Rising socialist stars on track to Congress: Who are Darializa Avila Chevalier, Brad Lander and Claire Valdez?
The Democratic Party has an identity crisis.
Three far-left radicals backed by New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani won their primary elections Tuesday night in a clean sweep by socialist and socialist-adjacent candidates. The mayor's preferred candidates destroyed those backed by the Democrat establishment and House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-N.Y.), leaving party leadership shellshocked.
Democratic Socialists of America (DSA) members Darializa Avila Chevalier and State Assemblywoman Claire Valdez, along with progressive Democrat and former DSA member Brad Lander, all have a clear path to Congress after winning in heavily blue districts.
Here's what we know about them:
Avila Chevalier, 32, is originally from Florida. She attended Columbia University and is currently pursuing a PhD at the City University of New York (CUNY).
She spent much of her time in college organizing against the political right, and is a hardline anti-Israel actor. At the Ivy League school, she helped found a group called Columbia University Apartheid Divest (CUAD), which later caused a firestorm when it posted "Death to America" in Farsi on X.
In 2024, the group faced widespread condemnation when it stated that it was "fighting for the total eradication of Western civilization." Columbia has distanced itself from the group.
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Avila Chevalier identifies as "Afro Latina" and converted to Islam in recent years. Her parents emigrated from the Dominican Republic before she was born, and her nationality became a central focus of her primary battle in the largely Dominican 13th Congressional District, especially as she appeared to distance herself from her roots.
Tuesday night, she ousted five-term Democrat Adriano Espaillat (D-N.Y.), a progressive in his own right, after running against him from his left.
Avila Chevalier deleted a rash of inflammatory far-left posts from her X account where she attacked other Democrats including former President Joe Biden, whom she called a "rapist" and a "war criminal," Vice President Kamala Harris, whom she cursed out, and progressive Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., whom she chastised for his "liberal Zionism."
Perhaps most egregiously, she has trashed the United States on multiple occasions — one time calling her home country "a f---ing disgrace."
"I forgot to get napkins so I just wiped my hand on the American flag behind me," she said in yet another deleted post.
The soon-to-be congresswoman is also a rabid anti-borders activist, and has argued for completely abolishing police and prisons.
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In a 2021 repost on X, then Twitter, she said that abolishing borders, prisons and police is "possible, necessary, and the only moral way forward," and later amplified and echoed posts that claimed "all deportation is wrong" and to "literally abolish the border."
In a debate against Espaillat last week, Avila Chevalier argued that illegal aliens shouldn't be deported from the under any circumstances, even if they have committed violent crimes or served jail time. She bizarrely argued that deporting violent alien criminals constitutes "double jeopardy," since Americans who commit the same crimes cannot be deported.
She also waged a war on white women and even once blasted black and Arab men for "fetishizing ugly colonizer women."
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Valdez currently represents New York's State Assembly for the 37th District, a position she was elected to in 2024. She took office in 2025, and almost immediately launched her congressional bid to replace outgoing Rep. Nydia Velázquez, D-N.Y., who is retiring from Congress.
Valdez is from Lubbock, Texas, and moved to New York to pursue a career as an artist in 2015. She is part Native American and a citizen of the Ysleta del Sur Pueblo Nation.
She, like Avila Chevalier, was endorsed by Justice Democrats, a far-left group that rose to prominence for helping launch the political career of socialist Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, D-N.Y. The group describes Valdez as a "proud Democratic Socialist."
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The endorsement brags that Valdez "worked low-wage customer service jobs through high school, college and after." One of those jobs was as a worker at Columbia University, where she joined UAW Local 2110, which represents full and part-time secretarial and clerical employees. She was elected to the bargaining committee of the union.
Justice Democrats says that in her capacity as an assemblywoman, she "has fought to tax the rich, protect tenants, and empower working people."
Valdez, too, has called Israel's military action in Gaza a "genocide."
"Two and a half years ago, Israeli leaders clearly stated their intent to carry out a genocide in Gaza," she said in an X post on June 3. "And that's exactly what they did. I was in the streets with so many New Yorkers protesting our complicity and to free Palestine."
She has called for the U.S. to withhold funding to Israel.
Valdez has also outwardly called for the abolishment of ICE, which she described as a "fascist agency" and accused them of "terrorizing" the community and "kidnapping" people.
"This fascist administration is kidnapping our neighbors from their immigration court check-ins," she said in a 2025 post to X. "What is Albany waiting for? State leaders cannot ignore this emergency any longer. We cannot allow ONE MORE neighbor to be targeted."
"We must pass NY4ALL and get ICE OUT OF NEW YORK."
Lander served as the chief financial officer for New York City from 2022 to 2025 as comptroller.
Before that, he represented Brooklyn's 39th District on the New York City Council for 12 years, and founded the Progressive Caucus while on the council.
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Lander was a card-carrying DSA member until 2023, when he was turned off by the group's response to the Oct. 7, 2023, Hamas terror attack on Israeli concertgoers that killed 1,200 people.
He defeated incumbent Rep. Dan Goldman, D-N.Y., in a landslide on Tuesday night in New York's 10th Congressional District.
Lander says his first priority in Congress will be to "vanquish Trump's fascism" and abolish ICE, and accused billionaires of "rigging our economy."
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He has described himself as an "ally" to the black community, and in a 2022 candidate survey for the comptroller job shockingly accused himself of possible white supremacy.
"As a white man, that work starts by listening as honestly as I can to black people about the anger and pain they are feeling, and the system of white supremacy and systemic racism it reflects," he said.
"That is not easy —because it implicates me, because the anger is so deep, and because what it would take to change it is so big. But it must be the starting point. From deep listening, action-oriented solutions and genuine commitments should follow."
In 2020, Lander called for police to suspend arresting criminals and demanded most inmates at Rikers be released. He also advocated for cutting NYPD's budget by $1 billion in a letter to constituents, according to the New York Post.
"My commitment to working to defund the NYPD," the letter reportedly said.
None of the primary winners responded to Fox News Digital's comment requests.