Darializa Avila Chevalier says she regrets controversial social media posts
Fresh off her victory in New York’s 13th Congressional District Democratic primary, Darializa Avila Chevalier told MS NOW’s Ali Velshi that she “regrets” past controversial social media posts, including comments about former President Joe Biden and former Vice President Kamala Harris, admitting that the controversy caused “a lot of division” during her campaign to unseat incumbent New York Rep. Adriano Espaillat.
Between 2018 and 2022, the democratic socialist made a series of now-deleted posts on X, including posts promoting conspiracy theories about the origins of Covid-19, using expletives to refer to Harris and calling Biden a “rapist.”
During an interview on “The 11th Hour” on Wednesday, Chevalier said there were “a lot of misunderstandings” about the posts and why they were later deleted.
“I deleted my account many years back because I was focused on returning to organizing and my studies,” she told Velshi.
“All that to say, I do regret my tweets, and that’s something that I think has brought a lot of division,” Chevalier continued. “And that’s something I regret, because as an organizer, my goal is always to unify our community and deliver for our community.”
Chevalier, who apologized directly to Harris during a debate earlier this month, said her posts about the former vice president came from a feeling of political “disempowerment” that she believes many Americans share.
“I think so many folks in our country feel that they don’t have representation that is fighting for them,” she said. “That was part of why I decided to run, because I felt that abandonment from establishment politics that looks at my community as though it is merely statistics and not people who are worth fighting for.”
While she apologized for her posts, Chevalier also questioned what she described as a double standard of accountability for those with political power and those without it.
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Allison Detzel is an editor/producer for MS NOW. She was previously a segment producer for “AYMAN” and “The Mehdi Hasan Show.”
