Mayor Zohran Mamdani’s team is privately furious after the socialist House candidate he endorsed demanded his handpicked NYPD commissioner step down, sources call it direct undermining of the mayor.
City Hall staffers have been openly complaining about Darializa Avila Chevalier’s social media attacks and public rhetoric against NYPD Commissioner Jessica Tisch, according to people familiar with the reaction. One source with knowledge of the talks said the mayor’s circle was angry about the posts and her tone on the police. Another flatly called the episode “a direct undermining of Mamdani.”
The flare-up followed an ICE operation in the Bronx in which agents shot an illegal immigrant described as a suspected gang member as he fled arrest in a car. Chevalier, whom Mamdani endorsed only months earlier during the primaries, responded with a lengthy social media tirade. She accused the department and Tisch of violating the spirit, if not the letter, of New York’s sanctuary city policies.
In the same post she demanded that the NYPD’s Strategic Response Group be disbanded “as quickly as possible” and that Commissioner Tisch “must step down.” The New York Post reported that the NYPD did not assist ICE in the immigration arrest and that the Strategic Response Group did not respond to the related protest.
"Last night, the NYPD and Commissioner Tisch violated the spirit, if not the letter, of our sanctuary city policies and fueled the Trump Administration’s attempt to demonize our communities."
Chevalier added the call for the unit’s elimination and Tisch’s resignation in the same nearly 400-word screed. Sources close to City Hall said the mayor’s aides viewed the rhetoric as more than policy disagreement. “They were pissed about what she did on social media and her public rhetoric on NYPD,” one source said. City Hall’s reaction, according to that account, amounted to: “what the f, k are you doing!”
Mamdani went out on a limb to back Chevalier in New York’s 13th Congressional District primary. She defeated incumbent Democrat Adriano Espaillat in June. Most observers credit the mayor’s backing and campaigning with helping her win. The general election is next month in the heavily Democratic seat, and she is expected to join the House.
That political investment is now colliding with the very left-wing base that helped elect both of them. Chevalier has encouraged anti-ICE protests, sources said. Video from an aggressive Thursday-night demonstration in Marble Hill showed her getting in the face of a calm police supervisor and accusing him of escalating the situation. Her campaign volunteers have been instructed to keep the mayor’s name out of their pitch: “I can’t speak about the mayor, but I can tell you what Darializa is prioritizing,” one person briefed on the guidance described the line.
The pressure is not limited to one candidate. Illapa Sairitupac, a DSA member and state Senate candidate also endorsed by Mamdani, joined the pile-on. He posted a blunt demand that captured the mood on the socialist left.
"Abolish ICE, disband the SRG, fire Tisch."
The New York City DSA chapter, whose leaders are described as close to the mayor, struck a similar note. Its social media statement framed ICE as “terrorists” and put the commissioner on notice.
"Jessica Tisch must get ICE out of New York and end NYPD complicity with these terrorists. If the Commissioner can’t put a stop to these injustices, she must be fired."
National DSA figures have also pushed for Tisch’s ouster. Mamdani, for his part, has stood by the commissioner he appointed even as he is inundated with demands from socialist comrades to dump her and make good on a campaign vow to disband the Strategic Response Group. He has dodged the city’s press corps for days while the fight plays out in public.
New York’s sanctuary rules bar local police from helping federal immigration enforcement in most cases. Chevalier claimed the NYPD and Tisch crossed that line after the Bronx shooting. Reporting on the incident found no such assistance and no SRG response to the protest that followed. The gap between the accusation and the operational facts has not slowed the calls for Tisch’s head inside DSA circles.
City Hall’s worry runs beyond one viral post. Aides are annoyed that Chevalier is stoking anti-ICE protests and disorder that could hand the Trump administration a rationale to put more federal officers on New York streets. One source put the political calculation plainly: she is “throwing her own fireball rhetoric to rally the folks,” but “instigating doesn’t help.”
The same orbit that once celebrated Mamdani’s rise now treats his police commissioner as the problem. That pattern fits a broader record in which the mayor’s progressive commitments keep colliding with governing reality, whether the subject is ICE enforcement and Bronx protests or other flashpoints that expose the distance between activist demands and public safety.
Insiders say Mamdani was talked into the Chevalier endorsement by adviser Morris Katz and is not personally a fan of the candidate. Other House candidates he backed, including Brad Lander and Claire Valdez, did not issue similar demands to fire Tisch. That contrast has only sharpened the sense inside City Hall that Chevalier is operating on her own wavelength.
People familiar with the mayor’s thinking already describe Chevalier as a liability. “She’s a loose cannon,” one insider said. “They are sick of her, and she’s not even started in Congress.” Another noted that City Hall knows where its problems sit, Council Speaker Julie Menin, Republicans, and others, and that Chevalier is now “on the dartboard.”
Her team is preparing a speech, possibly for election night or sooner, that will again call for Tisch to be fired. The timing underscores how little interest the incoming member has in quieting the fight for the sake of the mayor who helped elect her. Mamdani’s own campaign promise to dismantle the Strategic Response Group now sits in tension with his decision to keep Tisch and resist the purge his erstwhile allies demand.
Voters who backed the young mayor on a platform of bold left governance are watching the same coalition fracture over the basic question of whether New York will maintain a police command structure capable of handling disorder. Similar fractures have appeared whenever Mamdani’s circle has tried to square activist ideology with the limits of running a major city, from socialism pitches that expand government reach to cultural fights that leave moderates cold.
The mayor has also drawn criticism for turning solemn moments into ideological statements, a habit that resurfaced when he faced backlash over October 7 remarks and later stood firm on contested Israel language. The police commissioner fight fits the same pattern: a progressive mayor hemmed in by the harder-left forces he elevated.
Even routine city business has carried the same signature. Mamdani’s willingness to entertain sweeping lifestyle bans, including a deal to end horse-drawn carriages, shows an administration comfortable with symbolic progressive wins. Firing a commissioner to satisfy DSA street pressure would be a far more consequential concession, and one his own staff is signaling they do not want forced by an ally’s social media crusade.
Chevalier’s primary victory was supposed to showcase the strength of the Mamdani coalition in deep-blue New York. Instead, the weeks before her likely election have produced open conflict over sanctuary enforcement, federal immigration authority, and who controls the NYPD. The mayor appointed Tisch. His endorsed candidate is trying to drive her out. City Hall’s private verdict is that the move undercuts the mayor himself.
When a mayor’s own team has to warn an incoming member of Congress to stop lighting fires, the coalition’s discipline is already gone.
