Adriano de Jesús Espaillat Rodríguez (born September 27, 1954) is a Dominican-American politician who has served as the U.S. representative for since 2017. He is the first Dominican American and first formerly undocumented immigrant to serve in Congress. He previously served in the New York State Senate and the New York State Assembly.
While a member of the New York State Senate, Espaillat was a ranking member of the Housing, Construction and Community Development Committee and chaired the Senate Latino Caucus. He represented the neighborhoods of Marble Hill, Inwood, Kingsbridge, Washington Heights, Morris Heights and Fort George. Today, as U.S. Congressman, he continues to broadly represent these neighborhoods, as well as Harlem, Hamilton Heights, Morningside Heights, Fordham, East Harlem, and part of the Upper West Side.
Espaillat is a Democrat. He challenged then-Representative Charles Rangel in the Democratic primaries in 2012 and 2014, eventually winning the Democratic nomination in 2016 after Rangel announced his retirement. Espaillat represents one of the most Democratic districts in the country, with a Cook Partisan Voting Index of D+32.
In 2026, Espaillat is running for his sixth term in the 2026 New York's 13th congressional district election, first running in the Democratic primary.
Early life and education
Espaillat was born on September 27, 1954, in Santiago, Dominican Republic,
Adriano Espaillat is second-great-grandson of the military hero Pedro Ignacio Espaillat, who is descended from black African former slaves of Francisco Espaillat, an 18th-century French slaveholder and governor of the Dominican province of Cibao during the Spanish colony. However, Espaillat is —via his mother— the great-grandson of former Dominican Senate President Mario Fermín Cabral y Báez through an illegitimate daughter, which makes him a descendant of 19th-century Dominican President Buenaventura Báez.
Espaillat grew up in Washington Heights. He graduated from Bishop Dubois High School in 1974 and earned his B.S. degree in political science at Queens College, City University of New York in 1978. He has two children and is a grandfather. He is a Yankees fan.
Espaillat is a Catholic, but disagrees with the Church on certain issues.
Early career
Espaillat served as the Manhattan Court Services Coordinator for the New York City Criminal Justice Agency, a nonprofit organization that provides indigent legal services and works to reduce unnecessary pretrial detention and post-sentence incarceration costs. As a state-certified conflict resolution mediator and volunteer with the Washington Heights Inwood Conflict Resolutions and Mediation Center, Espaillat helped resolve hundreds of conflicts.
He later worked as director of the Washington Heights Victims Services Community Office, an organization offering counseling and other services to families of victims of homicides and other crimes. From 1994 to 1996, Espaillat served as the director of Project Right Start, a national initiative funded by the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation to combat substance abuse by educating the parents of preschool children. Despite national Republican and conservative criticism, Espaillat strongly supported efforts in 2007 to allow undocumented immigrants to obtain driver's licenses.
After a wave of assaults and murders against livery cab drivers in 2000 that left over 10 dead, Espaillat passed legislation strengthening penalties for violent crimes against livery drivers and enabled their families to receive New York State Crime Victims Board funding. Livery cabs work in less affluent neighborhoods of New York that typically lack access to yellow cabs.
Espaillat took legal action against power utility Con Edison after equipment failures led to a two-day blackout in Upper Manhattan in July 1999 that caused financial damage to restaurants, bodegas and other small businesses. Con Edison subsequently agreed to invest an additional $100 million in Upper Manhattan electrical infrastructure at no cost to ratepayers and was required to refund customers billed for expenses related to the blackout.
New York State Senate
thumb|left|Office on Columbus Avenue
Elections
2010
Espaillat ran for New York state senate in 2010 after incumbent Eric Schneiderman announced his campaign for New York attorney general. Espaillat received more than 50% of the vote in a four-way Democratic party. In 2012, Espaillat defeated then-Assemblyman Guillermo Linares 62% - 38% in the Democratic primary.
2014
After losing to Charles Rangel in the Democratic primary for U.S. Congress, Espaillat announced candidacy for reelection to his New York state senate seat, facing former city councilman Robert Jackson. He was reelected with 50.3% of the vote to Jackson's 42.7%.
Tenure
thumb|right|Adriano Espaillat in 2014.
In 2011, Espaillat led the fight to safeguard and strengthen rent regulation for over 1 million affordable housing apartments that was set to expire that year. While tenant protections had been weakened in the past, the agreement reached that year made it more difficult to convert affordable housing to market rate and created a new Tenant Protection Unit within the state's housing agency.
