Darializa Avila Chevalier, a member of the Democratic Socialists of America, narrowly unseated Rep. Adriano Espaillat, a five-term incumbent and chair of the Congressional Hispanic Caucus, in a primary covering Upper Manhattan and the Bronx. Espaillat is 79.
It was the sharpest of three wins on Tuesday for candidates endorsed by New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani. In Brooklyn’s 10th District, former Comptroller Brad Lander beat Rep. Dan Goldman by more than 30 points. In the open 7th District, Assemblywoman Claire Valdez defeated Borough President Antonio Reynoso by a comfortable double-digit margin. Democratic socialists are now on track to double their numbers in Congress, almost exactly a year after Mamdani’s own primary victory upended the city’s political establishment.
Mamdani reads the night as proof that his coalition can carry candidates other than himself. He has pointed out that Avila Chevalier would be the first Afro Latina Dominican woman to represent her district, and Valdez the first Mexican American and Indigenous woman to hold hers. He told NPR that it is time to “invest in babies, not bombs,” a line he credited to Avila Chevalier, tying the cost of living at home to his opposition to U.S. military aid abroad.
President Donald Trump, who called Mamdani a “communist lunatic” during the mayoral primary, mocked the outcome as the election of three “solid Communists.”
Party leaders split
Every candidate House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries endorsed lost. He described his relationship with Mamdani as “very good” but said the mayor has work to do mending ties with Congress, and he stressed that his own focus is winning the House back in November.
Rep. Nydia Velázquez was blunter. Valdez won her seat, and Velázquez told CNN that Mamdani made “a strategic error of judgement” by overriding her preferred successor. She canceled a dinner with him after hearing of the endorsement secondhand.
Rep. Ro Khanna took the opposite view. “The energy of our party is clearly with the left,” he told Axios. Jon Paul Lupo, a former adviser to ex-Mayor Bill de Blasio, called the results “seismic,” according to The New York Times.
Attorney General Letitia James, who backed Mamdani for mayor, ended up on the other side of this fight. She told CNN that some of the endorsed candidates do not understand “the cultural differences from district to district.” She added: “All of us are a little frustrated with the Democratic Party. But you don’t blow it up. That’s what MAGA has done.”
Avila Chevalier’s old posts
Avila Chevalier has drawn criticism for earlier inflammatory statements. During the 2020 election she called former President Joe Biden a “rapist” and a “war criminal,” and she wrote an expletive-laden post about Kamala Harris after the former vice president discouraged migrants from coming to the U.S. In an interview with MSNOW on Wednesday she said she regretted the now-deleted posts. “As an organizer, my goal is always to unify our community,” she said.
