Rep. Adriano Espaillat was not supposed to leave Congress this way.
The 71-year-old avatar of Dominican American political power was going to serve another term or two before picking a successor from among his loyal “Squadriano,” a loose-knit group of mostly Dominican American elected officials whose careers he has helped shepherd over the years. The smart money was on either Shaun Abreu or Carmen De La Rosa, both members of the New York City Council.
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Instead, Espaillat was unseated by Darializa Avila Chevalier, a 32-year-old Afro-Dominican political organizer backed by New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani and the Democratic Socialists of America. Avila Chevalier’s upset victory earned her comparisons to Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez – the most famous young Latina democratic socialist to unseat a longtime incumbent in New York – and disrupted the expected orderly succession of either Abreu or De La Rosa.
Espaillat’s defeat has dealt a nearly fatal blow to the Squadriano, but that may not necessarily be a bad thing for its members – since it has freed them from the veteran congressional representative’s grasp and enabled them to move to the left in ways that may reflect their changing districts.
Squabbling Squadriano
The Squadriano has its origins in Espaillat’s 2016 election to Congress, following the retirement of former Rep. Charlie Rangel. Espaillat had previously tried and failed twice to unseat Rangel, who represented a traditionally Black district that included Harlem, and his victory over Rangel’s preferred successor Keith Wright highlighted the growth of Dominican political power in Upper Manhattan.
While serving as the first Dominican American member of Congress, Espaillat kept building his own local political machine by endorsing and supporting a younger generation of mostly Dominican American politicians for local and state offices. By 2022, he had helped elect six of them: Abreu, De La Rosa, their fellow New York City Council Members Oswald Feliz and Pierina Sanchez, and Assembly Members Manny De Los Santos and George Alvarez. Members of the group didn’t necessarily share the same politics, but they shared a commitment to Dominican political power – and to the man who embodied it.
“We had a very real connection to our experiences as Dominicans, our experiences as immigrants or (the) children of immigrants, as Latinos in New York state, and Adriano was very much like a grounding force for that experience, despite differences in ideology,” De La Rosa said.
But there was tension within the Squadriano. Multiple people familiar with the group’s internal dynamics said Sanchez eventually cut ties with Espaillat completely, with one noting the two of them have not spoken in more than a year. In 2025, Espaillat notably did not endorse Sanchez for reelection, and she returned the favor by not endorsing him this year.
The rest of the Squadriano didn’t always see eye to eye with Espaillat, either. During the 2025 Democratic mayoral primary, Espaillat enthusiastically endorsed Gov. Andrew Cuomo. That was hardly surprising. Cuomo was trusted by much of the Democratic political establishment – and Espaillat, in many ways, was the Latino political establishment in Upper Manhattan. He has been described as having a transactional style of politics, and Cuomo was a consummate deal-maker who would be sure to reward his friends once he was in Gracie Mansion. It made sense for Espaillat to get behind the likely next mayor.
But members of the Squadriano – a generation younger than Espaillat – recognized something that their patriarch missed: Cuomo had become politically toxic among many younger Democratic voters.
Alvarez, who hosted the event where Espaillat endorsed Cuomo, and De Los Santos wanted to endorse their Assembly colleague Zohran Mamdani but were blocked by Espaillat, according to a source familiar with their deliberations. In the end, they both ranked Cuomo No. 1 and Mamdani No. 2. De La Rosa ranked New York City Council Speaker Adrienne Adams No. 1 and Mamdani No. 2, while Abreu and Feliz stayed out of the mayoral race completely.
“I didn’t endorse Cuomo, and I disagreed with all of them on the Cuomo endorsement,” De La Rosa said. “It was moments like that where it showed that there was an ideological disconnect between where the district was changing and moving toward, and where (Espaillat) stood in the political conversation.”
Mamdani carried Espaillat’s district by 13 points in the first round of the Democratic primary. Espaillat is a shrewd politician, and he quickly changed horses after Mamdani won the primary, agreeing to endorse the young democratic socialist in exchange for Mamdani promising to back his reelection a year later.
But then Avila Chevalier launched a campaign against Espaillat, zeroing in on one of his greatest political vulnerabilities: his position on Israel and his relationship with the American Israel Public Affairs Committee.
By 2026, the Democratic Party’s base was increasingly critical of Israel and AIPAC had become a dirty word in Democratic primaries – a dramatic shift from just a few years earlier, when Espaillat’s pro-Israel politics were well within the mainstream. The Squadriano dutifully endorsed Espaillat, but even they could sense how much the politics of the issue had changed.
“That came up when I was on the street campaigning (for Espaillat) – you know, the issues of AIPAC, the issues of Israel, Palestine,” De La Rosa said.
The race between Espaillat and Avila Chevalier became something of a proxy war, with AIPAC’s super PAC United Democracy Project transferring money to another super PAC that paid for ads attacking Avila Chevalier, while American Priorities, an anti-AIPAC super PAC, bought ads supporting her. In the end, Avila Chevalier defeated Espaillat by nearly 4 points.
Looking ahead to 2028
Although he won’t be in Congress next year, Espaillat is not riding off into the sunset.
