Early voting for New York’s Democratic primary election begins Saturday, June 13, and runs through Sunday, June 21, ahead of Primary Day on June 23. Among the closely watched races is the contest to succeed retiring 34-year incumbent Rep. Nydia Velázquez in New York’s 7th Congressional District.
In the running are Brooklyn Borough President Antonio Reynoso, Assemblymember Claire Valdez. Queens Councilwoman Julie Won and public defender Vichal Kumar.
Candidates shared their positions on disability issues in exclusive interviews with Able News.
Reynoso confessed to Able News that the disabled community is “an ignorance issue.”
“The reason that question is hard is because the amount of money we need federally is not something that I think a lot of us are aware of,” Borough President Reynoso said when asked about government spending that supports the disabled community, in the one-on-one interview in mid-May, at Positive Exposure, a nonprofit studio gallery in Manhattan for people with disabilities.
The son of two Dominican immigrants, Reynoso hails from Williamsburg, Brooklyn, where he lives with his wife and two disabled sons— Andres, 5, who has autism and Alejandro, 8, who was recently diagnosed with Attention-Deficit/Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD).
Brooklyn Borough President Antonio Reynoso with Christopher Alvarez of Able News.
His own struggle with trying to communicate with his autistic son and getting the right services to meet his needs has flipped his perspective on people with disabilities. “ My advocacy turned from a moment to a lifetime, where every bone in my body is advocating for Andres now and how he’s going to be able to live in this city every single minute” with an agenda that brings “real fights and real results” in taking on the housing crisis, healthcare inequality, investment in transportation, inclusive employment and higher education.
On Transportation and Safe Environments
“I just wish we had more sophistication and more humbleness to ourselves so we can start building a city that works for everyone,” Reynoso said, questioning why New York hasn’t been able to mimic London’s accessibility standards. Andres loves running but unlike his older brother, he is unable to fully grasp safety hazards that limit him from freely growing, exploring and participating in independent play. “The park spaces that we have are not conducive to supporting a child with autism,” Reynoso said, emphasizing his efforts with the New York City Department of Parks & Recreation to make public fields more supportive.
A 12-year dispute with NYC Parks has Reynoso motivated to build a makeshift wheelchair-accessible swing in Cooper Park, in protest, for a 30-year-old Brooklynite wheelchair user, who has never experienced a swing in his life.
“The accessibility, assisting children with autism and disabilities, not only physical, but neurodivergent kids are something that I don’t think we think about enough,” he said.
Recently, Reynoso filed a joint lawsuit with the Center for the Independence of the Disabled New York against the Metropolitan Transportation Authority (MTA), demanding more station agents in subway stations and speaking out against potential station closures. “My biggest issue is that in the MTA, I really feel like we’re moving away from a human touch and personal interaction, personal support,” he said. “Robots can’t open doors for us. Robots can’t assist us. If there’s an elevator that goes down, these station agents are the ones that advise us and give us support.”
“When we help the disability community, everybody benefits,” he said.
Reynoso wants the federal government to invest more money in the Department of Transportation for staffing, infrastructure, operations and highway development and expansion. He admits that he is radical in his argument for the city to start moving away from a car-centric reality and into one that’s more pedestrian-friendly, pointing to safety and accessibility concerns. To achieve this, Reynoso says that once in Congress, he will support Universal Daylighting Bills, originally proposed by his councilmember opponent, Julie Won. That proposal would daylight 1,000 intersections a year and create a 20 -foot parameter parking limit, for people with disabilities and those pushing a stroller, who are out of the line of sight for drivers.
Reynoso added that he will also support any legislation that boosts the cost of congestion pricing to expedite subway accessibility upgrades. “Nine dollars is not enough…we need to start getting it to fifteen. It brings more money into the MTA. Now we’re talking about ADA accessibility in a way that we can actually afford for stations that we need to start building out, and just a more reliable service that’s clean and makes more sense across the board,” he said, criticizing New York State Gov. Kathy Hochul’s infamous rollback on the tolling initiative, lowering its cost, as she runs for reelection in November.
On Nursing and Healthcare
Simultaneously, at the same time of Able News’ sit-down with Reynoso, disabled people rallied outside City Hall Park, with home care workers to stop the 24-hour workdays. Reynoso’s mother was and still is a 1199SEIU home health aide. He recalls her not being with the family on holidays, weekends, late nights and barely getting paid minimum wage. That’s why he also supports Intro. 303 and possibly even cutting the workday down to twelve or eighteen-hour shifts, and finding a replacement for somebody who needs 24-hour care.
