Darializa Avila Chevalier, the Democratic Socialists of America candidate who just unseated five-term incumbent Rep. Adriano Espaillat in New York's 13th Congressional District, pulled off her headphones and walked out of a live interview on Spanish-language radio station La Mega on Tuesday — primary election day — when the hosts asked her to address old social media posts calling for the abolition of police and prisons.
Her parting words to the audience: "Have a beautiful day."
The posts weren't opposition research dug up by a rival campaign. They were her own published positions — calls to abolish police and prisons, declarations that "all deportations are wrong," inflammatory remarks about U.S. institutions, and participation in a campus group that called for "Death to America." The hosts at La Mega didn't ambush her. They asked her to address statements she'd made publicly, repeatedly, and voluntarily.
Avila Chevalier's response was to announce, "I am not going to sit here and be yelled at by various people," remove her headphones, and leave the studio while the broadcast continued. The hosts had specifically asked her to address the Dominican community that may have felt hurt by her past comments opposing Dominican nationalism and flag display, which she had characterized as "violent." She chose the door instead.
This is the candidate NYC Mayor Zohran Mamdani hand-picked to carry the Democratic Socialists' banner in a district covering portions of Manhattan and the Bronx. Bernie Sanders himself campaigned alongside Avila Chevalier at a rally in the district. The DSA machine and the Mamdani faction poured resources into flipping NY-13, and it worked — Espaillat, the chair of the Congressional Hispanic Caucus, lost his seat after five terms.
So the socialist coalition got exactly what it wanted: a candidate who ran on abolishing police, abolishing prisons, stopping all deportations, and tearing down the institutions she's now asking voters to send her to Washington to run. That's the platform. That's not a distortion or a mischaracterization. Those are her words, posted under her name, on her own accounts.
The problem isn't that the radio hosts were hostile. The problem is that Avila Chevalier's own positions don't survive contact with a Spanish-language radio audience that actually lives in the district she wants to represent. The people in NY-13 — heavily Dominican, heavily immigrant, heavily working-class — heard "all deportations are wrong" and "displaying your flag is violent" and had questions. Reasonable ones. She didn't have answers.
There's a pattern with this new crop of DSA candidates. They build followings on social media where the algorithm feeds their posts to people who already agree. They campaign in rooms full of supporters. They collect endorsements from politicians like Mamdani who occupy the same ideological lane. And the moment someone outside that bubble reads their own words back to them, it becomes "yelling."
Espaillat wasn't a moderate by any national standard. He was a reliable Democratic vote for five terms. But for the Mamdani-backed socialist wing, reliable wasn't enough — they needed someone who was an avowed socialist (and really a communist) who'd call for abolishing the institutions the district's own residents depend on for safety. And now that candidate is the overwhelming favorite in a general election where NY-13 hasn't gone Republican in decades.
The empty chair kept broadcasting. The headphones sat on the desk. And somewhere in the Bronx, a voter who actually has to live with the consequences of open borders and defunded police departments watched a future congresswoman decide that their questions weren't worth answering.