Congress
The Dems already had AOC. Now they have DAC.
NEW YORK — After thrashing incumbent Rep. Adriano Espaillat in Tuesday’s Democratic primary, Darializa Avila Chevalier is poised to become Republicans’ next priority punching bag.
Also known as DAC, Avila Chevalier has said she’s skeptical of deportation, borders and prisons, tweeted about using the American flag as a napkin, and expressed sympathy for Russia during its invasion of Ukraine. Those public remarks, and many more, already have GOP politicians and operatives in full-on attack mode. They have also left some Democrats worried that Republicans have found a potent new foil for the midterms.
The path she’s taking bears an uncanny resemblance to another democratic socialist firebrand who’s moderated her rhetoric and positions substantially since ascending to Congress eight years ago.
Like DAC, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez unseated another long-term incumbent to get to the House — and also instantly became a boogeyman for the right.
But as Ocasio-Cortez continues to moderate with an eye toward the mainstream, Avila Chevalier is storming onto the national political scene with a similar anti-establishment bent — and a very different dogma. And Republicans are trying to make her and her future democratic socialist colleagues a tool in their arsenal to defend the House this year.
“This is a very real problem in which the Democratic Party has been taken over by socialists,” said Republican Rep. Mike Lawler, who represents a suburban New York House seat that’s one of the most vulnerable in the country. “This is not something they’re going to be able to just run and hide from.”
Avila Chevalier, a doctoral student in sociology, helped organize the 2024 pro-Palestinian encampment at Columbia University that sent the campus into chaos and provided a national platform for the left’s discontent over Israel’s military campaign in Gaza.
On the trail, Avila Chevalier said her old tweets don’t represent her current views and that she’s focused on lowering the cost of living in her district, shifting the focus to “babies, not bombs.”
Her past comments, though, have made some in the Democratic Party uneasy, despite her apologies and assertions she’s changed (she also affirmed during the campaign that she still believes all deportations are wrong, including of undocumented immigrants convicted of serious crimes like murder and rape). And while there are parallels to Ocasio-Cortez in terms of their shared rise to prominence, many view the newcomer as a few steps farther left than the four-term incumbent, who’s frequently floated as a contender for senator and president.
Liam Kerr, co-founder of centrist Democratic group WelcomePAC, told Blue Light News that Ocasio-Cortez and Avila Chevalier are both products of a broader wave of insurgent Democrats that has risen since the election of President Donald Trump.
“If AOC was this Tea Party’s Ted Cruz, yes, DAC is this Tea Party’s MTG,” he said, referring to former Georgia Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene. “It’s less substance and more about a sense that this person is unhinged and indefensible.”
Ocasio-Cortez’s team declined to comment for this article. In a social media post, Ocasio-Cortez congratulated the congressional primary winners, writing that she looks “forward to working together as a delegation as we fight for working families across New York.”
In a statement, Avila Chevalier’s campaign manager Ilona Duverge said: “We didn’t just run a campaign for better leadership in this district. We reminded people what the Democratic Party could be. After 2024, the lesson is simple: listen to your base. Working people don’t want scapegoats. They want a party that actually fights for them.”
In the waning days of the campaign, City & State dubbed Avila Chevalier “like AOC, but to the left.” When asked in a recent interview what her reaction was when she saw that, she downplayed the comparison.
“I think my reaction has been the same to all the comparisons I have gotten to anyone in political office right now,” she said. “Early on it was like, ‘Oh, are you going to be the next Zohran Mamdani?’ And I was like, ‘I’m going to be the Darializa Avila Chevalier.’ That is who I have always been. And that’s who I will be.”
Beyond Avila Chevalier, at least eight state legislative candidates backed by either the Democratic Socialists of America or New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani won in New York on Tuesday night.
Aber Kawas, a Queens community organizer who won one of those seats, is now facing renewed scrutiny for saying the long-term effects of capitalism, racism and white supremacy and Islamophobia resulted in the 9/11 attacks.
In another House Democratic primary in the city — for retiring Rep. Nydia Velázquez’s seat — Mamdani’s longtime DSA ally, Assemblymember Claire Valdez, won in a blowout against Velázquez’s handpicked successor, Brooklyn Borough President Antonio Reynoso. Reynoso is the former co-chair of the city Council’s progressive caucus, but he never joined the city’s DSA chapter, the political home of Valdez and Mamdani.
“Democrats have a Bolshevik revolution going on in their primaries,” Rep. Richard Hudson, the chair of the House Republicans’ campaign arm, told fellow Republicans in a closed-door House GOP meeting Wednesday, according to three people in the room, granted anonymity to discuss the event.
