Former Ku Klux Klan grand wizard David Duke told the Washington Free Beacon he agrees with New York Democratic congressional nominee Darializa Avila Chevalier on the subject of interracial marriage, a development that sharpens the political crisis building around the socialist wing of the Democratic Party in New York and the elected officials who back it.
Duke, who led the Knights of the Ku Klux Klan from 1974 to 1980 and later served in the Louisiana House of Representatives, praised Chevalier's now-deleted 2019 social media post in which she reportedly attacked "Black men" and "Arab men" for "fetishizing ugly colonizer women." The post has since been scrubbed, but its contents have become a flashpoint in the race for New York's 13th Congressional District.
The district is described as heavily Democratic, making Chevalier's election to the House in November very likely. That prospect has Democrats, and at least one prominent former Republican, asking why the party's leadership has done so little to distance itself from her.
In a phone interview with the Washington Free Beacon, Duke did not limit his praise to Chevalier. He also lauded New York City Mayor Zohran Kwame Mamdani, who endorsed Chevalier and a broader cohort of socialist candidates who swept New York's June Democratic primary elections.
Duke told the Free Beacon:
"Well, I think that people have the right to preserve their particular heritage. 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."
Chevalier identifies as Afro-Latina, not Somali. Duke's characterization appears to be his own.
On Mamdani, Duke was equally direct. He called the new mayor "a step forward" and then veered into the kind of language that has defined his career in extremist politics. Duke told the Free Beacon that Mamdani's views on Israel matter because "a tiny minority of America... the oligarchs of the Jewish people" are "controlling our foreign policy."
Duke has a long record of antisemitic statements. He has called Jewish people "a blight" who should "go into the ashcan of history." In 2019, he used his personal website to praise Rep. Ilhan Omar, who was at the time accused of implying that Jewish lawmakers hold dual loyalty to Israel, writing: "By defiance to (Zionist occupied government) Ilhan Omar is NOW the most important Member of the US Congress!"
The Duke praise lands on a Democratic Party already struggling with the political fallout from Mamdani's tenure as mayor. Mamdani has doubled down on attacks against AIPAC even as Jewish leaders have raised alarms about rising antisemitism.
His endorsement of Chevalier and other socialist primary winners has drawn fierce criticism from within the party. One unnamed Democrat told journalist Mark Halperin in June that "Chevalier is our David Duke. She is poisoning the possibility of a Democratic majority."
That comparison, made weeks before Duke himself weighed in, now reads less like hyperbole and more like prophecy. Mamdani has also publicly credited anti-Israel sentiment as a driving force behind his endorsed candidates' primary sweep, a statement that raised eyebrows even among allies.
The mayor's broader record in office has generated its own string of controversies, from using an America 250 celebration to criticize ICE and federal immigration enforcement to policy decisions that have drawn bipartisan pushback.
Against this backdrop, House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries posted a social media message congratulating Chevalier on her primary victory. Fox News Digital reported that Jeffries made the post on Saturday. No verbatim text of his congratulations was provided, and the post drew no public caveat about Chevalier's deleted social media history or Duke's endorsement of her views.
Former Republican congressman Peter Meijer offered a sharper take. Posting on X on Monday, Meijer drew a direct line between Chevalier and Duke's own political history, but aimed his criticism at the Democratic Party's willingness to tolerate what the GOP once refused to accept.
"the difference is that the modern Democratic Party would never do to Chevalier what the GOP did to David Duke."
Meijer's point rests on documented history. When Duke ran as a Republican in the 1991 Louisiana gubernatorial election and placed second in the state's nonpartisan jungle primary, the GOP refused to endorse him. The party backed Democrat Edwin Edwards instead, choosing a political opponent over a candidate who carried the stain of the Klan.
That decision cost the Republican Party a gubernatorial seat. It also drew a clear line. Meijer's argument is that no comparable line exists in today's Democratic Party, at least not one its leaders are willing to enforce against the ascendant socialist wing that Mamdani has championed.
Fox News Digital reached out to the Chevalier campaign for comment on Thursday. The campaign did not respond.
That silence is itself a data point. When a former Klan leader publicly agrees with a major-party congressional nominee on the subject of interracial relationships, the normal expectation, in either party, is a swift, unequivocal rejection. Chevalier has offered none. Her campaign has not addressed the deleted 2019 post, Duke's praise, or the broader questions about her social media history, which Fox News described as including "anti-America posts."
Democratic strategist James Carville has reportedly said the socialist Democrat "shouldn't be in the party" and called her views "a bridge too far," though the details of his remarks were referenced only in a linked headline and not elaborated upon in the Fox News report.
The party's institutional response has been similarly thin. Jeffries congratulated Chevalier. Mamdani endorsed her. Beyond one unnamed Democrat's private complaint to a journalist, the formal apparatus of the Democratic Party has treated Chevalier as a standard nominee in a safe seat, not as a candidate whose public statements attracted the enthusiastic agreement of America's most notorious white supremacist.
The political math here is not complicated. New York's 13th Congressional District is so heavily Democratic that Chevalier's general election is treated as a near-certainty. That means the primary was the real contest, and the party's voters chose a candidate whose deleted social media posts attacked men of color for dating white women, in language that a former Klan grand wizard found agreeable.
Mamdani's role in this outcome deserves scrutiny. The mayor endorsed Chevalier and a slate of socialist candidates who won across New York City in June. His own record includes controversial responses to constituent crises and repeated clashes with Jewish community leaders over his rhetoric about Israel and AIPAC. Duke's praise of Mamdani as "a step forward", combined with his antisemitic rationale for that praise, puts the mayor's political brand in a category no serious elected official should want to occupy.
The question Meijer raised on X is the one Democratic leaders have so far refused to answer: What would it take for them to do what Republicans did in 1991? The GOP rejected its own nominee when he carried baggage this toxic. It backed a Democrat rather than send a former Klansman to the governor's mansion.
Today's Democratic Party faces a far less dramatic test. Chevalier is not David Duke. But David Duke agrees with her. And the party's leaders have responded with congratulations, endorsements, and silence.
The contrast between the two parties' responses, separated by more than three decades, tells you everything about where the institutional courage went. In 1991, the GOP paid a political price to hold a moral line. In 2026, Democrats can't even find the line.
When a former Klan leader praises your nominee and your party's rising stars in the same interview, the decent response is not silence. It is not congratulations. It is accountability, and the Democratic Party owes its voters an explanation for why that word has gone missing from its vocabulary.