For that, Reynoso is aware that his fight in Congress will also have to heavily be dedicated to hiring more home health aides and increasing their pay because “it’s not an attractive job right now,” he noted. “They get paid slightly over minimum wage. The only way to attract people to this work is to pay them more.”
On Education
Andres is non-verbal and getting services through the city was very difficult at first, even for a city government official. Reynoso has seen significant improvements in his son’s development with the help of NYC Department of Education’s Acquisition, Integrated Services, Meaningful Communication, and Social Skills (AIMS) program, a specialized, intensive special education program for autistic students, the BP is worried that Andres is still feeling excluded.
“I want him to feel heard; I want him to feel seen, and I don’t necessarily know if that’s where he is right now,” he said. When Andres first enrolled in the AIMS program, the school didn’t have after-school programming for kids with disabilities. After Reynoso’s wife joined the Parent-Teacher Association, they were able to get the after-school program started for their son.
“It’s a hard thing for sure,” he said emotionally telling Able News that he’s thinking about creating workforce development programs, housing and education that makes sense for individuals with disabilities. “Now I’m an everyday advocate versus just an advocate once a month.”
On Housing
Previously, Reynoso served as Council Member for the 34th Council District, representing portions of Bushwick and Williamsburg in Brooklyn and Ridgewood in Queens. During his tenure, he championed the Bushwick Community Plan, a community-led rezoning to create affordable housing, preserve manufacturing space, and advancing neighborhood needs. If he wins the NY-7 congressional race, Reynoso promised to continue the fight alongside Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez to repeal the Faircloth Amendment, allowing the federal government to build affordable housing again. in their mission to fix the housing crisis and deliver more accessible housing by making it more affordable and working with more private companies that are Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED) certified, to make buildings more ADA-compliant.
Co-governance in a Reynoso Congress
Reynoso said that he needs and wants somebody from the disability community in his circle “so that the set of eyes that I have that are very narrow get expanded [and] be able to pop my bubbles or expand my horizons so that I make sure I advocate for them,” Reynoso said. “If you’re not in the room, these conversations are never happening.”
Reaching the goal
“I want the disability community to feel like I’m an advocate for them…I wanna make sure that people feel heard, seen, and fought for through my leadership regardless of identity politics,” the candidate looking to represent NY- 7 in Congress ended. “My advocacy is something that is unwavering. My advocacy is something that is an obligation. I have a lens as a parent of a son with a disability, and I’m gonna make sure that I do everything I can to make sure that [my son] is included, [and] that people like him are supported.”
Claire Valdez
Claire Valdez with Christopher Alvarez of Able News.
Sitting down on a park bench, Claire Valdez sighed in relief that budget season is behind her.
Albany policymakers finally passed the $268.6 billion state budget for 2026-27 fiscal year on May 28th.
The spending plan increased Medicaid reimbursement rates, including $480 million for nursing homes and $500 million for cash-strapped hospitals, $16.8 million was allocated to secure SNAP EBT system built on chip-enabled benefit card technology in the enacted state operations bill and $9.25 billion for special schools for blind and deaf students and food safety.
Democratic Socialist Assemblymember Valdez, however, is still unhappy with the end result, saying that New York State Gov. Kathy Hochul “answered to different New Yorkers, the small number of billionaires and CEOs.”
“ We spent weeks negotiating this budget and not even talking about revenue and the things that actually keep our communities healthy, whole, and safe,” Valdez said early last week, when she invited Able News to McCarren Park in Brooklyn for an exclusive interview about how she plans to help the disabled community, as she nears the final stretch of campaign run for Congress to represent the seventh congressional district.
“ I think we had an opportunity to raise taxes on the richest New Yorkers to make sure that they didn’t lose that healthcare. So, I’m disappointed in the budget process. I think it’s just a broken process. The governor has for the last couple of years spent a lot of time putting in her legislative priorities rather than talking about money and that’s really the thing that we need right now in so many of our communities.”
Similar to her opponent Brooklyn Borough President Antonio Reynoso, Valdez wants housing, Medicare and transit for all, among other issues.
The child of Mexican American parents, Valdez takes after her artistic mother, Christine, moving to the Big Apple to become an artist. When that didn’t pan out, Valdez decided to advocate for healthcare providers in their fight for better wages and hours, one of her top priorities in the political realm as her mom spent decades working in a hospital.
