Darializa Avila Chevalier: pro-Palestinian doctoral student steps into politics with ‘faith in the future’

In the months leading up to New York’s primary election, the 32-year-old political newcomer Darializa Avila Chevalier faced a barrage of negative ads. Super Pacs supporting her opponent – the veteran incumbent Adriano Espaillat – spent millions trying to stop her. And as an endorsement from Avila Chevalier’s fellow Democratic socialist, Zohran Mamdani, boosted her odds, the attacks turned racist, with false accusations suggesting she was lying about her Dominican ethnicity.

But on Tuesday, Avila Chevalier defied predictions and seized a stunning win in New York’s 13th congressional district, which spans upper Manhattan, including Harlem, and parts of The Bronx – with more than 49% of the vote. If she wins the general election in November, she will be the first Dominican woman elected to Congress.

During her victory speech, at a jubilant watch party at a popular Puerto Rican restaurant uptown, Avila Chevalier called the result “a new dawn” for her district.

“I have faith in the future that I know we are stepping into today,” she said. “No longer will we accept the politics that throw scraps at us and act like we should be grateful for them.”

Avila Chevalier’s win marks a remarkable achievement for an unabashedly pro-Palestinian doctoral student and community organizer with no prior experience in office.

It also cements the role of New York’s mayor as a formidable kingmaker for the left, and that of the Democratic Socialists of America – which backed both Mamdani and Avila Chevalier – as a surging force in US elections. All three congressional candidates backed by the mayor (in what some observers had viewed as a gamble) won seats on Tuesday, as did nine out of 10 of DSA’s candidates.

Mamdani, who joined Avila Chevalier in ads and on the campaign trail in recent weeks, had reportedly pledged to back Espaillat before reversing course and supporting Avila Chevalier – a move that earned him criticism from several politicians, some of whom accused the mayor of being untrustworthy. Of Avila Chevalier, Mamdani said that he could think of “no one better than someone of clarity, of conscience and of conviction to be the next congressperson” for the district. “Now that language of hope is a language of fact,” he said of her win.

Avila Chevalier, the daughter of working-class Dominican immigrants, grew up “pretty poor”, as she put it, in Florida before moving to New York to attend Columbia University, where she was active organizing to end sexual violence on campus and in support of Palestine and Black students. She was recruited to run for Congress by Justice Democrats, the same political group that backed Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez in her own historic upset of an establishment Democrat a decade ago. Avila Chevalier has been described by some as “like AOC, but to the left”.

“We are very lucky to have a principled leader and someone who understands who it means to be a leader carrying for their whole constituency,” wrote Ilhan Omar, the Minnesota representative and another history-making progressive, in a post following Avila Chevalier’s win. “Congratulations sis and welcome to Congress!”

Pennsylvania’s Chriss Rabb and New Jersey’s Adam Hamawy, two other leftists who recently won Democratic primaries, also congratulated her. “So thrilled that we have proven once more that there is no such thing as progressive except for Palestine,” said Hamawy.

Like fellow leftists, Avila Chevalier has campaigned on universal healthcare, stronger protections for renters, abolishing Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), and banning big Pacs from elections. She repeatedly accused Espaillat, a Dominican immigrant who was formerly undocumented, a five-term congressman, and the chair of the congressional Hispanic caucus, of having achieved little for his district and being beholden to wealthy donors, including the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (Aipac), which in May reportedly poured $650,000 into a Super Pac opposing Avila Chevalier.

She made “babies, not bombs” the signature pledge of her campaign.

New York’s 13th district is home to mostly working-class Black and Hispanic communities, and includes Washington Heights, the neighborhood where Espaillat grew up, and that boasts the largest Dominican population outside the Dominican Republic. But the district has grown younger and more diverse in recent years.

Avila Chevalier, who served as the area’s organizing lead for Mamdani’s mayoral campaign, first developed the idea of running a challenger to oust or push Espaillat on his positions by noting growing frustrations in the district with his lack of response to Israel’s war in Gaza. DSA also saw an opening there as upper Manhattan became its fastest growing chapter following Mamdani’s win.

“I think it’s time that we have a politics that actually invests in life, not just as rhetoric, that we put our money where our mouth is, that our budget reflects those values, and that we see our resources come back to our communities to fund our schools to fund housing for all, to make sure that we are investing in all the social safety net programs that allow us to lead dignified lives,” she told the Guardian in a recent interview. “You just have to look around our district and ask: have things gotten any better in the nine years that he’s been in office?”

On the campaign trail, Espaillat regularly invoked Avila Chevalier’s lack of experience. “Getting results in Congress is not a PhD program,” he said. But it’s her support for Palestine, where in her 20s she spent a summer which she described as deeply formative, that has earned Avila Chevalier widespread criticism and accusations of antisemitism. She was challenged on her participation in an 8 October 2023 pro-Palestinian protest in Times Square that some viewed as condoning Hamas violence, with Espaillat accusing her of “[celebrating]” the death of Israeli civilians immediately after the attack.

Avila Chevalier pushed back against her critics by saying she “would never celebrate the death of any human being” and that she attended the rally because she knew Israel’s response to the attacks “would be an outsized reaction that would cause the deaths of thousands upon thousands of people”. Conversely, she criticized Espaillat for failing to do anything to support his constituent, the Palestinian Columbia University student Mahmoud Khalil, who was held by ICE for three months last year and became the face of the Trump administration’s crackdown on pro-Palestinian speech.

Avila Chevalier also came under scrutiny over resurfaced old social media posts disparaging Kamala Harris and Joe Biden, which she said she regrets and has matured from. In interviews, she at times came off as testy and defensive.

But many of the attacks on her were aggressive and personal.

In the final weeks of the campaign, Avila Chevalier, who is Afro Latina and converted to Islam in recent years, faced racist and Islamophobic abuse, with a former senior aide of her opponent accusing her of wanting to make Washington Heights “a bastion of the Haitian, Muslim community allied to [Mamdani]”.

On social media, false claims that Avila Chevalier is Haitian – an attempt to further stoke division between Dominicans and Haitians, who share the island of Hispaniola, via anti-Haitian racism – went viral, prompting condemnations from several elected officials, including Espaillat.

Hours before her stunning win she addressed the racist attacks against her in a video posted on social media.

“I’m proud to be part of a generation of Dominicans and New Yorkers who reject racism and divisive politics and who fight for a future of solidarity and dignity for us all.”