Marni Halasa is another favorite personality at the Mermaid Parade. She usually sports roller skates but chose to be a judge this year. Photo: Beth Eisgrau-Heller/Brooklyn Eagle

Happy Tuesday on Primary Day in New York City, where hundreds of “I Voted” stickers will soon be littering the sidewalks outside polling stations from Inwood to Far Rockaway.

It’s been a contentious, at times nasty set of congressional campaigns thus far, with candidates ranging from the left to the far-left to the very-far-left battling to differentiate themselves to a New York electorate that appears to have lost much of the excitement of last year’s elections.

Of course, like insurance companies vying for advertising distinction, it helps to attach yourself to a superstar.

Zohran Mamdani has not shied away from hitting the campaign trail on behalf of his endorsees. The mayor made a slate of appearances at Brooklyn nightclubs and venues last week to push activist Darializa Avila Chevalier for NY-13, Assemblymember Claire Valdez for NY-7 and former Comptroller Brad Lander for NY-10, where he was greeted by enthusiastic fanfare. He’s personally involved himself in campaign strategizing and fundraising efforts and appeared in ad spots.

The results from today’s elections will, in many ways, act as a referendum on Mamdani’s political capital and the broadening appeal of his ideological coalition, the Democratic Socialists of America. Currently, two DSA candidates remain squarely in the running for congressional seats and seven for NY State Assembly. Mamdani is betting that the youth-driven movement he inspired during his mayoral campaign will continue to rally against establishment members of the party.

“ The party of the past will not be what leads us into the future, for we need a Democratic Party with backbone,” Mamdani said at a Brooklyn rally last Thursday. 

Of course, Mamdani’s aggressive involvement does not come without significant risk. If Lander, Valdez and Chevalier win their races, Mamdani will make major strides in consolidating his power bloc, legitimizing his influence and inoculating himself against accusations of radicalism or flukiness. If they fail, Mamdani will have undermined his reputation, roadblocked his own movement and empowered a host of enemies.

“This is a way to remake the Democratic Party,” Michael Lange, an elections analyst, told The New York Times. “But if he loses, the knives would be out. They would be really out. The risk is that they’ll say this is more man than movement.”

Will this domino fall straight, tipping the next and the next in a chain reaction of progressive victories that seem poised to reshape Democratic races across the country? Or will it fall sideways, stopping the surge in its tracks?

Election results will start coming in soon after the polls close — tonight at 9 p.m.

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Our World In Photos

Photo: Eric Gay/AP

HOUSTON — Any game worth its glory has got its horror: A child reacts before the World Cup Group K soccer match between Portugal and Uzbekistan in Houston, Tuesday, June 23, 2026.

For more pictures like this, see Our World in Photos.

The show isn’t dying,

the people who watch it are

Image generated using Nano Banana.

“60 Minutes,” the CBS flagship that has been the top-rated news program on television for 52 consecutive years, isn’t dying.

The people who watch it are.

You can tell by the commercials CBS airs that many of its viewers watched the Watergate hearings live — and have been glued to CBS ever since.

Sixties football legend Joe Namath is selling Medicare Advantage plans. The magnificently mustached Tom Selleck, once “Magnum, P.I.,” now hawks reverse mortgages.

Hearing aids. Walk-in bathtubs with safety bars and built-in seats so nobody breaks a hip getting clean. Term life insurance for $9.95 a month, no medical exam required, because at this point, why bother? And pharmaceutical ads whose lists of side effects run longer than the segment that preceded them and include, almost as an afterthought, death.

The joke in television circles has long been that CBS viewers tune in with their colostomy bags already attached. The advertisers aren’t laughing. They’re just not paying premium rates.

Fox and CBS both attract older audiences, but they aren’t the same old.

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By Harley Schwadron

For the Road

  • Happy Birthday “Cruel Intentions” star Selma Blair!

  • On this day in 1953, the Eagle reported, “The New York Knickerbockers today received the signed contracts of Harry Gallatin and Sweetwater Clifton, ace big men, for next season, the eighth year of the National Basketball Association …”

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