the United States’ rule right now to make sure that they have a voice in Congress, and to help people fight for true sovereignty and self-determination. That extends far beyond Indian Country that we come from, but I think is part of a much broader anti-colonial struggle.”
Valdez has garnered the endorsements of New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani, U.S. Sen. Bernie Sanders and actress Cynthia Nixon.
In 2024, U.S. Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez endorsed her for the state assembly, but has yet to endorse her congressional campaign.
Ocasio-Cortez is closely aligned with the Working Families Party and Antonio Reynoso, Brooklyn Borough President, won its primary. Reynoso will head to the general election as the Working Families Party nominee and a challenger to Valdez.
“Claire Valdez stood with me on day one because she understands how change is won — by building power, raising expectations, and delivering for working people,” Mamdani stated in an endorsement. “She comes from the labor movement and knows how to turn struggle into real gains on housing, healthcare, and workers’ rights. That’s the kind of partner I need in Congress, and why I’m proud to endorse her.”
From Lubbock, Texas to New York legislature
Valdez was born and raised in Lubbock, Texas, located on the border of New Mexico and Texas. Art was her passion growing up and this often made her feel isolated from her peers, she told Hyperallergic.
She moved to the Midwest to study art at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. She graduated with her undergraduate degree and went to work at Taco Bell, Trader Joe’s and Pizza Hut.
“Coming from the perspective of someone who has had to work fast food, who had to work at Trader Joe’s for a long time, I think those are really essential work experiences that not a lot of members of Congress have,” Valdez said.
In 2015, she moved to New York City, to live her dream as a professional artist. Valdez landed a job in the visual arts department at Columbia University.
The university is part of the United Auto Workers Local 2110, a union that protects 3,000 workers at universities, publishing houses, museums, law firms and other offices. She’s been a union organizer ever since.
“Having the perspective of being a proud union member from the United Auto Workers, a union that I think is really leading the way on especially international solidarity and anti-colonial struggle, that’s a really important perspective now when the Trump administration’s best friends are Jeff Bezos and Elon Musk and these really atrocious union busting billionaires,” she said.
After the death of her paternal grandfather in 2016, Valdez and her family reconnected with their family in Ysleta Del Sur Pueblo in, what is now known as, El Paso, Texas.
“We were able to connect with members of our family who were involved with tribal politics,” Valdez said. “We realized that we were eligible to be citizens and so we made the trip out with my father, my aunt, his sister, with my cousin, and with my family to properly enroll. It was a beautiful experience to have with my family.”
It was a very moving experience for Valdez and she was grateful that she got to experience it with her family.
“Being able to say, I have a political and cultural membership to a group of people who have been surviving in Texas for a long time, even in the face of colonialism, even in the face of assimilationist policies,” she said. “It felt really powerful to be able to say, I have a home here. This is a place that I have real belonging to.”
Valdez also identifies as Mexican-American.
Her first elected position was to the United Auto Workers Local 2110’s bargaining committee in 2022. Two years later she ran for New York state assembly to represent the state’s 37th District. This district is completely in Queens, one of New York City’s five boroughs.
She is choosing to not run for reelection to the state assembly and instead run for Congress.
It is likely that Valdez, as the Democratic nominee, will win at the general election. She won over her closest contender, Antonio Reynoso, by more than 13,200 votes in the June primary election. Reynoso lost to Valdez in the Democratic primary but won the Working Families Party nominee.
Campaign platform
Valdez is running on a platform of unions for all, Medicare for all, housing for all, to abolish Immigration Customs and Enforcement, and to stop funding war and genocide.
In her role as an assemblymember, she has met with representatives from the Seneca Nation.
“I’m a New York state assemblymember. I represent part of western Queens. There are obviously no tribal nations within my district, but there are many Indigenous folks who call New York State and New York City their home, and I’ve been able to meet with representatives from the Seneca Nation,” she said. “That’s been really, really amazing and really helpful to hear the kind of issues that are facing folks in New York state around land rights, around sovereignty. I’ve been able to connect with tribal nations about their particular issues, and it’s been a really important learning experience.”
She sees the issues of tribal sovereignty and self-determination intertwined with other issues important to her constituents, like those of Puerto Rico, which is a territory of the United States.
“This district has a long history of being a Puerto Rican district, a Latino district, that was something that came up again and again. I think these struggles are very deeply tied together,” Valdez said. “I think the anti-colonial perspective, especially at this moment when the United States is engaging in illegal wars, is supporting a genocide, I think was really resonant when we came to talk to people at the doors. There were a lot of issues kind of tied together there.”
Her ethos as an elected official is centered on solidarity, and she plans to bring that to Congress.
“Solidarity. That’s the ideal that ties a lot of this work for me together,” she said. “The solidarity for the people who are on their feet night and day, working long hours with very few protections. Solidarity with people whose land has been stolen from them, whose treaties have not been honored. Solidarity with the people of Puerto Rico who remain colonized by the United States and don’t have a voice in Congress.
“I want to make sure that this seat can be a representation of a really capacious vision of solidarity, and that’s why I got into politics. It’s what I want to be fighting for in Congress.”
