Mayor Zohran Mamdani has endorsed Darializa Avila Chevalier, the Democratic Socialists of America member challenging Rep. Adriano Espaillat in June’s Democratic primary in NY-13, walking back what was reported by Hellgate to be a handshake agreement to support the 71-year-old incumbent instead.
Espaillat endorsed Andrew Cuomo in last year’s mayoral primary, then swung behind Mamdani for the general election. The mayor reportedly promised to back Espaillat’s re-election in return. Mamdani appears to have broken that pledge. Avila Chevalier is a fellow DSA member, putting the mayor’s endorsement inside his own political home.
Espaillat has been a fixture of uptown politics for almost three decades, moving from the state Assembly to the state Senate to Congress. When he replaced Charlie Rangel nine years ago, he became the first Dominican American and the first formerly undocumented immigrant to serve in the House. He now chairs the Congressional Hispanic Caucus and represents nearly half a million voters in NY-13, which runs from Morningside Heights and East Harlem through Washington Heights and into Kingsbridge in the Bronx.
He is not an easy target. Espaillat helped secure billions for Phase 2 of the Second Avenue Subway, landed almost $38 million for a Dominican arts and culture center in Inwood, and, as a state assemblyman in 2000, filed a complaint against Con Edison that fed into a record rate rollback after the Indian Point nuclear accident. Heading into the primary he held endorsements from Gov. Kathy Hochul, Attorney General Letitia James, retiring Rep. Nydia Velázquez and City Council Speaker Julie Menin.
The switch is part of a larger project. If Mamdani’s congressional picks all win, he would have four DSA-aligned allies in Washington: Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Claire Valdez, Avila Chevalier and DSA-friendly Brad Lander. The mayor plugged the latter three in a television ad that aired during the first game of the Knicks Finals.
NY-13 is fertile ground for the left. In writer Michael Lange’s newsletter Double or Nothing, he notes Mamdani’s single greatest overperformance last June came not in the hipster precincts of Brooklyn and Queens but in the supermajority-renter blocks of Upper Manhattan, where the mayor beat Cuomo by 19 points in NY-13. Lange writes that the polling for Espaillat is “particularly alarming,” and that AIPAC, the incumbent’s top donor, is expected to flood the district in the campaign’s final weeks. The Democratic electorate in NY-13 is racially split, roughly 31 percent White, 27 percent Black and 34 percent Hispanic by Lange’s account, which he argues dilutes Espaillat’s usual edge with Hispanic voters.
Avila Chevalier is a student organizer backed by NYC-DSA and Justice Democrats. Her candidacy drew national attention this summer when House Democratic leaders brushed off concerns about her past communist social media posts, saying she has changed.
Espaillat is used to challengers, and he usually wins the fight. Over 15 months he shepherded six Dominican American candidates into office in overlapping districts, an operation political analyst Eli Valentin described to City & State as making Espaillat “a pseudo-county leader.” He personally ran against Rangel twice before winning the seat, and he has never been shy about backing challengers to incumbents who cross him. Now the mayor who owes him an endorsement is doing the same to him.
