For his part, Nadler opted to run in the 12th District, where he lives, and against the Maloney, and instead of the new 10th District, where there is technically no local incumbent. That left a swanky open seat covering lower Manhattan and parts of Brooklyn—prime representative real estate!—for the taking. The entrants flooded in. They included progressive state assembly member Yuh-Line Niou, city council member Carlina Rivera, ex-Rep. Elizabeth Holtzman, and Rep. Mondaire Jones (more on him in a sec!). Ex-Mayor Bill DeBlasio also originally threw his hat in before dropping out due to low, low polling. Ah, well.

But leading all of the choice progressive candidates in this diverse, deeply blue district is… slightly more moderate Levi Strauss heir and ex-prosecutor Dan Goldman, beneficiary of an endorsement from the New York Times, his family friends’ paper. Goldman’s ascent to a slim lead has progressives furious. Their best ally in the closing stretch of the campaign might be Donald Trump, who cheekily “endorsed” Goldman in the Democratic primary as revenge for Goldman’s role as a committee counsel during the first Trump impeachment. Mondaire Jones, at least, has tried to make hay of this and convince Democratic primary voters that Trump’s “endorsement” was done at face value.

What, you ask, is Mondaire Jones doing in Lower Manhattan? He was elected to represent, and currently represents, the 17th District covering much of Rockland and Westchester counties outside the city. When the new map came out, though, his neighboring representative, Rep. Sean Patrick Maloney, decided he wanted to run in the new 17th District, a suspiciously safer seat than his current 18th District. The power move put pressure on Jones: Did he want to take on Maloney, who happened to chair the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, in a primary? What about challenge fellow progressive Rep. Jamaal Bowman in the 16th? Quit? He announced, instead, that he would relocate to the open 10th seat with some story about how the seat had always been welcoming to outsiders.