Espaillat also passed legislation increasing enforcement against businesses that sell alcohol to minors and authored the[Notary Public Advertising Act, to crack down on public notaries who prey on vulnerable immigrants by offering fraudulent legal services. He voted in favor of marriage equality legislation in 2011.
State Senate committee assignments
- Housing, Construction & Community Development (Ranking Member)
- Environmental Conservation
- Higher Education
- Codes
- Rules
- Judiciary
- Finance
- Insurance
U.S. House of Representatives
Elections
2012
In 2012, Espaillat ran in the Democratic primary for New York's 13th congressional district, in a crowded field that included 42-year incumbent Charles Rangel. The seat had long been a majority-black district, but redistricting after the 2010 census made it a 55% Hispanic-majority district.
In the Democratic primary, which effectively determined the outcome in this heavily Democratic district, Rangel defeated Espaillat by a narrow margin, receiving 44% of the vote to Espaillat's 42%. The margin of victory was fewer than 1,000 votes. Espaillat carried the Bronx portion of the district and several areas in Upper Manhattan.
The election was marked by reports that Spanish-speaking voters were either turned away at the polls or forced to use affidavit ballots. The New York City Board of Elections was also sharply criticized for its poor handling of the election and subsequent legal proceedings.
2014
In 2014, Espaillat ran against Rangel again, losing for the second consecutive time, 47.7% to 43.1%.
2016
In November 2015, Espaillat announced he would give up his New York state senate seat to run for Congress again. He was running for an open seat; Rangel had announced in 2014 that he would not seek a 22nd term in 2016. In the Democratic primary, Espaillat narrowly defeated his nearest challenger, state assemblyman Keith L. T. Wright, with 36% of the vote. This made him an overwhelming favorite in the general election, which he won with 89% of the vote.
When Espaillat took office on January 3, 2017, he became only the third person to represent what is now the 13th in 72 years. Adam Clayton Powell Jr. held the district from 1945 to 1971; Rangel had won the seat after defeating Powell in the 1970 primary. The district had been numbered as the 22nd district from 1945 to 1953, the 16th from 1953 to 1963, the 18th from 1963 to 1973, the 19th from 1973 to 1983, the 16th from 1983 to 1993, the 15th from 1993 to 2013, and has been the 13th since 2013.
2018
Espaillat ran for a second term and defeated Republican Jineea Butler in the general election, winning 94.6% of the vote.
2020
Espaillat ran for a third term and defeated Republican Lovelynn Gwinn in the general election, winning 90.8% of the vote.
2022
Espaillat ran for a fourth term and was unopposed in the general election.
2024
Espaillat ran for a fifth term and defeated Republican Ruben Vargas in the general election, winning 83.5% of the vote.
2026
Espaillat is running for his sixth term in the 2026 New York's 13th congressional district election, first running in the Democratic primary. He has been endorsed by
U.S. Representatives Greg Casar, TX-35 (2023-present), Maxwell Frost, FL-10 (2023-present), Pramila Jayapal, WA-07 (2017-present), and Nydia Velázquez, NY-07 (1993–present). He has also been endorsed by New York state legislators George Alvarez, state assemblymember from the 78th district (2023–present), Manny De Los Santos, state assemblymember from the 72nd district (2022–present), and Yudelka Tapia, state assemblymember from the 86th district (2021–present).
The local officials who have endorsed Espaillat include Shaun Abreu, New York City council member from the 7th district (2022–present), Carmen De La Rosa, New York City councilmember from the 10th district (2022–present), Elsie Encarnacion, New York City councilmember from the 8th district (2026–present), Oswald Feliz, New York City councilmember from the 15th district (2021–present), Christopher Marte, New York City councilmember from the 1st district (2022–present), and Julie Menin, speaker of the New York City Council (2026–present) from the 5th district (2022–present). Other organizations that have endorsed him include AIPAC, Congressional Black Caucus PAC, Congressional Progressive Caucus PAC, Jim Owles Liberal Democratic Club, League of Conservation Voters Action Fund, Planned Parenthood Action Fund, Population Connection, and Stonewall Democratic Club of New York.
