Special Investigations

Press Freedom Defense Fund

There’s a New Democratic Machine. It’s Unabashedly Socialist.

While establishment Democrats argue socialists are confined to the coasts, DSA chapters have helped elevate more than 300 candidates nationwide.

As democratic socialists toppled establishment favorites this midterm cycle, the old guard of the Democratic Party picked up a preferred cudgel against insurgents: These people were propped up by white, urban, coastal, educated electorates — not the ones the Democrats were trying to reach, and certainly not the working class.

It’s true that the four victorious socialists running for Congress — Chris Rabb in Philadelphia, Darializa Avila Chevalier and Claire Valdez in New York City, and Melat Kiros in Denver — won in major cities where progressive politics are more likely to be popular than in the country’s many more rural, poorer, and less educated districts. But before this cycle’s big surge, the Democratic Socialists of America had spent the past decade backing and recruiting candidates in down-ballot races across the U.S., multiplying the number of people in office by a figure of eight and electing mayors, city councilors, state lawmakers, and other local officials in 39 states.

“Everybody is feeling the crunch. Everybody is deeply concerned for their families, for their security,” said Becky Cooper, campaign manager to Francesca Hong, a Wisconsin state representative and formidable DSA candidate for governor. “That transcends political party, transcends ages, and it transcends geography. This is not just a coastal elites thing.”

Despite the narrative that the socialist model only works among electorates dominated by young, white, coastal elites, the DSA, the largest socialist organization in the U.S., is decentralized and operates chapters in a majority of states. Its members currently hold office in states like Ohio, North Carolina, Texas, and Tennessee. Many of those candidates have been elected to local offices even as far-right campaigns to take over bodies like school boards have dominated in recent years. Since 2018, 305 DSA-backed lawmakers have won their races. Democratic socialists won state legislative primaries this season in Georgia and Kentucky, and they’re on the ballot in upcoming primary races in Florida, Michigan, Minnesota, and Wisconsin, where Hong has polled first or second in recent months in a tight gubernatorial primary.

In order to win, they’ve built what some might call a machine, joining forces with more mainstream progressive organizations to marshal resources against a well-financed political establishment that buried candidates on the left in 2024.

The Democratic Party Gets Its Populist Takeover

Their success has sent the Democratic establishment into a frenzy. Dismissing the wins in his backyard, House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries said the socialist victories in New York were concentrated in “higher-income districts” with an “outsized focus on issues connected to the Middle East.” 

But while Valdez and Avila Chevalier won a majority of voters in areas dominated by the young, wealthy, and college-educated, Avila Chevalier beat longtime incumbent Rep. Adriano Espaillat among Black voters, while Valdez dominated over Brooklyn Borough President Antonio Reynoso among majority-Hispanic precincts — suggesting the socialism-curious share of the electorate is more complex than its critics might make it seem. 

It’s “a very reductionist identity politics from pundits and critics who don’t have anything meaningful to offer working-class voters.”

It’s “a very reductionist identity politics from pundits and critics who don’t have anything meaningful to offer working-class voters.”

“People are going to keep trying to move the goalposts to pretend like this isn’t a movement sweeping the nation,” said democratic socialist New York state Sen. Jabari Brisport, pointing to another DSA member who won a primary upstate in Buffalo. “It’s an attack line that will keep coming again and again, a very reductionist identity politics from pundits and critics who don’t have anything meaningful to offer working-class voters.” 

According to Cooper, Democratic leaders hold responsibility for the surging popularity of the socialist brand. 

“The socialist label is more popular than the Democratic label because people are recognizing that they’ve been fed a bill of lies through capitalism,” she said. 

Democratic socialists looking to take over the governor’s mansion in Wisconsin say their message isn’t contingent on geography, race, or class.

“You’ve had throughout history political leaders use socialist policies without actually calling it socialism,” said Wisconsin state Rep. Darrin Madison, the first Black socialist elected in the state. He pointed to policies like the New Deal, the eight-hour workday, and Social Security. “Building systems of mutual aid, that’s a form of socialism,” Madison said.

Wisconsin’s long history of socialist politics has enjoyed a revival in recent years. Milwaukee sent the first socialist to the House in 1910 and elected three socialist mayors over the next half century, but the state’s socialist caucus died out........

© The Intercept