At a video game bar in Washington Heights, three recent congressional candidates, each of them vocally pro-Palestinian and with large online followings, came together for a night of Mario Kart on Wednesday.
What brought them there?
The candidacy of Darializa Avila Chevalier, a former Columbia University encampment organizer who’s now running for office in upper Manhattan and the Bronx.
The Mario Kart fundraiser featured appearances from former “Squad” member Jamaal Bowman, who was voted out of Congress in 2024, and two would-be “Squad” members in Kat Abughazaleh, who lost in her Illinois primary this year, and Cameron Kasky, who recently dropped out of the NY-12 race.
Now, they are coalescing around Avila Chevalier as a new chance to add a staunchly pro-Palestinian progressive to the U.S. House of Representatives.
“Every engine of power right now is working their hardest to quash working-class movements — they’re inventing new forms of rat-f–ing, I saw that in my own race,” Abughazaleh said during the event, alluding to efforts to oppose her such as AIPAC-affiliated shell groups that spent millions on attack ads, as well as a group that paid social media influencers to post negatively about her.
“And every single time someone before — whether it’s me, whether it’s Jamaal, whether it’s the many other people who have tried their hardest to fight for working-class rights who have lost — it clears the path even more for the next person,” she said. “And that person is Darializa.”
Two years ago, Avila Chevalier was helping organize the pro-Palestinian encampment at Columbia. Now, she’s running for Congress in the district that covers the Ivy League school, and — according to her campaign’s polling — gaining steam.
Based on name recognition alone, 42% of voters said they’d pick the incumbent, Rep. Adriano Espaillat, versus 28% for Avila Chevalier, according to her internal polling. But “once respondents heard positive messaging about Avila Chevalier’s platform,” according to The City, the results swung drastically with Chevalier winning 46% to 35%.
Avila Chevalier’s campaign did not respond to a request for the full wording of the questionnaire, nor to confirm what exactly that “positive messaging” was.
But part of that message might well have focused on Avila Chevalier’s critical stance on Israel, which is central to her campaign and an area of major difference between her and Espaillat, who she says is “bought by the Israeli lobby.”
Espaillat, who’s been firmly pro-Israel in his five terms in Congress, has previously been backed by AIPAC and received its endorsement once again this year. In 2024, his Manhattan district office, which is in a heavily Jewish neighborhood and displayed fliers of Israeli hostages held by Hamas, was vandalized with anti-Israel graffiti multiple times.
“It was very unfortunate and kind of abrasive that on the anniversary of Oct. 7, when more than 1,200 people lost their lives in gruesome ways — you know, women were raped, children were killed, seniors were shot and killed — that instead of appealing for peace that they resorted to violence and vandalism,” Espaillat said at the time. His campaign did not respond to a request for comment about his current primary challenge.
Ahead of the June 23 primary, Espaillat has garnered endorsements from a number of politicians this year such as New York State Attorney General Letitia James; City Council Speaker Julie Menin and Comptroller Mark Levine, who are both Jewish; and progressive politicians more critical of Israel such as Reps. Analilia Mejia, who was recently elected in New Jersey, and Nydia Velazquez.
And Mayor Zohran Mamdani, who shares Avila Chevalier’s pro-Palestinian outlook but got a boost from Espaillat in his own campaign last year and is under pressure not to oppose Democratic incumbents, has so far stayed out of the race.
But as opposition to AIPAC and U.S. military aid to Israel have become increasingly popular positions among Democratic voters, and a growing number of politicians are adopting those stances, Avila Chevalier’s messaging may be resonating. In the first quarter of this year, she out-fundraised Espaillat $270,000 to $230,000. Still, Espaillat leads her in total cash on hand.
Avila Chevalier, who says she refuses to accept money from AIPAC or any corporate PAC, has said the issue hits close to home.
“I am running for Congress because I see the links between the violence that Palestinians face under Israeli apartheid and the violence Black communities face from American law enforcement,” wrote Avila Chevalier, who is Afro-Latina. (Many anti-Zionists believe that U.S. police delegations to Israel serve to import brutal and militarized policing to the United States, a stance that its critics denounce as antisemitic.)
