Darializa Avila Chevalier, a 32-year-old progressive Democrat, is challenging five-term incumbent Rep. Adriano Espaillat in Tuesday’s Democratic primary for New York’s 13th congressional district. She is one of three candidates endorsed by New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani in competitive congressional primaries in the city this week.
Mamdani has also endorsed Claire Valdez, who is seeking the open seat in New York’s seventh congressional district, and Brad Lander, who is challenging Rep. Dan Goldman in the 10th district. The mayor appeared with the three candidates in a basketball-themed ad that aired during postgame coverage of Game 1 of the NBA finals. On Thursday, Mamdani and Sen. Bernie Sanders held a rally for the slate.
Avila Chevalier served as Mamdani’s organizing lead for her district’s region during his mayoral campaign, where Mamdani defeated former Gov. Andrew Cuomo in the Democratic primary by nearly 60% to 40%. Espaillat endorsed Cuomo in that primary before backing Mamdani in the general election.
In an interview with The Guardian, Avila Chevalier argued Espaillat has not delivered for the district since taking office in 2017.
“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?” she said. “I would argue the answer is no, because we’ve seen an exodus of over 200,000 Black New Yorkers leave the city in the last two decades.”
The 13th district encompasses much of upper Manhattan and parts of the Bronx, including Harlem and Washington Heights, and is home to a large Afro-Latino population. Espaillat, a five-term Democrat who chairs the Congressional Hispanic Caucus, became the first Dominican American and first formerly undocumented immigrant to serve in Congress when he was elected in 2016.
During a candidate forum held by WNYC, Espaillat said Avila Chevalier was not experienced enough. “Getting results in Congress is not a PhD program,” he said, referencing her studies at the City University of New York.
Avila Chevalier, who has lived in New York for about 14 years, said she felt “deeply abandoned by the establishment politics that we’ve had to live with for so long.” She works as a public defense investigator while completing a PhD at CUNY, where she is a member of United Auto Workers Local 2325. UAW Region 9A has endorsed her campaign.
Her policy platform includes expanding universal healthcare, strengthening renter protections, funding children’s programs over war, abolishing Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), banning corporate Super PACs from election campaigns, and prohibiting members of Congress from trading stocks.
She argued that Espaillat is an establishment politician beholden to wealthy donors, including the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (Aipac). Espaillat’s office did not respond to multiple requests for comment, the Guardian reported.
About 35% of children in New York’s 13th congressional district live in poverty, according to an annual poverty-level tracker conducted by the Robin Hood Foundation and Columbia University. The tracker found that the overall poverty rate for New York City residents climbed to 26% in 2024.
An internal poll from Avila Chevalier’s campaign conducted in March found Espaillat leading among voters 42% to 28%. A more recent internal poll conducted in early June by Data for Progress found Avila Chevalier leading Espaillat 39% to 35%.
Avila Chevalier has been endorsed by the New York City Democratic Socialists and Justice Democrats, the progressive political group that recruited Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez.
She was also targeted by the pro-Israel doxing website Canary Mission for her pro-Palestine activism while a student at Columbia University. The Department of Homeland Security used the website in 2025 to target Palestinian activists for deportation, the Guardian reported.