Queens’ Claire Valdez Seeks to Expand Workers’ Voice in Congress
By MOHAMED FARGHALY
mfarghaly@queensledger.com
Long before she held elected office in New York, Claire Valdez was a teenager in conservative West Texas making anti-war art. Now a Queens assembly member in District 37, Valdez is running for Congress, seeking to bring her experience as a union organizer and advocate for working-class New Yorkers to Washington. Her campaign frames labor rights, affordable housing, and democratic participation as central to her vision, connecting the struggles she witnessed growing up with the policies she hopes to advance on a federal level.
Valdez grew up in Lubbock, Texas in a Democratic household during the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. As a high school student, she entered a congressional art competition with a piece protesting the wars. It won, sending her to Washington, D.C., to display the work before the very lawmaker she opposed.
“That was my early activism,” Valdez said. “But there was no kind of organization or place to kind of put that political activity in Texas.”
Her path to politics was indirect. After studying in Chicago, Valdez moved to New York more than a decade ago, hoping to build a career as an artist. She worked as an operations manager at SculptureCenter, a small museum in Long Island City, while juggling the financial pressures of life in the city.
“It’s incredibly hard,” she said of trying to pursue art in New York. “It is very expensive to be an artist or just a person in New York City.”
Like many artists, she worked a patchwork of jobs to stay afloat, including years in retail and food service. She recalled long shifts and early mornings at Trader Joe’s while trying to support her creative work.
“I worked seven days a week, just on my feet all the time,” she said. “You don’t even know what to do. You’re just so tired you don’t even know how to fight back.”
One moment stuck with her. When the Affordable Care Act passed, she said the company raised the minimum hours required for employee health coverage, cutting off benefits for many part-time workers.
“To have this benefit just ripped away with no input from employees… it was really heartbreaking,” Valdez said.
Her entry into organized politics came after she took a job at Columbia University in 2018. There she joined United Auto Workers Local 2110, a union representing campus workers.
The experience reshaped her understanding of democracy.
“I went to my first union meeting, and it was 200, 300 strangers in a room who were all talking about what our contract was going to be and what we were willing to put on the line to win it,” she said. “It was the most democratic thing I’d ever seen in my life.”
Valdez soon became deeply involved in union organizing. She was elected to her unit’s bargaining committee and later became unit chair in 2022, representing about 500 coworkers and helping handle grievances and contract enforcement.
“That was my introduction to real politics,” she said.
Her labor activism overlapped with her involvement in the Democratic Socialists of America, which she joined in 2019. Valdez served as membership coordinator and helped run orientation sessions for new members, personally onboarding hundreds of volunteers.
“I think people trust me,” she said when asked why organizers encouraged her to run for office. “I’m consistent. I show up when I needed to show up.”
That network of organizing eventually propelled her into electoral politics. In 2024, Valdez was elected to represent the 37th Assembly District in Queens, which includes Long Island City, Sunnyside, Woodside, Maspeth and Ridgewood, where she now lives.
She said her decision to run stemmed from organizing work that exposed the power of state government.
“We were passing billions of dollars in budget,” she said. “There’s just an immense amount of money, an immense amount of power.”
During her first year in Albany, Valdez said she learned how complicated that power can be. Despite representing districts across the state, many key decisions still come down to negotiations among leadership.
“Our bodies move in a kind of sometimes not democratic way,” she said of the Legislature. “So much of the decision-making at the state level happens in that room.”
Still, she points to several accomplishments she is proud of. Among them is securing a $200 million budget line for the New York Power Authority to build publicly owned renewable energy projects.
“We need a real green transition,” she said.
Valdez has also focused on expanding worker protections, including unemployment insurance. Her office frequently fields calls from residents struggling to access benefits.
“Unemployment insurance is easily the number one issue we deal with in our office,” she said.
Her political outlook has also been shaped by personal experiences outside New York. In 2017, she said, an aunt in Texas who cared full-time for Valdez’s grandfather nearly died after a cold worsened without treatment because she lacked health insurance. The hospital bills included a $70,000 medical evacuation.
Hearing Bernie Sanders speak about health care inequality helped crystallize her politics.
“He was the first politician I heard talk about what a profound disaster this is,” she said, referring to medical debt in the United States.
Valdez now defines her politics through the lens of labor organizing and democratic socialism.
“As a Democratic socialist my belief is that democracy should be in play throughout your entire life — in your workplace and your apartment building and your communities,” she said. “Politics aren’t just something that happens to you. It’s something you have to make happen.”
If elected to Congress, she said much of her focus would be on expanding union power nationwide, including support for federal legislation like the Protecting the Right to Organize Act.
“Just talking about workers’ ability to organize in their workplaces really does advance democracy,” she said.
Her campaign also comes with unusual dynamics. She is seeking to succeed longtime Rep. Nydia Velázquez, whom Valdez praised as “a really good representative.”
“She was one of the first congress members to call for a ceasefire in Gaza in 2023,” Valdez said. “That took a lot of bravery at the federal level.”
Still, critics sometimes question why relatively new lawmakers run for higher office so quickly. Valdez acknowledged the concern but said many key labor battles happen at the federal level.
“I love my Assembly seat and my district,” she said. “But so much of our fights are at the federal level.”
She also said strong organizers should prepare others to lead.
“An organizer’s number one job is to replace themselves,” she said, pointing to fellow housing activist Samantha Kattan as someone she believes could represent the district.
Beyond policy, Valdez believes the future of the Democratic Party depends on grassroots engagement. She points to the surge of volunteers in recent local elections as evidence that voters want to participate directly in politics.
“There’s a real appetite for people to get involved,” she said.
Ultimately, she said her goals in Washington would reflect the same labor values that launched her career.
“I’d want union density to be higher in the United States,” Valdez said. “More unions, better worker protections, less misclassification, and for working people to feel empowered to participate in the political process.”
And despite the pressures of politics, Valdez said she still enjoys neighborhood staples in Queens. Among them is a favorite bakery, Masa Madre.
For now, the former artist and union organizer says her focus remains the same as when she first entered a union meeting years ago.
Building power for workers.
