It was a tableau that would have seemed unthinkable a decade ago.
Stumping on 125th Street on a recent Saturday, a dozen years after two failed bids to unseat Rep. Charlie Rangel of Harlem and ten after narrowly beating his chosen successor, there stood Rep. Adriano Espaillat, flanked by Black political leaders for a rally to protect the right to vote — and to help the five-term member of Congress keep his seat.
Espaillat has worked hard since he wrested the district away from the Harlem machine to build ties to the Black political leaders that rule the Manhattan Democratic Party. This summer will prove whether those efforts paid off, as he attempts to fend off a serious challenge by Darializa Avila Chevalier, a political newcomer backed by the same coalition that propelled Mayor Zohran Mamdani to victory last year.
That effort, led by the local chapter of the Democratic Socialists of America, is eager to overtake both Espaillat and the Harlem Democratic machine in twin House and state Assembly primaries. That Espaillat is even considering a truce with his longtime nemesis, Manhattan Democratic party boss Keith Wright, is a sign of just how seriously he is taking the threat from Avila Chevalier.
So far, however, Espaillat has resisted directly attacking his main opponent — declining to even refer to her by name — and waved off DSA’s ambitions in Upper Manhattan.
“Everybody has a right to run, we believe in democracy,” he said on Saturday. “And everybody has the right to push for their own political strategy — I have mine, and they have theirs.”
The race to represent New York’s 13th district, spanning Upper Manhattan and a chunk of the northwest Bronx, has quietly emerged as one of the hottest primaries of an unusually active midterm cycle in New York.
Avila Chevalier was the only Democratic primary candidate to outraise an incumbent in New York City in the first quarter of the year, and an internal poll commissioned by her campaign touts soft support for the incumbent.
A Muslim convert who shares Espaillat’s Dominican roots, she was a prominent pro-Palestine activist at Columbia University, her alma mater, and has attacked his donations from Columbia, AIPAC and real estate groups. Avila Chevalier most recently worked as a researcher at Neighborhood Defender Services of Harlem; she is currently on leave from that job to focus on her campaign.
Uptown Funk
Political observers say Espaillat holds a slight edge, if only for the fact that New York’s midterm bonanza — and in Manhattan in particular — has diverted attention from the provinces of Upper Manhattan and The Bronx. He is considered the dean of Dominican elected officials, and has proven to be a canny politician who’s worked hard to boost Dominican electoral power.
A combination of low turnout coupled with firing up his base of working class Dominican voters in the northern reaches of the district would guarantee Espaillat’s re-election, said Eli Valentin, an author and expert on Latino politics in New York.
He has already attracted plenty of establishment support, from some of the city’s largest labor unions, to token endorsements from trade groups representing bodega owners, and from prominent New York Democrats, including state Attorney General Letitia James and Rep. Nydia Velázquez (D-Brooklyn, Queens). On Thursday, he was endorsed by the House Progressive Caucus PAC.
“Espaillat’s definitely taking this seriously, and he sees her as a threat,” Valentin said. “Even if he wins this race, and I believe that he will, he’ll always have a fight, because DSA will run a candidate again and again until they win. This is not a challenge he takes lightly.”
If the DSA is able to drive up turnout Uptown the way it did for Mamdani, then Espaillat ought to worry, he said.
On Saturday, Espaillat addressed rumors that he’s weighing a truce with the Manhattan party boss and considering teaming up with Assemblymember Jordan Wright — the son of Keith — to put the brakes on the DSA.
“I speak to Jordan Wright, he is a good young leader, and we will continue to have conversations as the race moves forward,” he told reporters.
The elder Wright and Espaillat are longtime enemies: Espaillat narrowly defeated him in the 2016 primary to succeed Rangel, the lion of Harlem. Last year, Wright tried to expel Espaillat from his role as district leader over allegations that he cheated his way to the party position in 2023, prompting the Congressman to sue him.
Earlier this year, for the first time ever, Espaillat appeared at the endorsement forum of a Washington Heights-based political club founded by another foe, state Sen. Robert Jackson, an influential Black political leader whose district overlaps with Espaillat’s.
An overwhelming majority of the group’s members, Uptown Community Democrats, voted to endorse Avila Chevalier this week after an “in-depth conversation” with the candidate, said Johanna Garcia, the club’s co-president. UCD and the campaign co-hosted a fundraiser Wednesday night to support the victims of an Inwood apartment fire that killed three people and displaced dozens of families.
“This is a district that can benefit from more attention to the issues that our constituents face, such as housing, food insecurity and healthcare, versus funding for war, and petty fights that just create more division,” said Garcia.
Avila Chevalier’s campaign is seeking to replicate the magic of Mamdani’s campaign, turning out a small army of canvassers built from the same coalition of supporters — DSA members, rent-stabilized tenants and left-leaning Democrats furious about the war in Gaza — that helped increase turnout across the city last year.
New York’s DSA chapter was inspired to take a shot in Upper Manhattan given Mamdani’s strong performance in the district, as well as the backlash to the NYPD’s response to the 2024 antiwar encampments at Columbia University.
The group was an early backer of Conrad Blackburn, a public defender, to challenge Jordan Wright in Harlem’s 70th Assembly district, and later threw its support behind Avila Chevalier. The two campaigns, whose districts wholly overlap, are holding regular joint canvasses in Harlem — including four in the next week alone. Her campaign set the goal of knocking on 40,000 doors by the end of the weekend.
“In Darializa and in Conrad, we have two really strong community organizers and union members who are going to bring that organizing mentality into the halls of power and build power from the bottom up with working people,” Álvaro López, the group’s former elections coordinator, told THE CITY in January, after the group endorsed Avila Chevalier. (López now works for the Mamdani administration and is no longer a DSA spokesperson.)
Three of the four volunteers who showed up to a Monday evening canvass at Bennett Park in Washington Heights were devoted Mamdani volunteers now channeling their enthusiasm to Avila Chevalier.
At a rental building off Broadway on 183rd Street, Ben Sadoff and Sarah Ritzmann dutifully recited the campaign’s talking points and answered questions about the candidate from about a dozen tenants who opened their doors. The campaign is still in the information stage, they explained to THE CITY — their conversations with potential voters are focused on introducing Avila Chevalier and her platform, not attacking the incumbent.
“I’m ready for literally anything else,” one registered Democrat responded after a brief conversation with Sadoff and Ritzmann. Another registered voter signed up to volunteer for the Avila Chevalier campaign on the spot.
Additional reporting by Lilly Sabella.
Our nonprofit newsroom relies on donations from readers to sustain our local reporting and keep it free for all New Yorkers. Donate to THE CITY today.
The post Espaillat Ramps Up Efforts to Fend Off DSA-Backed Challenger appeared first on THE CITY – NYC News.