Nursing and Healthcare
Christine, Valdez’s mother, worked at a hospital for over 40 years as a medical technologist including working part-time during the COVID-19 pandemic and often late nights and weekends. “It was often kind of a one-parent household situation,” Valdez told Able News. “It wasn’t always easy to not have your mom around, but she always wanted to do right by her patients and by the people that she worked with. And I think I got some of my fight as a worker from her.” She noted that her mom “was very protective” of her coworkers, many times backing them up in fights against the hospital when it tried to minimize staff hours as an excuse to not give them healthcare and other work benefits.
For that reason, she said she supports Intro. 303, a city council bill that looks to end 24-hour workdays for home care workers.
“This is a matter of justice not just for the workers, but for the patients and the people that they’re caring for… I think the 24-hour shifts, without commensurate pay, are intolerable working conditions.,” Valdez told Able News staff writer at a disability forum he moderated with the candidates in late April. “We’re going to have to work very hard at the state level to make sure that we can pay for it so there are no gaps in care, no gaps in pay for those workers as we make that transition to 12-hour shifts.”
Valdez rolled her eyes, telling Able News that United States Secretary of Health and Human Services Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s comments were “ridiculous” when he testified before the House Ways and Means Committee on the 2027 budget for his department, saying that family members should not be compensated for taking care of their loved ones.
“ Home care, caring for loved ones is absolutely work done usually with a lot of love and care, but that still requires long hours, round-the-clock care, knowing how to treat your loved ones, [requires] a real level of expertise that obviously should be compensated,” she said, taking a sip of her coffee during last week’s one-on-one sit-down.
On Transportation
Known as the transit candidate in this congressional race, “ I support free bus service year-round,” Valdez said, not addressing if Access-A-Ride should also be included. At the same forum she also acknowledged that construction and scaffolding makes getting through the city incredibly difficult, which is why she supports the idea of finding safe and accommodating ways for wheelchair access on bike lanes when sidewalks are closed off.
New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani was unsuccessful in advancing his Repeal Egregious Property Accumulation and Invest it Right (REPAIR) Act as an assembly member. Now, Valdez, who represents the 37th district in Queens, which includes Long Island City, Sunnyside, Woodside, Maspeth, and Ridgewood, and the mayor’s pick to move on to Congress, told Able News that she will take on the task again because “ I believe that nonprofit universities like Columbia, like NYU, should be paying property taxes. This is supposed to be a way for powerful and moneyed institutions to actually give back to the city. And at a moment when they benefit massively from public transit, infrastructure, I do think there’s a requirement for private companies and private institutions to making sure that our city is accessible for everyone,” Valdez said fiercely.
On Housing
If she reaches her congressional aspirations to represent NY-7, Valdez will look forward to fighting alongside her political exemplar Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez to repeal the Faircloth Amendment, allowing the federal government to build affordable housing again. in their mission to build more public housing and how to repurpose who they are truly designed for in one of the richest countries that face a real shortage problem, she said.
“When we talk about housing and the federal supply of public housing, when we talk about social housing, all of that funding has to be tied to accessibility and making sure that these new units that come by are ADA compliant and accessible to anyone who actually needs to live there.”
Inclusive employment in a Valdez Congress
Coming in as a customer service worker and an organized union worker who has years of experience fighting big corporations for better working conditions and adequate pay, Valdez’s platform “ is a federal jobs guarantee” for everyone. And fair, high-quality jobs for the disabled community has been at the forefront of that mission, she told Able News.
“That saying, ‘Nothing about us without us,’ is so resonant to me,” Valdez paused. “I know what it’s like to have someone else make decisions about your life, to feel like you don’t have control over your life and your destiny. And I also know what it’s like to have a seat at the table and to be there, to make it, to have a say in what’s happening.”
“I’m really committed to making sure that in my office, should I go to Congress, that we have voices from the community to speak directly to the needs,” she added.
Being Heard
Just under a year and a half in the state assembly, Valdez, like Mayor Mamdani, has faced backlash over her lack of political experience but that’s not a concern for her, she said she started feeling like a powerful, political person when she started knocking on doors and standing up for the things that mattered in her life, and that is what she believes will get her over the hump in a tight race that shows her ahead of Reynoso two points, according to an Emerson poll released last month.
Although Valdez is here to secure the rights of the disabled Americans and other vulnerable communities, she also encourages people with disabilities to mirror the same attitude of direct and aggressive advocacy because trumpism will not be easy to win fights against. Winning the endorsement of Senator Bernie Sanders from Vermont, the democratic socialist movement, in which Valdez has pertained to for the past seven years, supporting a New York that’s actually affordable for everyone because “people are tired of feeling powerless,” is gaining momentum for that bout. “I find real hope there in the ability for people to learn how to fight back themselves,” she said.
