Socialist candidate Darializa Avila Chevalier is celebrating her Democratic primary victory over a New York congressional incumbent with a media clean-up tour of past comments that Democrats have denounced.
Ms. Avila Chevalier said in a series of post-election interviews that she regrets her past social media posts calling former President Joseph R. Biden a “rapist” and cursing former Vice President Kamala Harris. As the likely next representative of New York’s 13th District, she said she wants to build relationships and coalitions for her far-left policy ideas.
“I do regret my tweets,” she said on MS Now. “That’s something that I think has brought a lot of division, and that’s something I regret, because as an organizer, my goal is always to unify our community and deliver for our community.”
Ms. Avila Chevalier said that while people are holding her accountable for comments made long before she decided to run for political office, it is rare that elected officials are held accountable for the decisions they make in positions of power.
“That was part of why I decided to run, because I felt that abandonment from establishment politics that looks at my community as though it is merely statistics and not people who are worth fighting for, and not the policies that will actually better their lives,” she said.
Ms. Avila Chevalier defeated five-term Rep. Adriano Espaillat, the Congressional Hispanic Caucus chairman, in an upper Manhattan district that includes parts of the Bronx.
The 32-year-old worked on socialist New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani’s campaign last year and was one of three congressional challengers he endorsed in Tuesday’s primaries who won over establishment-backed candidates.
Democratic strategist James Carville, the architect of Bill Clinton’s 1992 presidential victory, said Ms. Avila Chevalier isn’t really a Democrat and should not be brought into the party fold in Washington.
“They should not seat her in the caucus,” he told NewsNation. “Her views are totally against anything that Democrats have. We believe in pluralism; she doesn’t believe in interracial dating.”
That was a reference to a post from her deactivated Twitter account suggesting that White people should not be in interracial relationships.
However, Ms. Avila Chevalier told NBC News that the Democratic establishment has “pushed forward a politics of cynicism for far too long.”
She said her victory shows voters “are more interested in a politics of hope” that provides a vision of what the party is fighting for instead of just the things they are against. That is why she said she is not responding to President Trump and other Republicans calling her a communist.
She summarized her political vision in her first post-primary interview with the left-wing news program “Democracy Now!”
“We are fighting for housing for all, to make sure that we abolish ICE and to have our tax dollars come back home to invest in our babies here and not in bombs abroad,” Ms. Avila Chevalier said.
While that description is largely in line with the broader Democratic Party’s views, Ms. Avila Chevalier has taken positions that are further left than most, such as opposing the deportation of all illegal immigrants, including criminals. She previously called for abolishing the police and prisons, and she still opposes all deportations of illegal immigrants, including criminals.
New York City Councilwoman Vickie Paladino, a Republican, said Ms. Avila Chevalier’s anti-American activism makes her ineligible to be sworn into her House seat.
At Columbia University, Ms. Avila Chevalier was a member of Students for Justice in Palestine and helped found an apartheid divest movement group that sought to pressure the university to break ties with Israel. The group on social media called for “Death to America” in Farsi.
Ms. Avila Chevalier has questioned Israel’s right to exist. She attended a pro-Palestinian rally the day after Hamas’ Oct. 7, 2023, terrorist rampage in Israel that killed more than 1,200 people, mostly civilians, including more than 300 young men and women at the Nova music festival.
“The reason I was there — was at that rally, is because I have been advocating for Palestinian human rights and dignity for most of my adult life,” she told MS Now. “And knowing that historically, what we have seen is that whenever there is an incident that happens in the region, there is an outsized reaction, one that costs thousands more people their lives. And that was what I was there to stand against.”
Ms. Avila Chevalier studied abroad in the West Bank in 2014. Within a day of arriving back in the U.S., Israel began bombing Gaza in a 50-day war in which more than 1,400 Palestinian civilians were killed.
“I remember being home and scrolling through the faces and names of the people who had been killed and feeling completely powerless to do anything about it,” she said of experiences that informed her political beliefs.
Ms. Avila Chevalier can’t be blocked from taking a seat in Congress, but Democrats could refuse to give her any committee assignments or other privileges of membership in their party caucus. That appears unlikely.
“Voters have that ability to make those decisions in Democratic primaries. And we’ll work with whoever they send,” said House Democratic Conference Chairman Pete Aguilar of California.
Ms. Avila Chevalier declined to say whether she would support House Democratic leader Hakeem Jeffries of New York for speaker if control of the chamber flips in November.
She said she will use her experience as an organizer to build coalitions in Congress for passing left-wing policies, such as Medicare and college for all.
“It’s about knowing when you’re outnumbered and out-resourced and still having an outsized impact and using strategy and relationship building and trust building to actually deliver for folks,” Ms. Avila Chevalier said.
