Public Power Champs Headed to Albany and Washington D.C.

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE: Thursday, June 25, 2026

Public Power Champs Headed to Albany and Washington D.C.

Claire Valdez supports a federal public power authority, 8 new socialist legislators will fight for New York to build at least 15GW of public renewables

New York, New York – On Tuesday night, New Yorkers voted in the Democratic primaries to send public power champions, Claire Valdez and Darializa Avila Chevalier to congress and eight socialists will join the increasingly powerful bloc of state legislators in Albany demanding the New York Power Authority (NYPA) step up and build at least 15 gigawatts (GW) of public renewables.

Valdez supports building a federal public power authority, wrote an OpEd with public power champion Diana Moreno, and often highlighted her role in successfully securing $100 million in the state budget for public renewables as a key accomplishment throughout her campaign.

Moreno was elected earlier this year to replace Zohran Mamdani in the Assembly and will be joined by Illapa Sairitupac, Christian Celeste Tate, Eon Huntley, David Orkin, Samantha Kattan and Adam Bojak who all won their primaries and Aber Kawas in the New York State Senate.

Alex Patterson, Campaign Coordinator for Public Power NY, said “Public Power champions are winning elections because New Yorkers are struggling to pay their energy bills and are demanding a real solution. There are two potential energy futures being presented to New Yorkers and working class people across the country: an expensive fracked gas and nuclear system that only benefits AI data centers and fossil fuel billionaires or a massive buildout of public renewables that will lower bills and create tens of thousands of good paying union jobs. With more public power champions in Albany and Washington D.C. a better energy future for New Yorkers can become a reality.”

Tuesday’s victories aren’t the first for public power champions. In 2022 Assemblymember Sarahana Shrestha ran and won on public power and Mayor Mamdani was also a powerful advocate for the Build Public Renewables Act (BPRA) which passed in 2023 and directs NYPA to build and own renewable energy projects.

A recently released book, Organize or Burn by Professor Fabian Holt, follows the “riveting” story of how organizers within the New York City Ecosocialist Working Group took an idea to reclaim NYPA, which was being used as “Andrew’s Cuomo Piggy Bank” at the time, and transform it to meet the state’s legally mandated climate goals and provide cheap, renewable energy to New Yorkers.

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Note to the editor:

About Public Power NY

Public Power NY is a movement fighting to ensure New York effectively carries out the Build Public Renewables Act by building 15 Gigawatts of public renewables by 2030. Hailed as the first statewide Green New Deal law, BPRA was written by PPNY and passed in 2023 thanks to four years of organizing by a multiracial, multi-generational movement of climate and advocacy organizations, labor unions representing millions of New Yorkers and tens of thousands of New Yorkers who have taken action from upstate, downstate, and everywhere in between. With federal climate action off the table, BPRA has enabled NY to not just play defense against Trump, but lead the way the way FDR created NYPA to do.