The Justice Democrats, a group that’s helped elect some of the fiercest progressives in Congress, just got its newest candidate: Darializa Avila Chevalier, an upper Manhattan community organizer looking to unseat Rep. Adriano Espaillat in a Democratic primary. The district, New York’s 13th, went overwhelmingly for Mayor-elect Zohran Mamdani despite the fact that Espaillat initially opposed him.
Avila Chevalier announced her candidacy Thursday morning with a video highlighting Espiallat’s connections to the Democratic establishment, such as former Gov. Andrew Cuomo, and special interest groups, like the American Israel Public Affairs Committee.
In her announcement, Avila Chevalier promised that she would not accept donations from corporate PACs or special interest groups and said that New York’s 13th district deserves “a working-class champion who can’t be bought by billionaire donors or corporate PACs, and will always put the people first.”
Avila Chevalier, as an organizer, worked to get New Yorkers out of ICE detention and has assisted families facing family separation and deportation threats. She also ran the “Swipe It Forward” campaign aimed at helping poor New Yorkers pay their subway fares and was an organizer in support of the removal of the J. Marion Sims statue in Central Park. Sims was a 19th-century gynecologist who conducted experiments on enslaved women without anesthesia.
Avila Chevalier told Salon that her campaign for Congress would focus on a “housing for all” message, and that, if elected, she would fight for investments in the New York City Housing Authority. She is also advocating for divesting from the American military industrial complex and using those resources to invest in programs that would make it easier to start a family in the United States, a program she calls “babies not bombs.” She also plans to campaign on expanding pathways to citizenship for immigrants and abolishing Immigration and Customs Enforcement, which has been abducting hundreds of American citizens while enacting Trump’s mass deportation agenda and giving out lucrative $50,000 signing bonuses and student loan forgiveness to its agents.
“When I speak to folks at their door or on the streets, the issues that they repeatedly bring up are concerns around not being able to afford their rent or their groceries, concerns around the genocide in Palestine, concerns around their children’s education, and the fear they feel when they see ICE kidnapping New Yorkers off the street,” Avila Chevalier said. “If I saw Espaillat doing everything he could to fight for our community, I wouldn’t be running for Congress.”
“If I saw Espaillat doing everything he could to fight for our community, I wouldn’t be running for Congress.”
Avila Chevalier explained that, in her view, the Democratic Party should be a political vehicle to address the concerns of the working class, rather than billionaires and corporations, many of which support Trump and his administration. She underscored that this is one of the reasons why she believes it’s important that candidates in the Democratic Party refuse corporate PAC money.
“If the money is not influencing the way politicians are voting, then why are we seeing politicians so often voting in line with the interests of the corporate PACs and lobbies funding them, even when those votes are directly opposed to the interests of their constituents?” Avila Chevalier said. “I think what we see happening with AIPAC is a good example of this: the majority of Democratic voters oppose the genocide in Gaza, but the majority of their Representatives in Congress continue to support it.”
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Regarding health care policy, a central factor in the longest government shutdown in U.S. history, Avila Chevalier said that she supports Medicare for All. She also said that she would sign the “Block the Bombs Act,” a bill that would block the sale of major American-produced weapons to Israel, on day one.
In the election, progressives are hoping that they can maintain the coalition that Mamdani brought to the polls in the Democratic primary and expanded upon in the general election. They’re also aiming to leverage the fact that Espiallat endorsed Cuomo in the primary, before ultimately endorsing Mamdani in the general election.
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They have also highlighted Espiallt’s relationship with the pro-Israel lobby. In both the 2022 and 2024 elections, AIPAC was the top donor to Espaillat’s leadership PAC, giving him $25,200 in the 2022 cycle and $160,810 in the 2024 cycle.
It’s clear, too, that the district is fertile ground for a progressive wave in next year’s primary elections in June. In the mayoral primary in June, Mamdani carried the area covered by the district by 19 points. In the general election in November, he carried it by 34 points.
Avila Chevalier is the fifth candidate running with the support of the Justice Democrats in 2026, which, alongside other organizations, like the Sunrise Movement, have launched a wave of primary challengers already, ahead of the 2026 elections.