Though internal polling can often be skewed in favor of the candidate commissioning it, Avila Chevalier’s led a number of progressive pundits to claim that Espaillat is being held up by “soft” support in the 13th district, and that she could feasibly nab the upper Manhattan and west Bronx seat in the primary.
“The polls show what we already know: Espaillat’s support in the district is SOFT,” she tweeted. “The people mostly don’t know him, and those who do prefer OUR policies when they learn about them. What this means is that WE CAN WIN!”
Avila Chevalier, who’s been endorsed by the anti-Zionist group Jewish Voice for Peace and left-wing groups like the Democratic Socialists of America, outlines her foreign policy vision on her campaign website.
“We must end the genocide and occupation in Palestine, divest from Israeli apartheid, stop all funding to the Israeli government, and reinvest in us,” Avila Chevalier’s website reads. She says she would vote in favor of the Block the Bombs Act, which prohibits the sale of certain U.S.-made offensive weapons to Israel. Earlier in April, she was arrested while protesting with JVP outside Chuck Schumer and Kirsten Gillibrand’s offices, calling for them to vote against weapons sales to Israel. (Schumer and Gillibrand were among the seven Democratic senators to vote “no” on the Bernie Sanders-led resolution.)
Avila Chevalier’s campaign priorities also include abolishing ICE, adding affordable housing and securing federal funds to repair the city’s public housing.
She has been endorsed by and, according to FEC filings, received $5,000 in campaign donations directly from PAL PAC, a pro-Palestinian group founded to counter AIPAC’s spending. She also received endorsements from the social media watchdog Track AIPAC and from Bowman, who declared during Wednesday’s fundraiser, “Organized people beat organized money every single time!” Bowman, who served two terms in Congress, was defeated in 2024 after AIPAC spent $14.5 million against him.
Avila Chevalier’s pro-Palestinian activism stretches back to long before the 2024 encampment.
In 2016 she co-wrote a piece in Electronic Intifada titled “Black activists owe no apology for charging Israel with genocide.” The piece criticized Jewish organizations like the Anti-Defamation League and the Jewish Community Relations Council of Boston, as well as the progressive Israeli magazine +972, for disagreeing with the Movement for Black Lives’ accusation that Israel was committing genocide in its 2016 vision paper. (+972 has since referred to Israel’s recent military campaign in Gaza as a “genocide.”)
Before graduating from Columbia in 2016, Avila Chevalier was involved in the school’s branch of Students for Justice in Palestine, and in the 2016 formation of Columbia University Apartheid Divest, which is aligned with the larger Boycott, Divest and Sanctions movement against Israel. She won a “principled action” award from Columbia in 2014 that recognized “students who have demonstrated ethical decision making and sound moral judgment, as well as fostered and encouraged similar actions from others.”
As an alumna, Avila Chevalier was protesting on the Columbia campus less than a week after Hamas’ Oct. 7, 2023, attack on Israel, during SJP’s “day of resistance.”
“It’s about standing with the people of Gaza, and reminding the world that these are humans who deserve to live in dignity, to deserve to live free from occupation, free from colonial brutality, free from the violence that Israel constantly is constantly throwing at them,” she told the Guardian at the time.
Critics said the pro-Palestinian protests celebrated the killing of civilians that occurred on Oct. 7; Avila Chevalier disagreed, but said the violence against Israelis was not unprovoked.
“No one wants violence, right?” she said. “What people who are engaging in these protests are trying to get across is that this violence didn’t start five days ago, this violence started with Israeli occupation of Palestine.”
Last year she wrote a column decrying the detainment of Palestinian activist Mahmoud Khalil. It “has always been clear to me that Mahmoud is a man who is both brave and gentle, with strong principles, humility and a deep love for his people and community,” she wrote, based on their interactions.
The district covers upper Manhattan and a portion of the west side of the Bronx. A 2013 population study found that 39,700 Jews lived in the district at the time. As of 2023, about 18,000 Jewish adults lived in the adjoined NY-13 neighborhoods of Washington Heights and Inwood. The district has also absorbed Morningside Heights, the neighborhood home to Columbia and the Jewish Theological Seminary, since a recent redistricting.
Avila Chevalier’s polling, which was conducted by Upswing Research & Strategy, surveyed 598 likely voters in the district from March 25 to March 30, and has a 4% margin of error.
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