Heard Around Town
Why Espaillat challenger Chevalier ranked Lander fifth for mayor
The progressive congressional candidates disagreed on Mahmoud Khalil’s organizing and on retail theft.
While Brad Lander stood up for Mahmoud Khalil's right to protest, he said he disagreed with the content. Ryan Murphy/Getty Images
When democratic socialist congressional candidate Darializa Avila Chevalier was voting for mayor, she ranked Brad Lander fifth, at the bottom of her ballot, out of spite.
“I moved him to the bottom because of how he threw my friend Mahmoud (Khalil) under the bus and supported a policy of further NYPD surveillance,” Chevalier wrote on her NYC-DSA endorsement questionnaire obtained by City & State. Despite earning legal residency in the U.S., Khalil was arrested and the Trump administration tried to deport him for leading anti-Israel protests at Columbia University.
Chevalier is taking on Rep. Adriano Espaillat while Lander’s running against Rep. Dan Goldman, and Chevalier’s answer highlights lingering disagreements on pro-Palestinian activism in New York, even among progressive Democratic challengers.
Chevalier explained that she didn’t like how Lander supported Khalil with “qualifications” – “I disagree strongly with things that were said in the protests he reportedly led,” Lander said in an otherwise positive 2025 X post. She also criticized his mayoral campaign proposal to make it easier for stores to share surveillance footage with the police, calling it a “tool to surveil black, Brown and immigrant New Yorkers who frequent bodegas.”
(On the questionnaire she said she ranked Zohran Mamdani first, then Michael Blake as “the only other candidate who supported Palestine,” followed by Adrienne Adams, Zellnor Myrie and Lander.)
But Chevalier stands with Lander now, in his 10th Congressional District primary. “Brad and I are different people with different perspectives, and as such, I have disagreed with him in the past on certain issues,” she said in a statement. “However, if I lived in NY-10, I would vote for him and support his campaign for Congress, because New Yorkers everywhere deserve a Representative who isn’t bought by AIPAC."
Lander campaign spokesperson Lauren Hitt pointed to Lander’s long list of progressive endorsers and said she didn’t think he threw Khalil under the bus, noting Lander publicly agitated for his release and even spoke on a national organizing call with Khalil in September, hosted by leftist Jewish group IfNotNow.
Mamdani, who has endorsed Lander, hosted Khalil at Gracie Mansion Sunday, a move that earned him some criticism from his right.