“I don’t want people to just be scraping by. I want them to have lives of dignity and beauty. And we can win that when we organize together, and we can win that for everyone, too. For everyone who’s under attack by the federal government right now,” Valdez said as her last message to disabled voters. “That’s what this campaign is about.”
She may not be from Puerto Rico, but the congressional candidate is hopeful that she will become the second democratic socialist woman ever elected to Congress, behind AOC, to replace retiring, 34 year House incumbent, Rep. Nydia Velázquez, who said she preferred a woman in her place. However, she ended up endorsing her Puerto Rican “paisano,” Brooklyn Borough President Antonio Reynoso. NYC Mayor Zohran Mamdani endorsed assemblywoman Claire Valdez.
The first one to arrive at the NY-7 Disability forum in Long Island City, Queens, was Council member Julie Won.
Julie Won with Christopher Alvarez of Able News at a candidate forum.
The first woman and immigrant in the city’s history to represent the 26th Council district in Western Queens covering the neighborhoods of Long Island City, Sunnyside, Astoria, and Woodside, sat quietly in the back to review her talking points on the topics of transportation, education and other vital issues as they pertain to the disabled community.
Her platform “A Lifetime of Care” puts healthcare and Medicaid at the forefront of her congressional pitch.
Won outraised her opponent Brooklyn Borough President Antonio Reynoso, who is backed by the retiring incumbent she is looking to succeed in the race.
First and foremost, to kick off her opening statement, Won told a group of disabled voters that “when it comes to litigation and accountability, it puts the onus on those who need the accessibility to sue and to report to say that this ain’t right” and that is why she will fight hard in Congress to “ change the way that we keep the government accountable for when they are not meeting their own laws.”
On Transportation and Safe Environments
As a mother of two toddlers, Won is a champion of parks, spending a lot of time in inaccessible playgrounds. That breaks her heart. The design features she suggested are: clampless gates that open inwards, more concrete walkways for wheelchairs and ADA accessible swings for all disabled children.
When the forum was virtually interrupted by a frustrated disabled transit rider, Won came back to her government accountability discussion, saying that agencies like the MTA, only answer to the mayor and the governor, they all have to learn to work together to get more funding through congestion pricing and other streams of revenue because by law, every single subway station has to be ADA accessible, in a timely manner. She suggested a statewide bill for real-time elevator outage data.
She noted that her City Council team is always looking for ways to expand land use projects through MTA tax abatements and private developers, “incentivizing them to invest in getting their rights for their building so that they can build more density, making our MTA stations more accessible,” she added, calling out the city and state’s procurement process and corruption that has led to over bureaucracy.
On Housing
Within months of taking her council seat, Won delivered her major campaign promise of WiFi For All — free internet for NYCHA residents. In just four years, she approved 18,805 new housing units including thousands of permanently affordable homes and led the fight for the OneLIC Neighborhood Plan, the largest rezoning in New York City in 25 years, securing $2 billion in community investments and historic levels of new housing. To accommodate individuals with autism and developmental disabilities, Won’s office partnered with Birch Family Services to provide them with supportive housing.
“ There’s a lot of investments needed. And at every level, we have to make sure that we’re carving out a certain percentage to make sure that we are investing because legislation can take time,” she said. “But we have to make sure that we’re investing to make sure that those who have the needs are being met.”
On Education
A proud product of New York public schools, Won has worked closely with parents, teachers, and administrators in every public school in her district and secured over $100 million for education. Her cousin is a teacher at a district 75 school, who constantly points out the inaccessibility of all classrooms, resulting in disabled students being left behind. “When it comes to funding, we have to adequately fund to make sure that we have ADA accessibility for our schools.” she said, worried about the effects the Trump administration has had on the Development of Education.
Despite opening two new district 75 schools in the Bronx and Astoria for students with disabilities, partnering with Riverview School – P.S. Q224 in Long Island City to form workforce readiness programs for children in need who want to become independent and the $19M investment to make sure public schools are equipped with sensory rooms and other accessibility accommodations, Won claimed that the federal government is asking parents in the disabled community to send their kids to private school because public schools simply are not equipped to provide these students with the full educational experience.
“ That’s pretty horrific from top down,” she said. “We have to look at the public education system at large on how it’s being defunded and it’s being privatized.”
