Former Ku Klux Klan grand wizard David Duke recently told a conservative media outlet that he agrees with a Democratic congressional nominee on an unlikely issue: interracial marriage.
Darializa Avila Chevalier, who recently won the Democratic primary in New York’s 13th Congressional District, attracted controversy on the campaign trail for a deleted 2019 social media post where she attacked “Black men” and “Arab men” for “fetishizing ugly colonizer women.”
The sentiment won praise from Duke.
“Well, I think that people have the right to preserve their particular heritage,” the former KKK leader told the Washington Free Beacon in a phone interview. “And if she’s concerned about preserving her heritage if it’s Somali, or whatever she is, she’s certainly got the right to do that.”
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Chevalier identifies as Afro-Latina. She was also part of a cohort of socialist candidates endorsed by New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani who swept New York’s June Democratic primary elections.
Duke served in the Louisiana House of Representatives from 1989 to 1992 after years of involvement in extremist politics. He was grand wizard of the Knights of the Ku Klux Klan from 1974 to 1980, a title used by the organization for its national leader.
Even before Duke went public with his praise for Chevalier, some political observers were making connections between the two.
“Chevalier is our David Duke,” one unnamed Democrat told journalist Mark Halperin in June. “She is poisoning the possibility of a Democratic majority.”
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Former Republican congressman Peter Meijer said Monday on X that “the difference is that the modern Democratic Party would never do to Chevalier what the GOP did to David Duke.”
Duke infamously ran as a Republican in the 1991 Louisiana gubernatorial election after placing second in the state’s nonpartisan jungle primary. Amid national controversy, the GOP refused to endorse Duke, backing Democrat Edwin Edwards instead.
House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries, meanwhile, congratulated Chevalier on her primary victory in a Saturday social media post. New York’s 13th Congressional District is heavily Democratic, making it very likely that Chevalier will be elected to the House of Representatives in November.
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Duke has had kind words for a number of Democrats in recent years, citing their shared distaste for Israel.
“By defiance to (Zionist occupied government) Ilhan Omar is NOW the most important Member of the US Congress!” Duke wrote on his website in 2019 after Rep. Ilhan Omar was accused of implying that Jewish lawmakers have a dual loyalty to Israel.
Duke has called Jews “a blight” who should “go into the ashcan of history.”
The one-time KKK leader also praised Mamdani in his interview with the Free Beacon.
“I think that the new mayor of New York was a step forward,” Duke said, according to the outlet, though he noted he disagrees with him on immigration policy. “His views on Israel are critical, because there’s no more important political issue than the fact that a tiny minority of America … the oligarchs of the Jewish people, that they are controlling our foreign policy.”
The episode highlights a potential political vulnerability for some progressive Democrats, who face mounting scrutiny over allegations of antisemitism within their ranks. Duke’s praise for Chevalier — and his support for other Democrats who have drawn accusations of antisemitism — give critics in both parties a new opening to attack the Democratic Party’s young and ascendant socialist wing.
The Chevalier campaign did not respond to a request for comment when reached by Fox News Digital Thursday.