White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt wasted no time seizing on newly unearthed text messages from Darializa Avila Chevalier, the democratic socialist who just won her New York City House primary. The messages, uncovered by CNN's Andrew Kaczynski, show Chevalier making sympathetic references to communist icons like Vladimir Lenin and Joseph Stalin—leaders whose policies led to the deaths of millions. She also retweeted favorable comments about Ho Chi Minh, Fidel Castro, and Che Guevara, and expressed general sympathy for the Bolsheviks, the revolutionary party that executed the Russian imperial family.
Leavitt framed the election as a stark choice between "communism and common sense," a line that Republicans are expected to hammer in the coming months. The GOP is already tweaking its message to highlight the radicalism of candidates like Chevalier, betting that voters will recoil from open admiration of authoritarian regimes.
Chevalier's posts date from 2020 to 2022—hardly ancient history. She hasn't disavowed them, and there's no evidence she's changed her views. In one post, she lamented that people won't accept socialism because they prefer having choices—like which soup to buy. The implication was clear: individual liberty and market variety are obstacles to the collectivist utopia she envisions.
But the data from her primary win tells a revealing story. Chevalier's opponent actually performed better among Black, Hispanic, and low-income voters. Her support came overwhelmingly from wealthy white voters—the demographic most insulated from the consequences of the policies she champions. Critics argue this is the real constituency for communism: people who spent too long in graduate school and too little time in the real world. Working-class voters, who remember the empty shelves and long lines of socialist experiments, are not buying what she's selling.
Chevalier is not an isolated case. In Colorado, would-be congressional candidate Melat Kiros is following a similar playbook, asserting that 9/11 was inevitable because of American hubris. The pattern is clear: a wave of progressive candidates who openly sympathize with America's adversaries and reject the basic tenets of liberal democracy. Chevalier herself has refused to engage with the communist label, but her record speaks volumes.
Former President Donald Trump has also weighed in, blasting "communists" after left-wing candidates won New York primaries. The Republican strategy is to tie every Democratic candidate to the most extreme voices in their coalition—and Chevalier makes that case easy. Her support for Hamas terrorists, as noted in other reports, only deepens the concern.
Robby Soave, co-host of The Hill's "Rising" and a senior editor at Reason Magazine, summed it up bluntly: Chevalier is "so obviously pathologically unfit for office" that her election is a stain on the democratic system. He noted that Democrats who literally support communism are trying to get elected to Congress, and voters should take that threat seriously.
The GOP is betting that voters will side with common sense. Whether that bet pays off will depend on whether the rest of the country sees Chevalier as a harbinger or an outlier. But one thing is certain: the 2024 elections will be fought, in part, over whether America wants to embrace the failed ideologies of the 20th century—or move forward with freedom and markets.
