REVERSIONS: One nominee has some horrible tweets!

THURSDAY, JULY 2, 2026

The other two nominees don't: On Monday, it only got worse.

No, dear reader! Mayor Mamdani's three nominees aren't all exactly the same. For example, at least as far as we know at this time, only one of the three has generated an awkward situation like this:   

Mamdani-Backed Chevalier Praised North Korea’s Kim in Unearthed Communist-Friendly Tweets  

Deleted tweets from Darializa Avila Chevalier (D)—one of the three [sic] Democratic Socialist candidates who won their Democratic congressional primary in New York City last week—showed the congressional hopeful praising communists like North Korean founder Kim Il Sung and lamenting that books by Joseph Stalin weren’t available.

The tweets were unearthed by CNN’s K-File on Monday. Journalist Andrew Kaczynski reported Chevalier praised Karl Marx as an “essential must-read,” complained public libraries didn’t have enough books by Vladimir Lenin and other Marxist leaders, and was upset a bookstore’s “banned books” display did not include The Complete Works of J. V. Stalin. 

She also showed affection for several brutal communist leaders.

[...] 

The latest batch of unearthed tweets comes after previous deleted posts showed Chevalier describing the U.S. flag as a napkin. She also questioned interracial dating and called for abolishing borders and prisons.  

For starters, let it be said that Mediaite's Sean James opened with an apparent misstatement. In fact, only two of the three nominees are members of Democratic Socialists of America (DSA). 

The third nominee--former New York City comptroller Brad Lander--joined DSA as a University of Chicago student, way back in 1991. According to the leading authority on Lander's career, "he split with and left the Democratic Socialists of America in 2023 following the October 7 [Hamas] attacks."   

At present, two of the three are DSA; one of the three is not. But Avila Valdez is generating headlines which seem to belong to her alone--except on venues like The Five, where imitation journalists loudly pretend that behaviors engaged in by one of the three have of course been engaged in by all.   

As in The Sixth Sense, so too here--we Americans have a hard time seeing that we've already become a failed state! That said, are the other claims actually true--the other claims summarized by James? 

We aren't huge fans of Kacynski's overall work for CNN, but his new starts off like this: 

Deleted tweets on Darializa Avila Chevalier’s account had favorable references to communist leaders and Marxism

Darializa Avila Chevalier, the Democratic congressional nominee endorsed by New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani, who ousted longtime Rep. Adriano Espaillat in Tuesday’s primary, maintained a since-deleted Twitter account with repeated sympathetic references to communism, Marxist ideology and Soviet figures, including Vladimir Lenin.

Avila Chevalier, a sociology PhD student whose victory sent shockwaves throughout the Democratic establishment, has been under fire for a since-deleted Twitter account, previously reported by CNN, that included phrases such as “seize the means of production,” along with calls to abolish police, prisons and borders. Other controversial tweets include one that said Black and Arab men are both “Fetishizing ugly colonizer women” and another that described wiping her dirty hands on the American flag in lieu of a napkin.

As an undergraduate, Avila Chevalier attended Columbia University, where she organized with Students for Justice in Palestine, and after graduation became involved in pro-Palestinian campus protests over Israel’s war in Gaza. She also attended a controversial October 8, 2023, pro-Palestinian rally in Times Square—one day after Hamas’ attack on Israel—that featured speeches and rhetoric praising the attack.   

There are some slippery accusation swimming around in that prose. We often get the impression, watching Kacynski's interviews, that his thumbs may perhaps be placed on some scales--sometimes in reports criticizing Blue targets, sometimes in alleged exposes of key Red figures.   

On the other hand, has Avila Chevalier issued "calls to abolish police, prisons and borders?" Does she issue such calls today? For the New York Times account of these awkward matters, see yesterday's report. 

(A brief aside: Avila Chevalier's past complaints about "ugly colonizer women” suggest that she might be best suited for a regular spot on the Gutfeld! show, whose host routinely attacks women with whom he disagrees for being too fat, for being too ugly, and for being insufficiently sexually attractive to satisfy his grisly demands.)

Of the three congressional candidates endorsed by Mayor Mamdani, no one has generated awkward copy in the way Avila Chevalier has done. By possible way of contrast, consider what happened when the third nominee, Assemblywoman Claire Valdez, was interviewed by CNN's Erin Burnett on Wednesday, June 24.

Assemblywoman Valdez, age 36 though perhaps looking younger, had won nomination the previous day. The interview started like this:  

BURNETT (6/24/26): Out front now, State Assemblywoman Claire Valdez, and this is her first national interview since her win. And obviously, it's a win that has sent shockwaves through the Democratic Party, through the Republican Party, you name it.

Assemblywoman, you know, what do you -- what do you think? Now, you've had not even 24 hours here. What do you think your victory means?

VALDEZ: I think it means that the movement that elected Zohran Mamdani last year continues, and that the movement that has been fighting for working-class New Yorkers for years before his election continues. We have a lot to win, and when we go to working people, when we say, you know, "This is our platform. We want to fight for you, we want to fight to abolish ICE and win Medicare for All, to make your lives more dignified and affordable, to empower workers," that resonates with people and we win. 

And so, I'm very proud of the campaign.   

That's what the candidate said. In Burnett's next question, the C-bombs were cited. She asked about a reversion:  

BURNETT: [The president is] seizing, as are other Republicans, on your victory and other victories by Democratic Socialists here in New York as a negative. Let me just play some of what they've said.

PRESIDENT TRUMP (video): Well, they're going radical left. They're going really, you know, you talk about the Democrat socialists, you took really -- it's really Communist.

SPEAKER JOHNSON (video): These are the times that Reagan was warning about. He was warning about Communism overseas. Now it is on our own shores.

REP. SCALISE (video): Call it the Bolshevik Revolution of 2026, but the Mamdani takeover of the Democrat Party is official now.

BURNETT: Okay, now, I'm just going through here, and, you know, Trump using the word "Communist." Mike Johnson using the word "Communism." Is that a badge of honor to hear them talk like that?

VALDEZ: You know, I'm a proud Democratic Socialist. And what that means for me is that my union taught me that when we organize together, we can take on bad bosses, we can win good wages, we can win dignified working conditions. And it's funny that they would invoke Reagan, who famously decimated the labor movement, attacked-- after PATCO, really set the tone for what the federal government has done to the labor movement over the last decades.

My goal in running for office is always, "How do we get as many people as possible into unions? How do we pass the PRO Act? How do we stand on the side of working people so that they have the power to fight for themselves and their coworkers and their neighbors?" And that's the movement that I come out of, and I'm very proud to be a part of that.   

Communism, the Communists, and of course the Commies and Bolsheviks! People like President Trump had already swung into action--but is it actually true? Is Assemblywoman Valdez a Communist? 

 Is Assemblywoman Valdez a Communist? Possibly seeking to avoid participation in a reversion, Burnett never asked!  

Along the way, as the interview proceeded, CNN listed the policies Valdez supports. The list of policies appeared on the screen as the interview proceeded.  To watch the full session, click here.

Were we supposed to be shocked by the policies Valdez supports? Tomorrow, we'll show you what those policies were--and we'll show you how they're polling.   

All in all, one nominee has left a trail of awkward, embarrassing, exploitable tweets. As far as we know, the other two nominees haven't. 

On Fox, they're screaming about the Commies.  We regard that as a striking reversion, but there are quite likely others to choose from.

Tomorrow: Chait spots a different reversion