Mayor Zohran Mamdani’s inner circle is boiling over. Just days after taking the reins at City Hall, the new administration is facing a messy public spat with one of its own. Darializa Avila Chevalier, a favored ally and Democratic nominee for Congress, is openly calling for Police Commissioner Jessica Tisch to quit. While Chevalier insists everything is fine, sources inside City Hall tell a very different story.
The tension erupted last Friday following a violent incident in the Bronx where ICE agents shot a suspected gang member. Chevalier immediately took to social media to blast the NYPD and Commissioner Tisch. She accused the department of violating sanctuary city laws and demanded Tisch’s resignation. Now, the mayor’s team says this move is a direct attack on their authority.
City Hall Is Pissed
The reaction from the mayor’s office was swift and angry. According to reporting from the New York Post, insiders are “pissed about what she did on social media and her public rhetoric on NYPD.” One source with knowledge of the situation described the mood at City Hall bluntly: “City Hall was like, ‘what the f–k are you doing!'”
Another source told the Post that colleagues view Chevalier’s actions as a betrayal. They claim this was “a direct undermining of Mamdani” just as the administration is trying to establish its footing. The timing is particularly bad since Chevalier won her congressional nomination with Mamdani’s endorsement and is expected to represent parts of Upper Manhattan and the Bronx.
The Clash Over Tisch
At the heart of the fight is Commissioner Jessica Tisch. Mamdani stuck by her on Monday, defending her record of uprooting corruption. “The reason that I made the decision to have Jessica Tisch as the police commissioner was because of her record of uprooting corruption from the upper echelons of the NYPD while lowering crime across our city,” the mayor told reporters.
Chevalier, however, has no such patience. After an incident where she claimed an officer shoved her to the ground while she tried to calm protesters, she doubled down. “They were escalating against protesters,” Avila Chevalier said of the responding officers. She argued that Tisch failed to condemn the actions of ICE or investigate the NYPD’s behavior properly.
“The fact that she, rather than condemn the actions of ICE or acknowledge that there needs to be a serious investigation into NYPD’s behavior, she then proceeded to vilify the victim of the shooting,” Avila Chevalier said. She went further, stating, “The NYPD’s Strategic Response Group must be disbanded as quickly as possible, and Commissioner Tisch must step down.”
A Great Relationship?
Despite the screaming match in public, Chevalier is trying to spin this as a minor disagreement. On Thursday, she appeared on WNYC to dismiss reports of a rift. She told reporter Bridgit Bergen, “I don’t think much of what the New York Post says seriously.” She even claimed that she and the mayor were laughing about the reports.
“When the mayor and I spoke about the article after it came out, we were cracking jokes about the ridiculousness of the article itself,” Chevalier continued.
But the facts on the ground suggest otherwise. While Chevalier says she sees eye-to-eye with the mayor, she also admitted, “I made it very clear that I think it is on Jessica Tisch to step down.” She claims the mayor is already putting funds toward accountability, but the public demand for a commissioner’s head while the mayor defends her creates a confusing message for New Yorkers.
This internal war highlights the fragile nature of the new socialist administration. If allies are publicly tearing down each other’s appointments before the ink is even dry on their contracts, how will they govern the city? New Yorkers deserve a team that speaks with one voice, not a chaotic squabble over who is in charge.
This is opinion and commentary from the RapForMayor team.
