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State Assembly Member Claire Valdez is running for New York’s 7th Congressional District. LightRocket via Getty Images<\/p>\nA democratic socialist running for a New York House seat has been boasting on the campaign trail of her working class background with a history of \u201clow-wage, customer service jobs\u201d — while leaving out that her cushy suburban upbringing and the fact she attended a pricey art school.<\/p>\n
Mayor Zohran Mamdani\u2019s pick for New York’s 7th Congressional District, Assembly Member Claire Valdez has repeatedly touted her work as a low-wage employee at Taco Bell, Trader Joes and Pizza Hut, more than a dozen times in campaign speeches and interviews.\u00a0<\/p>\n
But the card-carrying member of the Democratic Socialists of America has left out that she was raised in a four-bedroom suburban house in Lubbock, Texas to an engineer father and a medical technologist mother before she attended the School of the Art Institute of Chicago \u2013 which now has a hefty price tag of $78,770 per year.\u00a0<\/p>\n
State Assembly Member Claire Valdez is running for New York’s 7th Congressional District. LightRocket via Getty Images<\/p>\n
The candidate has consistently airbrushed her childhood out of her standard talking points \u2013\u00a0 and even claimed to controversial Twitch streamer Hasan Piker that she identified as a \u201cworker\u201d above all else.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cI’ve had a lot of bad jobs like many of us. I bagged groceries, I worked at Taco Bell-Pizza Hut combination, I worked at Trader Joe’s for many years,\u201d Valdez told Piker on his channel \u2018Socialist Hub\u2019, in February.<\/p>\n
\u201cI think before I identified as anything else in my life, I identified as a worker, as somebody who had to come in, walk in, stand on your feet all day, get burns at Taco Bell, freeze in Trader Joe’s coolers,\u201d she said.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n
Valdez\u2019s resume notably includes roles in operations at a hip Queens sculpture museum and as an administrative assistant at Columbia University, the latter of which led her to become an union organizer.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Still, in 10 separate 2026 interviews \u2013 she called back to her time working at Texas Taco Bell, rather than her more prestigious, blue-collar Big Apple roles.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cI worked drive-through windows, I unpacked pallets, I bagged groceries,” she lamented at a January DSA forum.\u00a0“And in all that time, I was working nights and weekends and unpaid overtime like many, many people in this room and in this district have done.”<\/p>\n
Valdez has the official endorsement of Mamdani and her DSA comrades in the Democratic primary race against Brooklyn Borough President Antonio Reynoso for retiring Rep. Nydia Velazquez\u2019s seat.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Mamdani\u2019s endorsement of Valdez jeopardized his relationship with the influential Velazquez \u2013 who endorsed her longtime mentee, Reynoso.\u00a0<\/p>\n
A spokesperson for Valdez did not immediately respond to The Post’s request for comment. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A democratic socialist running for a New York House seat has been boasting on the campaign trail of…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":791626,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5122],"tags":[5229,22807,5310,175377,5371,5248,405,403,24102,182858,5226,5225,5228,5227,67,586,132,5230,68,1154,2969,5301],"class_list":{"0":"post-791625","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-new-york","8":"tag-america","9":"tag-bruce-blakeman","10":"tag-city-council","11":"tag-julie-menin","12":"tag-kathy-hochul","13":"tag-metro","14":"tag-new-york","15":"tag-new-york-city","16":"tag-new-york-state-assembly","17":"tag-new-york-state-senate","18":"tag-newyork","19":"tag-newyorkcity","20":"tag-ny","21":"tag-nyc","22":"tag-united-states","23":"tag-united-states-of-america","24":"tag-unitedstates","25":"tag-unitedstatesofamerica","26":"tag-us","27":"tag-us-news","28":"tag-usa","29":"tag-zohran-mamdani"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@us\/116563010359792657","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/791625","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=791625"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/791625\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/791626"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=791625"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=791625"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=791625"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}