What Victory of Three Far-Left Candidates Backed by Zohran Mamdani Really Says About State of Dem Party

The Democratic Party took a giant leap to the left Tuesday night in New York City, where voters rejected the establishment in favor of three far-left candidates backed by Democratic Socialist Mayor Zohran Mamdani in primaries for U.S. House seats.

Mamdani’s Wins

In New York’s 7th Congressional District, State Assemblywoman Claire Valdez defeated Brooklyn Borough President Antonio Reynoso after campaigning on her staunch opposition to Israel. In NY-10, former city comptroller Brand Lander defeated incumbent Congressman Dan Goldman by more than 30 points. Lander, who was also endorsed by Sens. Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren, has said the U.S. needs to “reset” its relationship with Israel.

But perhaps the most extreme candidate of the trio is Darializa Avila Chevalier. She bested Rep. Adriano Espaillat, a five-term incumbent who chairs the Congressional Hispanic Caucus, in the Democrat primary for New York’s 13th Congressional District. If elected in November as expected in her deep-blue district, Chevalier is predicted to be one of the most far-left candidates in the history of Congress.

A 32-year-old “community organizer” and PhD candidate at the City University of New York, Chevalier is a member of the Democratic Socialists of America (DSA) and a recent convert to Islam. She calls notorious Columbia University protester Mahmoud Khalil a friend, and her campaign website says she “provides legal aid to victims of police brutality” for the public defender’s office in Harlem.

While she has tried to scrub her social media history, The New Post and CNN are among the outlets that dug up some of her now-deleted posts. In June of 2020, Chevalier responded to a tweet about what it means to abolish the police, writing, “It means ending police full stop. Period. No more police at all ever. It’s very harmful to the work Black abolitionists have been doing for decades to dilute this movement. If you’re not fully on board yet it’s fine to just say that.”

On December 23, 2019, she posted: “I forgot to get napkins so I just wiped my hand on the American flag behind me.” And in June 2021 when then-Vice President Kamala Harris encouraged migrants from Central America to stop making the dangerous trek to the U.S., Chevalier wrote, “I have no nuance to add. Fuck Kamala Harris.”

The Rise of the Radical Wing

Given the electorate in these three districts, the Mamdani-backed leftists are almost certain to cruise to victory in November. On Wednesday’s edition of The Megyn Kelly Show, Megyn said it is interesting to see how the socialist mayor’s influence has already spread.

“When Mamdani got elected, I know tons of Republicans who are actually operatives within the party who were saying they couldn’t wait to make him the face of the Democrat Party. They thought that would be very good for Republicans,” she shared. “But it depends on where you are because in New York… he is becoming extremely strong and formidable as a kingmaker within the Democrat Party. New York is not considered extreme by most Democrats. It is how they see their own party, how they see the world, and, generally, where they would like to take their own party. The far left is ascendant within Team Blue.”

Mark Halperin, host of MK Media’s Next Up, said that while Tuesday’s results are “easy to overstate,” they are even “easier to understate” because the trend goes beyond New York City. 

“It’s Maine with Graham Platner; it’s probably going to be Michigan with Dr. [Abdul] El-Sayed; and the energy and power in the Democratic Party is with this wing. It’s Israel, it’s anti-establishment, it’s anti-ICE, it’s pro-radicalism, and Democrats have ignored this for 10 years… since Bernie Sanders had the nomination stolen from him by the establishment in 2016,” he explained.

And now the chickens are coming home to roost. “The party pretended, as best they could, that they weren’t being dominated by the energy and power of the radical wing of the party, the progressive wing,” Halperin said. “They speak for tens of millions. It’s not like they don’t have followers, but I don’t think they’re a majority of the party. But they are the loudest and angriest on the national town square.”

Will Dems Push Back?

How the Dem establishment handles the rise in NYC and beyond is anyone’s guess. “It is going to be fascinating in the context of the midterm and then the presidential [election] to see if the wing of the party that says ‘we don’t want to be a socialist party,’ ‘we don’t want a hostile takeover of the Democratic Party by the Socialist Party,’ ‘we’re gonna have to stand up to that wing of the party’… does it,” Halperin said. 

“[Senate Minority Leader] Chuck Schumer and [House Minority Leader] Hakeem Jeffries have known for a decade what’s happening, and they do not have the nerve and the courage and the skill to stand up to that wing of the party,” Halperin concluded. “We saw, yesterday, a specific New York City manifestation of it, but it is happening everywhere within the party and has been for a decade.”

You can check out Megyn’s full interview with Halperin by tuning in to episode 1,346 on YouTube, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you like to listen. And don’t forget that you can catch The Megyn Kelly Show live on SiriusXM’s The Megyn Kelly Channel (channel 111) weekdays from 12pm to 2pm ET.