They had already been hailed as courageous reformers, the insurgent candidates who dared take on New York State senators laden with money, influence and name recognition.

But as the results from last week’s Democratic primary settled, the challengers who successfully toppled seven incumbents immediately took on a new mantle as the new, pulsing nucleus of hopes for progressive change.

For many in the leftmost wing of New York’s Democratic Party, who had watched in dismay as Cynthia Nixon and her allies fell in their quests for statewide office, their plans for progressive, even radical reform in Albany were redirected from the defeated statewide candidates to the seven Senate victors. Six of the vanquished incumbents were former members of the Independent Democratic Conference, a much-reviled group of Democratic senators who had empowered the Republicans.

[What was the I.D.C.? Read our explainer.]

“By a power of 10,” George Albro, a co-chairman of the New York Progressive Action Network, said of how the Senate challengers’ wins would supercharge progressives’ influence in the state capital.