Jon Levine writes for the Washington Free Beacon about the reaction to recent election results in the nation’s largest city.
Democrats in New York City and beyond remain wary and far from sold on a trio of far-left candidates who swept city primaries last week, two of whom knocked out establishment Democratic incumbents.
The New York State Democratic Party chair distanced himself from the insurgents—specifically from perhaps the most radical of the troika, Darializa Avila Chevalier—in comments to the Washington Free Beacon. And Sen. John Fetterman (D., Pa.) told the Free Beacon that nominee Claire Valdez “will perfectly fit with the pro-Hamas caucus.”
Jay Jacobs, the chair of the New York State Democratic Party, said he had not called any of the triumphant insurgents nearly a week after the primary earthquake, telling the Free Beacon, “I’ve been very busy on personal issues this week.”
When pressed on whether he would be endorsing Chevalier, a virulently anti-Israel socialist City University of New York Ph.D. student who has criticized interracial relationships and bragged about using the American flag as a washrag, Jacobs demurred.
“What I’m going to say to you is that I’m willing to work with her, okay, and whether I endorse her or not, we haven’t had that conversation and frankly she hasn’t asked for my endorsement,” Jacobs said.
Jacobs took pains to insist that Chevalier was not representative of the whole Democratic Party.
“To use a broad brush and say that the Democratic Party has moved far to the left because of the results in a couple of very progressive districts, which are distinguished from other competitive districts, I think this is inaccurate,” he said. “What I would say is that in those districts we tend to have, as in all primaries, a lower turnout. It favors activists, the activists tend to be more progressive.”
The chair said he thought Chevalier’s past posts on social media were “reprehensible.”
“Apparently, she does too, because she’s removed them,” he added.
