Justice Democrats, the organization that helped power Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez’s rise to Congress in 2018, will test New York City’s political climate and throw its support behind an insurgent challenger to Representative Adriano Espaillat.
That candidate, Darializa Avila Chevalier, a Harlem-based organizer, will receive the group’s first endorsement in New York City for the 2026 midterms, and its fifth in a new crop of progressive challengers to establishment moderates in Congress.
The endorsements in New York are an effort to capitalize on the momentum generated by Mayor-elect Zohran Mamdani, a democratic socialist who pledged that the success of his campaign and administration would prove that the party’s left flank, once considered flailing and overly idealistic, could deliver on its ambitious policy goals.
Ms. Avila Chevalier, 31, said that both Mr. Espaillat’s record and Mr. Mamdani’s successful mayoral campaign had compelled her to run. Her 71-year-old opponent, she said in an interview, has been more beholden to corporate interests than to the needs of the district’s working-class families.
“He takes money from the very institutions that are making life harder for New Yorkers here — institutions like landlords, AIPAC and corporate PACs — and turns the other way when our rents are being raised, when we’re being priced out of our communities,” she said, referring to a prominent pro-Israel lobbying group. “And I think New Yorkers are hungry for something different. I think this past mayoral election proves that.”
Mr. Espaillat was not immediately available for comment.
Ms. Avila Chevalier’s run is one of a handful of primary challenges against well-known Democrats in the city that have emerged since Mr. Mamdani’s victory. The leftist city councilman Chi Ossé has said he plans to run against Representative Hakeem Jeffries, the top House Democrat, in his Brooklyn district; the city comptroller, Brad Lander, is preparing a run against Representative Daniel Goldman, a moderate Democrat representing parts of Brooklyn and Lower Manhattan.
Usamah Andrabi, Justice Democrats’ communications director, said the group was weighing possible endorsements of candidates challenging Mr. Jeffries and Mr. Goldman, but that for now, it was prioritizing unseating Mr. Espaillat, a Democrat serving his fifth term in the 13th District.
Mr. Espaillat, the first Dominican American to serve in Congress, is considered one of the body’s foremost Latino members. His district, which includes broad swaths of Harlem and Washington Heights in Upper Manhattan and stretches to the West Bronx, voted overwhelmingly for Mr. Mamdani in the Democratic mayoral primary and the general election. Mr. Espaillat, who endorsed former Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo during the primary, switched to support Mr. Mamdani ahead of the November election.
Mr. Espaillat benefits from widespread name recognition and a ready-made fund-raising machine. And despite the momentum Mr. Mamdani’s campaign has generated for the left, there is no guarantee that his mayoralty will be a boon to progressive candidates by next June’s primary.
It is unclear whether Mr. Mamdani intends to offer endorsements in congressional primaries.
Mr. Mamdani’s win on Nov. 4 brought many of the generational and ideological fights currently roiling the party into stark relief. New York has been on the front lines of a majority of those battles: Debates over the Israel-Hamas conflict, corporate interests’ meddling in politics and the response to the affordability crisis animated the mayoral contest, and all are likely to color competitive Democratic primaries citywide and across the country.
Some Democrats have already responded to the discourse. In September, Representative Jerrold Nadler, the veteran congressman who served for more than three decades, said he would retire at the end of his term — a response to widespread calls for fresh leadership. Though he drew a primary challenger before his announcement, his impending exit has given way to a field of nearly a dozen contenders, including a Kennedy heir and a Gen Z democratic socialist.
Ms. Avila Chevalier, who canvassed for Mr. Mamdani, said the mayoral results had given her confidence that a political shift was underway.
“I think that Zohran’s win convinced so many on the left that this is possible,” she said. “And I think we have to build on that momentum, because if we let that momentum go, then we did all that work for nothing.”
This campaign is Ms. Avila Chevalier’s first run for political office. She is a Ph.D. student and an investigator in a public defender office in Harlem, and has also helped lead protests against the Israel-Hamas war at Columbia University.
Maya King is a Times reporter covering New York politics.
The post Justice Democrats Re-Emerge in New York to Try to Unseat Espaillat appeared first on New York Times.
