NY-13: Justice Democrats Re-Emerge in New York to Try to Unseat Espaillat
Justice Democrats, the organization that helped power Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez’s rise to Congress in 2018, will test New York City’s political climate by throwing its support behind an insurgent challenger to Representative Adriano Espaillat.
That candidate, Darializa Avila Chevalier, a Harlem-based organizer, received the group’s first endorsement in New York City for the 2026 midterms, and its fifth in a new crop of progressive challengers to establishment moderates in Congress across the nation.
The endorsement in New York is an effort to capitalize on the momentum generated by Mayor-elect Zohran Mamdani, a democratic socialist who pledged that the success of his campaign and administration would prove that the party’s left flank, once considered flailing and overly idealistic, could deliver on its ambitious policy goals.
Ms. Avila Chevalier, 31, said that both Mr. Espaillat’s record and Mr. Mamdani’s successful mayoral campaign had compelled her to run. Her 71-year-old opponent, she said in an interview, has been more beholden to corporate interests than to the needs of the district’s working-class families.
https://www.nytimes.com/2025/11/20/nyregion/justice-democrats-espaillat-avila-chevalier.html