Darializa Avila Chevalier, 32, who stunned the Democratic political establishment by upsetting Representative Adriano Espaillat, is a relative political newcomer who emerged from the world of far-left activism.
Her campaign was buoyed by strong support from Mayor Zohran Mamdani over the closing stretch. The mayor had originally pledged to endorse her opponent, the incumbent, Representative Adriano Espaillat.
But Ms. Avila Chevalier and Mr. Mamdani, both young democratic socialists, had enough in common that the mayor backtracked on his vow to back Mr. Espaillat.
Some of Ms. Avila Chevalier’s views may be considered too extreme for mainstream politics, and should she be chosen to represent Upper Manhattan in Congress, her views could pose a challenge for the greater Democratic Party. In an interview last week with The New York Editorial Board, a substack, Ms. Avila Chevalier repeatedly avoided answering whether she would send a man who randomly killed another man to prison.
Here are five things to know about Ms. Avila Chevalier.
1. She’s a first-time candidate. Ms. Avila Chevalier entered the race as an organizer looking to capitalize on the youthful energy that Mr. Mamdani injected into city politics with his win in November. Mr. Mamdani overwhelmingly carried the 13th District, covering large sections of Harlem and Washington Heights in Upper Manhattan, in the Democratic mayoral primary and the general election.
Ms. Avila Chevalier joined a wave of progressive challengers to establishment incumbents. This campaign was her first formal foray into politics. She is a Ph.D. student and an investigator in a public defender office, while she previously helped lead protests against the Israel-Hamas war at Columbia University.
2. She was strongly backed by the Democratic Socialists. Ms. Avila Chevalier received crucial support from the Democratic Socialists of America’s New York City chapter, which sought to help her expand the organization’s reach into Upper Manhattan, where its leaders say they have seen the most new membership growth this year.
Ms. Avila Chevalier was a more left-wing candidate than her opponent, having voiced support for abolishing the police, borders and prisons and seizing property from landlords.
She was also supported by Justice Democrats, a left-wing group, which recruited her to run. The group funneled close to $300,000 to Ms. Avila Chevalier’s campaign and was an influential supporter of Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez’s 2018 campaign.
3. She was involved in protests at Columbia. Ms. Avila Chevalier attended Columbia University and organized with the school’s Students for Justice in Palestine group. The university’s activists later faced a great deal of scrutiny following the Oct. 7, 2023, Hamas attacks in Israel as the school descended into monthslong protests, largely in support of the Palestinian cause.
Mahmoud Khalil, the activist who has been targeted by the Trump administration for his organizing, protested alongside her and was featured in one of the advertisements supporting her with his wife, Noor.
According to City & State New York, Ms. Avila Chevalier attended a pro-Palestinian rally in Times Square on Oct. 8, 2023. The event was condemned by local leaders, including Brad Lander, a candidate for Congress in the 10th Congressional District, and Gov. Kathy Hochul, for rhetoric that suggested the attacks on Oct. 7 were justified.
“I can only say I have been advocating for the human rights of Palestinians for my adult life,” Ms. Avila Chevalier told the outlet.
4. She was the target of racist attacks. Over the course of Ms. Avila Chevalier’s campaign, she faced racist attacks questioning her fidelity to her Dominican heritage. Ms. Avila Chevalier’s parents are both immigrants from the Dominican Republic, but some supporters of Mr. Espaillat, the first Dominican American elected to Congress, falsely claimed that she is of Haitian descent.
The Dominican Republic and Haiti share the island of Hispaniola and have a long and complicated history marked by an occupation of the entire island by the Haitians and a massacre of Haitians by Rafael Trujillo, who was the Dominican dictator for decades.
Ms. Avila Chevalier abruptly left an interview on La Mega 97.9, a popular Spanish language radio station, on Tuesday after the hosts accused her of insulting the Dominican flag for refusing to include it in her social media bio because, she said, Dominican nationalism was “violent.”
5. Her social media posts caused a firestorm. Ms. Avila Chevalier faced increasing scrutiny toward the end of her campaign, especially when it came to social media posts she had deleted, but that had been archived on the internet. Between 2018 and 2022, she posted frequently and sometimes used profane language to criticize the Democratic Party, the reported origins of the Covid-19 pandemic and interracial relationships.
Mr. Espaillat pounced on the posts, with multiple super PACs behind him running ads highlighting some of her more colorful points. For example, one featured a post from 2021 in which Ms. Avila Chevalier lashed out against Kamala Harris, then the vice president. “I have no nuance to add,” she wrote. “[Expletive] Kamala Harris.”
She also called Joe Biden a “rapist” in April 2020, as he was on his way to clinching the Democratic nomination for the presidency, though she recently said she voted for him.
Mr. Mamdani said he was unaware of Ms. Avila Chevalier’s social media posts at the time of his endorsement, but he did not disavow them.
Maya King, Jeffery C. Mays and Sally Goldenberg contributed reporting.
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