House Speaker Mike Johnson also said the “radical” wins Tuesday night should spur GOP lawmakers to dig in their heels and fundraise.
The ascent of Avila Chevalier and her socialist colleagues also planted the seeds for more Democratic establishment displacement. The co-leader of the city’s DSA chapter, for instance, expressed regret for not supporting a primary of House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries.
When asked by a reporter Wednesday if he’s worried about a primary challenge in 2028 from a Mamdani-endorsed candidate, Jeffries replied: “When you ask me a serious question, I’ll give you a serious answer.”
The left’s rise also means the once-extreme Ocasio-Cortez is now on the ideological periphery of a new insurgent wave as she appears to position herself for higher office.
Ocasio-Cortez did not endorse in either Valdez or Avila Chevalier’s races. Speaking to reporters at the Capitol on Wednesday, she said her focus was on the 14 down-ballot candidates she did support: “I think I’m going to take a beat and really enjoy their success, and we’ll see what happens from there.”
Mamdani, the DSA and the left-leaning group Justice Democrats took on major roles to boost Avila Chevalier and Valdez. Mamdani’s move against Espaillat, as well as Velázquez’s successor of choice, upset Democratic power brokers.
Asked by Blue Light News on Tuesday if he believes rank-and-file DSA members are angry with Ocasio-Cortez for not endorsing in those two congressional primaries, Mamdani replied, “I think that AOC is somebody that has inspired so many across our city and our country in the fight for working people, and I think she continues to do so, and I think we’ll see that in the results.”
The mayor also expressed doubt that Avila Chevalier will morph into an effective boogeyman for Republicans in swing districts.
“We’ve heard from Republicans time and again that they are going to try and make these candidates the face of the Democratic Party,” Mamdani said Wednesday morning. “To them, I say that we are ready for that because for far too long we’ve been told that it’s not possible to fight for working people and win. These candidates have shown that they can. Let the Republicans talk about that more.”
A political consultant close to senior congressional Democrats agreed that such attacks won’t work in the current economic climate.
“In normal times, we should be concerned about attacks like that. In normal times, that probably would work,” said the consultant, who was granted anonymity to discuss internal deliberations. “But when the economy is this bad, it’s not going to work … [The GOP’s] best bet is to try to distract and focus on a random local candidate like Darializa, but the reality is that there’s a litany of horrific things that Republicans have done under this president and that’s what voters are going to care about.”
Andrew Bard Epstein, a top adviser to both Valdez and Mamdani, felt the same way — and then took a shot at Lawler, who faces a challenge in November from Army veteran Cait Conley.
“I don’t live in the 17th District, but I would think voters there care about costs of living and stopping chaos in the world,” Epstein said, referring to Lawler’s district. “Mike Lawler has just cosigned a disastrous war with Iran, which has raised prices and destabilized the world and has left both Iranian civilians and U.S. service members dead. They are the extremists.”
Still, some moderate Democrats are concerned. Matt Bennett, co-founder of centrist group Third Way, said he’s worried Avila Chevalier will become a “lightning rod” in the way Republicans like Greene and Colorado Rep. Lauren Boebert did.
“She can live all day on cable news if she feels like it, and will have a huge social media following, and everything she does will be amplified by Republicans,” he said. “There’s a real risk of her becoming a national figure, even though she will have no impact whatsoever on actual legislating.”
Meredith Lee Hill and Ali Bianco contributed to this report.
A GOP-aligned super PAC has more-than tripled its investment in the Ohio Senate race over the last week as it seeks to boost a socialist candidate — an apparent attempt to sink former Democratic Sen. Sherrod Brown’s chances.
Enough Promises Ohio, which was created last month, has spent a combined $1.58 million to promote Greg Levy and oppose Brown, according to recent filings from the Federal Election Commission. Levy, a candidate with the Party for Socialism and Liberation, is also on the ballot in the tight race for Senate between Brown and Ohio GOP Sen. Jon Husted. He’s running a longshot bid, currently polling at 5 percent, but could siphon away more progressive voters from Brown.
It wouldn’t be the first time this cycle that operatives for a major political party attempted to raise a third-party candidate’s profile to meddle with the outcome. Recent public polling shows a dead heat between Brown and Husted in the race.
The super PAC spent a total of $828,359 on mailers supporting Levy or opposing Brown. Spectrum News, The Washington Post and Axios previously reported Enough Promises Ohio spent $400,000 on such mailers, but the expenditure has since grown.
The group also poured an additional $753,000 into ads supporting Levy and opposing Brown over the weekend, including one video ad on Google that knocks Brown as someone who “sold us out” and boosts “real progressive Greg Levy.”