Tenure
thumb|right|Espaillat with [[President of the United States|President Joe Biden and Tom Suozzi in 2021]]
Espaillat serves as a member of the House Appropriations Committee. He is Chair of the Congressional Hispanic Caucus (CHC), Co-Chair of the Latino-Jewish Caucus, and a leader of the Progressive Caucus.
In August 2017, after the 2017 Unite the Right rally in Charlottesville, Virginia, Espaillat and Pennsylvania Representative Dwight E. Evans introduced legislation banning Confederate monuments on federal property.
Prior to 2017, no one had attempted to be in both the Congressional Black Caucus (CBC) and the Congressional Hispanic Caucus. In the 2016 House elections, after Espaillat defeated Rangel in the Democratic primary. Espaillat, an Afro-Latino, signaled that he wanted to join the CBC as well as the CHC, but it was reported that he was rebuffed, and it was insinuated that the cause was bad blood over his repeated primary challenges of Rangel in previous cycles.
Espaillat has been critical of Brazil's now-former president Jair Bolsonaro. In March 2019 he and 29 other Democratic lawmakers wrote U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo a letter that read in part, "Since the election of far-right candidate Jair Bolsonaro as president, we have been particularly alarmed by the threat Bolsonaro's agenda poses to the LGBTQ+ community and other minority communities, women, labor activists, and political dissidents in Brazil."
In January 2023, Espaillat introduced a resolution (H.Res.28) condemning the U.S. Supreme Court's decision to overturn Roe v. Wade and Planned Parenthood v. Casey, as well as committing to advancing reproductive justice and judicial reform. On February 1, 2023, Espaillat was named Ranking Member of the Legislative Branch Subcommittee of the House Appropriations Committee. The same month, Espaillat introduced a bill (H.R 1124) which would abolish the death penalty under Federal law.
Since being elected to Congress, Espaillat has sought to build a network of Dominican elected officials in and around his district, frequently dubbed "The Squadriano" (a portmanteau of "Adriano" and "the Squad"). Espaillat is a member of the Vote Blue Coalition, a progressive group and federal PAC created to support Democrats in New York, New Jersey, and Pennsylvania through voter outreach and mobilization efforts.
Following his win for a fifth term, Espaillat was elected as the first Black chair of the Congressional Hispanic Caucus in November 2024.
Committee assignments
- Committee on Appropriations
- Subcommittee on the Legislative Branch (Ranking Member)
Caucus leadership
- Congressional Hispanic Caucus, chair
- Congressional Hispanic Caucus, deputy chair
- Latino-Jewish Caucus, co-chair
Caucus memberships
- Congressional Caucus for the Equal Rights Amendment
- Congressional Progressive Caucus
- Labor Caucus
- Foster Youth Caucus
- LGBT Equality Caucus
- Congressional Ukraine Caucus
- Black Maternal Health Caucus
- New Americans Caucus
- Expand Social Security Caucus
- Tri-Caucus
- Pro-Choice Caucus
- Steel Caucus
- Wine Caucus
- Medicare for All Caucus
- Friends of the Dominican Republic Caucus
- Friends of Ecuador Caucus
Immigration
Espaillat visited an immigration detention facility in Carrizo Springs, Texas, vowing that the U.S. needs to do a better job of connecting migrant children detained at the southern border with their families. The first former undocumented immigrant in Congress, Espaillat claimed he overstayed a tourist visa in the 1960s and is a staunch supporter of the American Dream and Promise Act.
Israel
In 2019, Espaillat supported the Israel Anti-Boycott Act, an effort that called for criminal penalties of up to $1 million for companies that support the Boycott, Divest and Sanctions Movement against Israel. In August 2019, he released a statement condemning Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's decision to deny Representatives Rashida Tlaib and Ilhan Omar entry into Israel. In 2023, he voted to provide Israel with support following the October 7 attacks.
Syria
In 2023, Espaillat was among 56 Democrats to vote in favor of H.Con.Res. 21 which directed President Joe Biden to remove U.S. troops from Syria within 180 days.
Fiscal Responsibility Act of 2023
Espaillat was among the 46 Democrats who voted against final passage of the Fiscal Responsibility Act of 2023 in the House.
Electoral history
New York City Council
New York State Assembly
New York State Senate
U.S. House of Representatives
See also
- List of Hispanic and Latino Americans in the United States Congress
- List of African-American United States representatives
- List of Afro-Latinos
Notes
References
External links
- Congressman Adriano Espaillat official U.S. House website
- Campaign website
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