New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani threw his weight behind a 32-year-old Democratic Socialist congressional candidate who called Joe Biden a "rapist" and a "war criminal," posted "f*** Kamala Harris" on social media, demanded the total abolition of police, and mocked the American flag, all from a since-deleted X account whose contents are now spilling into public view weeks before a June 23 primary.
Darializa Avila Chevalier, a CUNY Ph.D. student and self-described "working-class Afro-Latina" organizer, is running to unseat five-term incumbent Rep. Adriano Espaillat in New York's 13th Congressional District, which covers Harlem, Washington Heights, and parts of the Bronx. Mamdani's endorsement, announced over the weekend, has rattled establishment Democrats from the district level all the way up to House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries, as the New York Post reported.
The political fallout is real. But the deeper story is what Avila Chevalier actually believes, and what it says about the mayor who chose her over a sitting congressman who endorsed him.
Avila Chevalier's now-deleted X account reads like a catalog of contempt for the country she wants to represent in Congress, the party whose nomination she seeks, and the institutions that hold a democratic society together.
During the 2020 presidential election cycle, she posted: "Y'all really sitting here talking about how we HAVE to vote for one rapist over the other rapist." She called Biden a "war criminal" and wrote, "I've voted in every election since I turned 18 but you out of your mind if you think I'm voting for a war criminal." She added: "This country is a f***ing disgrace."
On Vice President Kamala Harris, she was blunt. "I have no nuance to add. F*** Kamala Harris," she posted. In a separate June 2020 message, she wrote: "Thought we had leveled up the convo from 'Kamala is a cop' to 'All cops are b******s' but I see some major points need to be revisited."
That was not her only statement on law enforcement. She also posted, with clapping-hand emojis between each word for emphasis, "No more police at all ever."
In 2019, she posted about the American flag: "I forgot to get napkins so I just wiped my hand on the American flag behind me," followed by a smiling face emoji. That same year, in February, she posted a comment about interracial relationships: "Black men [handshake emoji] Arab men fetishizing ugly colonizer women."
She gleefully mocked Hillary Clinton on social media. She needled Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez for voting "present" on Israeli military funding, apparently not radical enough for Avila Chevalier's taste. And she took a shot at Sen. Bernie Sanders, an early Mamdani backer, posting: "I'm no fan of Bernie's liberal Zionism to be clear."
When even Bernie Sanders is too moderate for you on Israel, the political map has run out of left.
Avila Chevalier's social media history is not an aberration from her platform, it is the platform's unfiltered voice. Her DSA candidate questionnaire commits her to abolishing prisons, legalizing prostitution and the private use of all drugs, scrapping ICE entirely, and ending all military support to Israel.
She worked for an organization called Families For Freedom and at a Harlem public defenders office. She holds active membership in the United Auto Workers. And she counts among her friends Mahmoud Khalil, the anti-Israel protester and former Columbia University graduate student currently in a deportation fight.
Mamdani's decision to endorse this candidate, rather than the incumbent who backed his own mayoral campaign, is consistent with a pattern of choices that have alienated mainstream New Yorkers. This is not a mayor building coalitions. This is an ideologue picking sides.
Espaillat, the first Dominican American elected to Congress and the first former undocumented immigrant to serve in the House, endorsed Mamdani after Mamdani won the mayoral primary. Democratic insiders say the understanding was that Mamdani would reciprocate, or at least stay neutral in Espaillat's race.
He did neither.
Arthur Schwartz, political director of the New York Progressive Action Network, a group founded by Sanders supporters that endorsed Espaillat, put it plainly: "It's disappointing. Going back on your word is a big sin."
One high-profile national Democrat was sharper: "His two thumbs up for her are two middle fingers to Hakeem Jeffries." The same source added: "The mayor will come to rue the day where he meddled with the makeup of the federal delegation instead of running the city and shaping the political makeup there. He can't do both."
Another prominent national Democrat compared Mamdani to a reckless buyer: "He needs to think like a mayor and that means what can this person buy me. With this endorsement, he bought nothing. She can't do anything for him if she gets elected. In New York City, when someone buys something and gets nothing, that's who we call a tourist."
