Carolyn Maloney will face Justice Democrats-backed primary challenger

Progressive activist Rana Abdelhamid announced on Wednesday that she is challenging incumbent Rep. Carolyn Maloney (D-N.Y.) in the state’s 12th Congressional District. 

“As someone who has personally confronted inequality and displacement, I know that twenty-eight years of Carolyn Maloney’s failed leadership has left too many New Yorkers behind,” Abdelhamid, a nonprofit founder and community activist, said in a statement. 

The progressive group Justice Democrats, which has endorsed a number of famous progressive primary challengers including Reps. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.) and Jamaal Bowman (D-N.Y.), said on Wednesday it was throwing its support behind Abdelhamid. 

“Voters and activists all across the district have made clear that they want to help usher in a new generation of leadership into the Democratic Party free of corporate money and dedicated to uplifting all of our communities,” the group’s executive director, Alexandra Rojas, said in a statement. 

Maloney, who is the chair of the House Oversight and Reform Committee, has served in Congress since 1993. She previously fended off primary challenges from attorney Suraj Patel in 2018 and 2020. Maloney won her Democratic primary last year, garnering 43 percent of the vote.

Patel received roughly 39 percent of the vote. 

Progressive Democrats, with the support of groups like Justice Democrats, have posed a number of challenges to incumbent New York Democrats in recent years. Ocasio-Cortez famously unseated 10-term incumbent Rep. Joseph Crowley (D-N.Y.) in 2018, while Bowman defeated 16-term incumbent Rep. Eliot Engel (D-N.Y.) in 2020.