A large donor to socialist Claire Valdez, a candidate in a tight Democratic primary for New York’s Seventh Congressional District, is a notorious city slumlord who once pleaded guilty to felony fraud charges for not paying immigrant laborers, the Washington Free Beacon can reveal.
Valdez, an artist and state assembly member, has a narrow lead in the polls against Brooklyn Borough president Antonio Reynoso and City Council member Julie Won in the primary for the deep blue district. Valdez has been endorsed by Zohran Mamdani, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, and Bernie Sanders.
In March 2026, Valdez took $1,000 from Muhammad Zulfiqar, Federal Election Commission records show. In 2012, Zulfiqar’s company, Mascon Restoration, was fined $1.2 million and “debarred from bidding on contracts in the Big Apple for five years,” after bilking illegal workers, according to a press release from then-city comptroller John Liu.
Zulfiqar’s company pleaded guilty to one count of offering a false instrument for filing, a felony offense.
In addition to cheating migrant workers of wages, Zulfiqar and Mascon Restoration told illegal workers that city investigators from the city who were there to help them were actually immigration agents, the release said.
“The immigrant community has been exploited in far too many occasions by opportunistic employers seeking to gain an edge off the backs of hard workers and their families. They should be ashamed of themselves, and it is time to pay the piper,” then-New York City Council member Jumaane Williams said at the time.
“We must take a strong stance along with Comptroller Liu against worker abuse, whether it be undercutting wages or failing to safeguard against unsafe conditions.”
The case stemmed from contracts awarded by the New York City Department of Housing Preservation and Development (HPD), which went to companies employing Mascon Restoration as a subcontractor for demolition, carpentry, and masonry work, Liu said at the time.
While he rakes in HPD cash, Zulfiqar is also a slumlord who has racked up dozens of violations from the agency for a six-unit apartment building he owns at 93-06 35th Avenue in Jackson Heights, Queens.
The building has 31 open violations according to HPD’s own count. They cover everything from roach infestations to water leakage to inadequate heating to missing carbon monoxide detectors, and more.
In April 2025, Zulfiqar was sued by HPD for not supplying sufficient heat and hot water to his tenants. A judge later ordered him to make amends and pay a $1,700 fine.
Zulfiqar’s infractions come even as Valdez, who was an active member of the United Autoworkers when she worked a union job at Columbia University, has made championing “workers’ rights” a top priority of her political career.
“Workers who aren’t protected by a union—especially immigrant workers, tipped and gig workers, and workers of color—are most at risk of retaliation and exploitation on the job,” Valdez said in a 2024 questionnaire in which she specifically called out “wage theft.”
“In NY-7 we have a huge immigrant population. Many, many, many, thousands of people were born outside of the district, and have come here to build their lives and are looking for real stability and dignity,” Valdez said earlier this month.
The seventh district, which stretches across swaths of Brooklyn and Queens, is currently represented by retiring Rep. Nydia Velázquez (D.), who has served in Congress since 1993.
Mamdani’s endorsement of Valdez in January caused a significant split within the party, as Reynoso had the backing of Velázquez and other mainstream Democrats in the district. In a major breach of party etiquette, Mamdani has also endorsed socialist primary challengers to liberal Democratic incumbents in two other city races, leading to deep divisions.
Valdez, a DSA member of the state assembly, is running an unapologetically doctrinaire far-left campaign.
She is fiercely anti-Israel, has falsely accused Israel of committing “genocide” in Gaza, and called for a ceasefire in the territory “almost immediately” after Hamas’s Oct. 7 slaughter, the progressive City and State blog noted.
She has lent her support to the antisemitic Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions campaign against Israel and has called for ending military aid to the country.
Valdez liked an X post celebrating the massacre on the day of the Oct. 7 attack and sat for a chummy interview with a Twitch streamer who has called Jews a “demonic ethnicity,” Jewish Insider previously reported.
Mahmoud Khalil, the virulently anti-Israel Columbia agitator whom the Trump administration has been trying to deport for a year, spoke at Valdez’s House campaign launch in January.
Valdez supports abolishing Immigration and Customs Enforcement and has accused President Trump of using it to impose a “white nationalist agenda” on the country.
During her House campaign, she raised eyebrows after reversing her promise not to take money from super PACs.
“The fact of the matter is, we have a campaign that we need to win,” Valdez said, dismissing the flip-flop during a debate.
“I respect your writing, FYI I live in Nassau and not in NYC and can’t vote for the candidate. I never met the candidate personally. After reviewing I realize I was requested by a friend to donate that’s the extent of my involvement with the candidate. I am respectfully requesting not to drag me into politics,” Zulfiqar told the Free Beacon.
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