NY-13: Mamdani-backed congressional candidate deleted posts calling to seize private property

Darializa Avila Chevalier, a democratic socialist congressional candidate endorsed by New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani, deleted a previous Twitter account that included thousands of posts and reposts expressing support for abolishing police, prisons and borders, as well as seizing private property and nationalizing major industries and calling into question Israel’s right to exist.

Avila Chevalier, a 32-year-old investigator at a public defender’s office in New York City and doctoral student, has emerged as one of the most prominent left-wing challengers in the country after Mamdani endorsed her bid to unseat longtime Democratic Rep. Adriano Espaillat in New York’s 13th Congressional District.

But the posts from her since-deleted account from over the last decade have drawn scrutiny amid her high-profile challenge of Espaillat, a five-term incumbent and chair of the Congressional Hispanic Caucus. That primary, scheduled for June 23, has become a closely watched proxy battle between the Democratic Party’s establishment and its ascendant democratic-socialist wing, with Mamdani’s endorsement last week elevating the race’s national profile.

While reports in the New York Post and Politico previously highlighted several deleted social media posts in which Avila Chevalier criticized police, Israel and Democratic politicians, a CNN KFile review of hundreds of deleted posts and reposts found ones that called for abolishing police, prisons and borders; tweets about communism; calls for open borders and zero deportations; and expletive-laden attacks on Democrats.




https://www.cnn.com/2026/06/01/politics/kfile-ny-13-darializa-avila-chevalier-deleted-tweets-defund-abolish-police-prisons-deportations