The mayor's office has not been shy about framing policy through an ideological lens, but this endorsement moves past policy into raw factional warfare within the Democratic Party.
The Avila Chevalier endorsement is not an isolated act. Mamdani also backed Brad Lander against Rep. Dan Goldman in the NY-10 race and supported state assemblywoman Claire Valdez, a fellow DSA member, against Brooklyn Borough President Antonio Reynoso in the NY-7 contest. Reynoso was the handpicked successor of retiring Rep. Nydia Velazquez.
In each case, Mamdani chose the more radical candidate over the establishment pick. He said the Avila Chevalier endorsement would be his last in Democratic congressional primary races, a claim that Democratic operatives greeted with visible skepticism.
The Washington Examiner reported that Espaillat is backed not only by Jeffries but also by the Congressional Black Caucus and the Congressional Progressive Caucus, a rare alignment of establishment and progressive institutional support against a DSA insurgent. Espaillat responded to the endorsement with restraint: "Mayor Mamdani is entitled to support the candidate of his choice. But one endorsement does not make a race. Voters do."
The NRCC, meanwhile, saw an opportunity. Press secretary Mike Marinella framed it as a gift: "The Democrat Party's org chart is getting easier to understand: radical socialist Zohran Mamdani at the top, disgruntled Democrats fighting each other in the middle."
Rev. Thomas Johnson, pastor of Canaan Baptist Church on 116th Street in Harlem, offered a ground-level view that should worry Avila Chevalier's campaign, and Mamdani's political team.
"The mayor endorsed her, but he doesn't have much of a presence in Harlem, at this point, and we know nothing about her," Johnson said. He added: "My weight at this point would be leaning toward the incumbent, especially right now we have so much at stake."
Johnson also made a broader point about the district's voters: "Interestingly enough, these folks... they are not far-left. African Americans have always tended to be moderate, centrist." That observation cuts directly against the premise of Avila Chevalier's candidacy, and against Mamdani's bet that DSA energy can override the preferences of actual voters in Harlem and Washington Heights.
Espaillat holds a significant financial advantage, having raised $1.3 million compared to Avila Chevalier's $400,000. But money did not save Joe Crowley in 2018, and Democratic operatives are not dismissing the threat. "I think the drama is he might lose now," one campaign operative said of Espaillat.
The Mamdani endorsement also strained the mayor's relationship with Gov. Kathy Hochul, who announced her own backing for Espaillat in response. The political dynamics are further complicated by Mamdani's own controversial associations. The Washington Free Beacon documented that Mamdani visited Sheikh Fadhel Al-Sahlani's mosque at least three times since January 2025, a cleric who told the New York Sun in 2006 that the six million Holocaust death toll "has been exaggerated" and who praised Hamas in November 2023, calling it a movement that "has made a big difference."
This is the company the mayor keeps. And now, through his endorsement, he is asking the voters of NY-13 to send more of it to Washington.
Several questions remain unanswered. Avila Chevalier's X account was deleted at some point before this campaign cycle, but neither she nor her campaign has explained when or why. Mamdani has offered no public rationale for backing her over the incumbent who supported him. And the full text of her DSA candidate questionnaire, the document that reportedly commits her to abolishing prisons and scrapping ICE, has not been released in its entirety.
Avila Chevalier described herself as a friend of Mahmoud Khalil, the former Columbia student facing deportation proceedings. The details of that case remain unclear from available public statements. What is clear is that Avila Chevalier's worldview, captured in her own words before she scrubbed them, places her well outside the mainstream of even progressive Democratic politics.
This is a candidate who dismissed the American flag as a napkin, demanded the elimination of all police, called the sitting president a rapist, and expressed contempt for interracial relationships. And the Mamdani circle's pattern of inflammatory social media posts is becoming harder to dismiss as coincidence.
The mayor who punishes NYPD officers for criticizing him now wants voters to reward a candidate whose public record is a sustained attack on the country, its institutions, and its people. The voters of Harlem, Washington Heights, and the Bronx will have their say on June 23.
When a politician tells you who they are, in their own deleted posts, believe them the first time.