Healthcare
“Every single one of us deserve to have assisted care without breaking the bank,” Won said, acknowledging that in New York, a family of four would have to make under $31,000 in order to qualify for Medicaid, the only health insurance that allows you to have home assisted care. “That is completely unacceptable and has to be changed,” she said. If elected to Congress, she vowed to call back and fight against the trillion-dollar Medicaid funding cut, the feds are aggressively pushing for that punishes low income and disabled families.
Won spoke from the heart when she revealed at the forum that her immigrant aunt was a 24-hour caregiver, who despite loving what she did, she was overworked. Her aunt is one of the main reasons Won became one of the first council members to vote in favor of Intro. 303 and do away with the 24-hour shift mandate for homecare workers.
“ It’s incredibly important that we have dignified care for those who need it and also those that who provide it,” she said. “ But we can’t allow the state government to exploit these workers who are vulnerable, who have no other form of work to survive, to be worked to death.” Won said she would prefer it if those shifts were broken down into 12 hours. “ We are fighting to make sure that we can force the state to redesign this process and fund it because this can’t go on any longer. It’s dangerous for you and dangerous for the caregiver, and we wanna see justice.”
She also disagrees with Hochul’s decision to hand CDPAP to the single fiscal intermediary PPL, saying that “we’ve gone from worst to worst.”
In a response to recently emailed questions from Able News, Vichal Kumar outlined his disability agenda:
“Disability justice is central to any meaningful agenda, and I don’t come at it from a think tank. I come at it from 20 years as a public defender, sitting across from New Yorkers the system ignored.
I saw disability in many of the people I served. I fought for clients with serious mental illness thrown into solitary confinement and built a project to get them out. I represented kids whose schools never wrote the IEP that would have kept them learning instead of pushing them toward suspension. I sat with people fighting for the SSI and SSDI benefits they were owed and then denied, losing housing while the paperwork dragged.
What I learned is that government almost never sees a whole person. It sees a school case, a benefits case, a criminal case, a housing case, and it fails the person at every handoff in between.”
He pledged that if elected, he would “fight to fully fund and expand Medicaid, Medicare, Social Security, SSI and SSDI, community-based services, anti-discrimination enforcement, accessible public housing, and transit. The goal behind all of it is simple. People with disabilities should be able to live independently, stay in their communities, get care, work with dignity, and take full part in civic life. And nothing about that should be decided without them.”
On Transportation, Housing and Employment:
On transportation, he said he supports “major federal investment in transit that’s accessible, reliable, and affordable. Across NY7, people depend on the bus and the subway, and more than thirty-five years after the ADA, barely a third of our stations are accessible. Under the MTA’s 2022 settlement, the system doesn’t even have to reach 95% accessibility until 2055. I’d push for stronger federal oversight and funding to get stations ADA-compliant, make Access-A-Ride reliable, and expand elevator access, all while making that funding contingent on real timelines.”
In addition, he said housing security is fundamental to disability justice.
“I support stronger tenant protections, expanding rent stabilization and rental assistance, keeping Wall Street and private equity from swallowing our housing supply, and widening access to Section 8. I’d also back federal efforts to build more accessible housing, including repealing the Faircloth Amendment, the 1998 cap that has frozen new public housing for a generation.
On employment, his workers’ rights platform includes disabled workers, he said. “I’d expand workplace accommodations, fight discrimination, and protect disabled workers from being pushed out of their jobs. I’d end the subminimum wage that still lets employers pay disabled workers pennies under 14(c) certificates from 1938. And I’d end the trap where taking a job or a raise means losing the healthcare, benefits, or personal supports you need to live. No one should have to choose between working and surviving.”
Regarding Intro. 303
He explained his position on Intro. 303:
“The 24-hour shift is indefensible. Asking a home care worker, usually a low-income immigrant woman, to cover a full day and get paid for 13 hours of it is exploitation, plain and simple. So, I understand exactly why the bill exists.
But as written, I share the concerns the disability community and the home care unions have raised together. Intro 303 bans the 24-hour shift without funding the split shifts meant to replace it, and Medicaid doesn’t currently authorize that setup. The practical result could be a care gap that forces disabled New Yorkers into hospitals or nursing homes. The worker and the person receiving care both get hurt.
Two 12-hour shifts only work if there are enough workers to fill them, and right now there aren’t. My lane, running for Congress, is building that supply. A higher, permanent federal match for home and community-based care, so agencies can afford two humane shifts. And a real pipeline into the profession, free tuition and training for people who want to do this work, so caregiving is a career you can build a life on.”
Early voting for the primary elections begins this Saturday, June 13th. Who will you choose?
Joie Tyrrell contributed to this report.