The campaign finance filings show Enough Promises Ohio used a printing company linked to a Republican political firm, Whistletop Strategies. Whistletop has worked with an affiliate of President Donald Trump’s MAGA Inc. super PAC and lists as its “director” Big Dog Strategies, which helped run Republican Sen. Bernie Moreno’s 2024 election campaign and is a consultant for the Ohio GOP.
Enough Promises Ohio did not respond to a request for comment. Neither did Big Dog Strategies.
Amy Natoce, a spokesperson for the Husted campaign, told Blue Light News, “our campaign had no involvement with the group you are referencing. Therefore, we have no comment.”
Levy himself has distanced himself from the PAC, calling its boosting of him an “attempted deception of voters” that’s “a form of digital blackface.” Levy is Black. His spokesperson, Charlie Koenigsmark, also told Blue Light News he and the campaign “completely condemn this attempt to manipulate voters.”
Brown did not respond to a request for comment.
Artificial intelligence is challenging some lawmakers’ confidence that they have the capacity to regulate it.
The slow pace of Congress and a challenging political environment are already working against lawmakers under pressure to address AI threats. There’s also a significant gap in tech policy expertise.
“We need to dramatically increase the base knowledge of Congress if we’re going to legislate meaningfully,” Rep. Sam Liccardo said in a recent interview.
One big concern is at the staffing level: getting people with a deep understanding of the technology around rank-and-file members. Aides who specialize in tech policy often get lured to private companies with huge salaries that can be hard to resist.
Some lawmakers, like Rep. Mark Takano, are advocating for an in-house hub — something like the long-defunct Office of Technology Assessment, which helped Congress understand emerging technology and its social and policy implications from 1972 until it was scrapped in 1995. A Takano aide said he’ll introduce a bipartisan bill to restore such an office in the coming weeks.
Members have also been leaning on fellows from TechCongress — a nonprofit founded by former congressional aide Travis Moore that places technology experts in member and committee offices.
Moore said in an interview that there are plenty of people who want to work on Capitol Hill, but it’s a matter of “Congress’s will and capacity to absorb that talent.”
Not everybody buys into the theory that staffing will solve the problem. Some conservatives, in particular, have seized on the lack of member expertise to argue for a hands-off regulatory approach.
“We don’t understand it well enough,” Sen. Cynthia Lummis, who has repeatedly brought in technology experts through the TechCongress fellowship, told reporters this month. “We don’t have the expertise to do it.”
“Do you really trust the members of Congress, who barely understand AI, to write the regulations around something?” added Rep. Eric Burlison in an interview last month.
There are a few members who consider themselves fluent in AI policy, including several who have joined working groups on it. They’ve taken educating their colleagues into their own hands but have not always seen great enthusiasm.
Liccardo, for example, recounted how he has brought in experts to brief lawmakers — including huge AI industry figures like Sam Altman of OpenAI and Dario Amodei of Anthropic— only to struggle to convince members to attend.
“We have had challenges in the past trying to get folks’ attention to the issues,” he said.
What else we’re watching:
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— PILOT BILLS GET COMEDIAN’S HELP — Lawmakers are targeting year-end enactment of a pair of bipartisan bills aimed at helping pilots deal with mental health issues and hazy medication regulations, thanks in part to a comedian with an HBO show. Lawmakers and others credit Nathan Fielder, star of the docu-comedy “The Rehearsal” for raising awareness on the stresses pilots face in the hit show last year. They say Fielder wasn’t actively involved in lobbying despite pleas from some for help. “Frankly, I’m glad he elevated the story,” Rep. Sean Casten, one of the lawmakers leading the mental health legislation, told Safa. After passing the Senate late last month, the two bills are awaiting House action.
Katherine Tully-McManus, Jalen Beckford and Safa Wahidi contributed to this report.
Lawmakers are under pressure to pass legislation to address the threats from advanced artificial intelligence, but many have serious doubts they have the capacity to regulate the technology’s explosive growth.
Few are expecting lawmakers themselves — some of whom still proudly use flip phones — to become AI experts overnight. But while even congressional Luddites acknowledge there is urgency for Capitol Hill to quickly expand its expertise in tech policy to help with legislating, regulating and conducting effective oversight, there’s no consensus yet on how to achieve it.
“We need to dramatically increase the base knowledge of Congress if we’re going to legislate meaningfully,” Rep. Sam Liccardo (D-Calif.) said in a recent interview.
Congress already has a long track record of lagging behind as technological innovations transform the world beyond Washington: It has adopted a largely hands-off approach to regulating the Internet as it integrated into everyday life in the past 40 years, relying instead on existing laws that govern other industries and taking smaller piecemeal bites.