“Adriano understands that building long-term political power isn’t synonymous with holding elected office, which is why as a community leader he nurtured and developed a new generation of leaders who will continue to shape our neighborhoods and New York City for decades to come,” a spokesperson for Espaillat told City & State in a statement. “We are certain that his neighbors will want to continue to hear about his positions – no matter where he serves.”
Espaillat remains a district leader, and multiple sources told City & State they believe he wants to back a candidate against Avila Chevalier in 2028. But that doesn’t necessarily mean the Squadriano will go along with his plans.
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“If the gossip I heard is true that Adriano is going to want to continue to stay involved, he will probably try to do what he was doing,” said Eli Valentin, an assistant dean at Virginia Union University’s Graduate Center in Harlem and expert on Latino politics in New York City. “I just do not think that it will have the same effect because he’s no longer the congressional rep.”
Barring a major scandal, Avila Chevalier could be difficult to defeat in two years. She’ll likely have all the advantages that she had in 2026 – the backing of the mayor and thousands of DSA volunteers – plus the advantages of incumbency and probable endorsements from popular colleagues like Ocasio-Cortez.
Abreu, Espaillat’s protégé, is widely seen as a potential challenger to Avila Chevalier. For now, though, he seems more interested in working with her than risking his career on a primary run against her.
“I’m rooting for her,” he told City & State. “She’s representing a district with a lot of needs, and it’s important to the people who live here that she has the support to meet those needs. I look forward to working with her on the issues where we align, like alleviating student loan debt and completing the crosstown subway extension.”
Another potential challenger to Avila Chevalier is De La Rosa, whom sources told City & State has been meeting with elected officials in overlapping districts to discuss a potential 2028 run. In an interview with City & State, De La Rosa praised Avila Chevalier even as she left the door open to running.
“Darializa’s positions as she has described them, and my positions, and how I’ve just been operating as an elected official, don’t seem to be so in conflict with each other that I would say I’m running for Congress against her in 2028,” De La Rosa said. “There’s no reason why she shouldn’t be an amazing congressperson, and it’s on all of us to make sure that she has the tools that she needs in order to accomplish what her vision is,” she said of Avila Chevalier.
“At this time, I do not have any plans of running for Congress in 2028,” she added. “Obviously, I think that it is an important conversation for us to continue to have in the community because all of us that run for office have visions that we want to put forth, and we’re accountable to the voters at the end of the day.”
Of course, Wright has long dreamed of winning the seat back for Black Harlem. And he’s made no secret of the fact that he’d love to see his son, Assembly Member Jordan Wright, ascend to higher office, noting that he’s “authentic,” “homegrown,” “indigenous to the community.” The younger Wright was also the lone candidate in the June primaries to defeat an opponent backed by DSA.
But that doesn’t mean the Wrights are already making 2028 plans. Keith Wright said he’s met Avila Chevalier and was “impressed by her demeanor” and felt “her heart is in the right place.”
“However, as we all know, getting elected and governing are two different things,” he said. “And I think we all have to take a wait-and-see attitude about her.”
Uptown politics have been defined in racial terms for many years, exemplified by the long-standing political rivalry between the Black Wright and Afro-Latino Espaillat. With the representative’s loss, Wright hopes there could be a new paradigm.
“The two communities were very much aligned in some ways over the years. And some kind of ways got a little fractured in the last couple of years,” he said. “I hope that we can come back together.”
Separate ways
When a group like the Squadriano loses its leader, there are two likely possibilities: either someone will step up to replace them, or the group will fall apart. The Squadriano was fraying even before Espaillat’s stunning defeat, and it’s not clear anyone wants to – or even could – fill his shoes.
“There’s no one in that squad right now that has the type of charisma that Adriano has, and perhaps more importantly, there’s no one in that squad that functions politically the way that Adriano did,” Valentin said. “By that, I mean someone that plays the part of a pseudo-county leader, a boss, a godfather or ‘padrino,’ as they would say in Spanish. None of these members – they’ve never played that role, and I think some of them may actually feel uncomfortable playing that role.”
De La Rosa agreed that Espaillat is unlikely to be replaced. “I don’t see it as, like, there’s one person that’s going to be like the new kingmaker of uptown … I don’t think that there’s going to be a passing of the torch ceremony,” she said.
If that happened, where would that leave Dominican American politics? “I think that we’re going to see the same thing with Dominican politics that happened with Puerto Rican politics,” Valentin said.
He compared Espaillat to Herman Badillo, who became the first Puerto Rican elected to Congress in 1970. Badillo was the political champion of the city’s rapidly growing Puerto Rican community, just as Espaillat would be for the Dominican community four decades later, and Badillo helped elect other Puerto Rican politicians to local offices, including Assembly Members Carmen Arroyo and José Rivera. But once Badillo left Congress at the end of 1977, following three failed New York City mayoral campaigns, Puerto Rican politics in the Bronx fractured into multiple local fiefdoms while the broader Puerto Rican electorate was absorbed into either the Bronx county machine or the reform groups fighting that machine.
“There will not be another like Adriano,” Valentin said. “With his defeat, I think the type of politics that Adriano has represented has also been defeated.”
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– with reporting by Jeff Coltin