A 32-year-old public defense investigator and PhD student who organized against sexual violence at Columbia and helped deliver Zohran Mamdani a landslide mayoral win is now trying to end the political career of a five-term congressman who backed the guy Mamdani crushed. The race is in New York's 13th congressional district, and the incumbent, Adriano Espaillat, has held some form of elected office for thirty years. That is, apparently, exactly the problem.
Thirty Years of 'Getting Results,' With a District to Show for It
Espaillat's case for keeping his job is, more or less, that Darializa Avila Chevalier is not qualified to take it. At a recent WNYC candidate forum, according to The Guardian, the five-term congressman and chair of the Congressional Hispanic Caucus dismissed her academic credentials by saying, 'Getting results in Congress is not a PhD program.' The crowd did not give him a standing ovation for that one.
Avila Chevalier's counter is simple: look out the window. '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 told The Guardian. 'I would argue the answer is no.' She points to an exodus of over 200,000 Black New Yorkers from the city over the last two decades, and a district where, per The Guardian, roughly 35% of children live in poverty. The city's overall poverty rate hit 26% in 2024, according to an annual tracker run by Robin Hood and Columbia University.
Espaillat, to be fair, is not nobody. He made history in 2017 as the first Dominican American and first formerly undocumented immigrant elected to Congress, representing a district that covers much of upper Manhattan and parts of the Bronx, including Harlem and Washington Heights. His record as a groundbreaker is real. His record as someone who moved the needle on poverty in his own district is, based on those numbers, considerably murkier.
The Mamdani Machine Is Rolling
Avila Chevalier is not running alone. She is one of three congressional candidates that New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani has endorsed in competitive Democratic primaries happening Tuesday. The other two are Claire Valdez, running for Nydia Velázquez's open seat in the 7th district, and Brad Lander, who is challenging Dan Goldman in the 10th. The Guardian reports Mamdani introduced all three in a basketball-themed political ad that dropped during postgame coverage of Game 1 of the Knicks' NBA Finals run, which is both extremely on-brand for the current political moment in New York and an absolutely ruthless media buy.
Last Thursday, Mamdani and Senator Bernie Sanders held a rally for all three candidates. That's the kind of institutional progressive muscle that, two years ago, would have been unthinkable in a race where the incumbent is a Democratic caucus chair with thirty years in politics. It is thinkable now because Mamdani just beat Andrew Cuomo by roughly 60 to 40 in the district where Avila Chevalier ran organizing operations for his campaign. The same district where Espaillat had endorsed Cuomo. Before eventually pivoting to back Mamdani in the general, as The Guardian notes, because that is what establishment politicians do.
Who Is Actually Running Here
Avila Chevalier is 32, has lived in New York for about fourteen years, and currently works as a public defense investigator while finishing her doctorate at the City University of New York, where she is also a member of UAW Local 2325. Her union, UAW Region 9A, has endorsed her campaign. She told The Guardian that her union membership 'changed the course of my education,' giving her workable teaching conditions and a wage that let her, in her words, 'actually lead a dignified life.'
At Columbia, she organized against sexual violence on campus, worked with Students for Justice in Palestine and the Black Student Organization, and organized around mass incarceration and immigration justice. That last piece has consequences. The Guardian reports she has been targeted by Canary Mission, the pro-Israel doxing website that the Department of Homeland Security used in 2025 to identify Palestinian activists for deportation. She has not hidden from any of it.
Her platform, per The Guardian, includes universal healthcare, stronger renter protections, funding children's programs over war spending, abolishing ICE, banning Super PACs from elections, and prohibiting members of Congress from trading stocks. She is endorsed by New York City Democratic Socialists and Justice Democrats, the group that recruited Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez. She has also called out Espaillat directly for what she describes as being beholden to major donors including AIPAC. Espaillat's office did not respond to multiple requests for comment from The Guardian.
What's Actually at Stake on Tuesday
This is not a quirky long-shot primary. This is a test of whether the Mamdani coalition, which just delivered a genuine political earthquake in the mayoral race, can translate that energy into congressional seats. Three races at once. The same day. All in New York City.
If Avila Chevalier, Valdez, and Lander all win, you are looking at a coordinated left-wing sweep of Democratic congressional primaries in one of the most watched media markets in the country, driven by a sitting mayor who is openly building a political infrastructure to change who holds power. If they lose, the establishment wing gets to declare the Mamdani moment a fluke. The stakes on Tuesday are not subtle.
The Dingo Take
Here is the part where a normal political commentator would say something careful about how 'both candidates make compelling arguments' and 'voters will decide.' We are not doing that.
Espaillat has been in elected office for thirty years. Thirty. His district has a 35% child poverty rate. His response to a challenger backed by a movement that just embarrassed his preferred mayoral candidate is to mock her for being in a PhD program. The guy whose argument is 'I know how to get things done in Congress' is represented, per Avila Chevalier, by a district where over a quarter of residents live in poverty and 200,000 Black New Yorkers have left the city in two decades. At some point, you have to ask what exactly is getting done and for whom.
Avila Chevalier is not a guaranteed winner. She's young, she's running against a well-resourced incumbent, and 'abolish ICE' is a phrase that still makes half the Democratic Party break out in hives. But she is running on a platform that actually addresses what is happening to the people in that district, she has one of the most politically potent endorsements available in New York right now, and she is doing it while being actively targeted by a DHS-linked doxing operation for her campus activism. That last part, in a sane political era, would be considered a scandal about the government. Right now it is just Tuesday.