The challenging political environment won’t help speed things along now: Democrats are split over whether the answer is to put guardrails on the AI industry or ban “superintelligence” entirely, while many Republicans — including President Donald Trump — warn that any regulation would stifle innovation and cede ground to China.
Some members consider themselves fluent in AI policy, including several who have joined working groups on AI policy. Reps. Jay Obernolte (R-Calif.) and Don Beyer (D-Va.) have pursued masters degrees in AI and machine learning, in addition to many others who are self-taught.
The “overwhelming number” of lawmakers have some idea of what AI is and what it is capable of, Rep. Valerie Foushee (D-N.C.), co-chair of a House Democratic commission on AI policy, said in a recent interview. But, she added, “None of us can say that we understand where it’s going.”
The larger concern is at the staff level — putting people with real expertise around the rank-and-file members who don’t have the bandwidth or interest in educating themselves on the frontier of the industry. Aides who do specialize in tech policy often get lured to the industry with huge salaries that can be hard to resist.
That’s where Travis Moore, a former congressional staffer, has spent more than a decade trying to help.
In 2015, Moore left his post as legislative director for Rep. Henry Waxman (D-Calif.) and founded TechCongress, a nonprofit that places technology experts in member and committee offices. The hope is that those offices will be convinced to hire those fellows full-time — or at least recognize the need to secure in-house tech policy expertise.
“You should have a technologist at the table to at least mitigate the unknown unknowns,” Moore said, regardless of what members themselves know about technology.
As AI has boomed, so has demand for TechCongress’ fellows: In the last two years, Moore has fielded more than 1,200 applications for about 36 fellowship slots through the program, which does not accept funding from corporations or tech companies.
Of nearly 130 fellows selected through the program since its founding, Moore said 32 were later hired full-time. Two-thirds of all the fellows have pursued careers in public service, either on Capitol Hill or other government roles.
Rep. Lori Trahan (D-Mass.), one of the leaders on AI policy on Capitol Hill, is among the offices that currently employs a TechCongress fellow. The House Judiciary Committee, the House Foreign Affairs Committee and Sen. Brian Schatz (D-Hawaii) also host fellows.
Moore says his initiative has shown there are plenty of people who want to work on Capitol Hill to help inform some of the most pressing issues of the moment — even when more lucrative salaries in the private sector beckon.
“The constraint is not talent supply,” Moore said in an interview. Rather, he said, it’s a matter of “Congress’s will and capacity to absorb that talent.”
Some on Capitol Hill are advocating for an in-house hub — something like the long-defunct Office of Technology Assessment, which helped Congress understand emerging technology and its social and policy implications from 1972 until it was scrapped in 1995.
Rep. Mark Takano (D-Calif.) has long championed efforts to revive the OTA for years and expects to reintroduce his legislation restoring the office in the coming weeks with bipartisan backing, spokesperson Austin Clark said.
Not everybody buys into the theory that staffing will solve the problem. Some conservatives, in particular, have seized on the lack of member expertise to argue for a hands-off approach to regulation.
“We don’t understand it well enough,” Sen. Cynthia Lummis (R-Wyo.), who has repeatedly brought in technology experts through the TechCongress fellowship, told reporters this month. “You can’t address it based on what policymakers know about it on a one-size-fits-all universal basis. … We don’t have the expertise to do it.”
“Do you really trust the members of Congress, who barely understand AI, to write the regulations around something?” added Rep. Eric Burlison (R-Mo.) in an interview last month.
Others don’t see a hopeless cause, but a convenient excuse.
“I understand it’s hard, but lots of things we do here are hard,” Sen. Chris Murphy (D-Conn.) said in an interview, noting that lawmakers have had to bone up quickly on everything from nuclear energy policy to complex weapons systems and advances in health care, like biologic drugs.
“I just think the industry wants us to believe that there’s seven people who understand this, and that’s just not true,” Murphy said, accusing some of his colleagues of “just throwing shit up against the wall to try to figure out how to justify doing nothing.”
A few members on both sides of the aisle have taken educating their colleagues into their own hands. Obernotle says he helped tutor more than two dozen House members through the bipartisan AI working group he chaired in the previous Congress.
Liccardo, who represents parts of Silicon Valley, recounted how he has brought in experts to brief lawmakers — including huge AI industry figures like Sam Altman of OpenAI, Dario Amodei of Anthropic and Jensen Huang of Nvidia — only to struggle to convince members to attend.
“We have had challenges in the past trying to get folks’ attention to the issues,” he said. “We have a lot of work to do, I’ll just say, to get everybody up to speed.”
Riley Rogerson, Jordain Carney and Mia McCarthy contributed to this report.
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