Socialists Are Setting the Agenda in New York City

THree key primaries in New York City delivered whopping victories for an emboldened left led by Mayor Zohran Mamdani on Tuesday, as democratic socialists sought to define the future of the Democratic Party.

All three candidates Mamdani backed — democratic socialists Claire Valdez and Darializa Avila Chevalier, and his onetime mayoral competitor Brad Lander — won their races in the heat of a midterm cycle that could see Democrats take back the House of Representatives. One message from the results was clear: The left isn’t just having a moment — it’s dictating how Democrats play the game of electoral politics.

“A year ago, it was not the end of a political movement. It was the beginning,” Mamdani said at a victory party for Valdez and several down-ballot socialists who also won Tuesday. “Let’s hear it for a politics that will never forget working people. For a politics that is ready to write a new chapter in our party’s history. And for a politics that realizes the old politics that got us into this crisis is not gonna get out of this crisis.”

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Several races played out as proxy wars between the Democratic Party establishment and progressive insurgents, or even between progressives and socialists, to prove who would do more to disrupt the status quo. In hotly contested primaries spanning four out of five NYC boroughs, candidates touted endorsements from Mamdani and Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., as well as their proximity to the most unconventional wings of the Democratic Party. 

“Even when we are outspent, our agenda and operation bring out voters in a way the Democratic Party establishment no longer aspires to,” Gustavo Gordillo, co-chair of the New York City chapter of the Democratic Socialists of America, told The Intercept. “It is democratic socialists who are defining much of the political terrain in New York.” 

“If you’re an establishment Democrat, that’s spent,” streamer Hasan Piker told local outlet Hell Gate. “We’re not giving another dime to Israel, hopefully an arms embargo, or at least pushing for one. We’re gonna make sure that we change the American trajectory.”

Avila Chevalier, a former organizer in the Columbia University encampments for Palestine, was considered a longshot candidate when she launched her campaign against the powerful incumbent Rep. Adriano Espaillat. She won the tightest race of the three Tuesday night, saying in a statement: “We deserve leadership in Washington that will fight tooth and nail for every single one of us, and I can’t wait to get to work with our community to deliver on that promise.”

Lander, who is not a DSA member but represents the clearest bridge between socialists and progressives out of the three Mamdani-endorsed congressional candidates, was the first to sail to victory, defeating Rep. Dan Goldman, D-N.Y., less than 10 minutes after polls closed with roughly a third of votes counted in the 10th Congressional District. Goldman, an heir to the Levi Strauss fortune and a staunch supporter of Israel, had lagged in public polling for months, suggesting the energy on the ground was firmly against the incumbent.

“This campaign was born out of solidarity. Solidarity is not the same as unity. Unity means we already agree. Solidarity is a practice of building bridges, even when we don’t,” Lander said Tuesday. “When I launched this race, I said it wasn’t progressives versus moderates. It’s fighters versus folders.”

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The momentum among progressives and the left in New York forced Democrats close to the party’s establishment to change the way they campaign. And the rise of the DSA chapter in New York following Mamdani’s upset win last year has also raised questions about how the progressive and socialist wings of the party will share power as they seek to expand their coalition beyond New York and across the country. Some critics condemned socialist darling Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, who rose to power eight years ago with her own insurgent campaign against a powerful incumbent, for staying out of New York’s congressional primaries — while others theorized that the congresswoman and the mayor were dividing their political clout across competitive federal and state-level races. 

The primaries also created an unusual lane for the progressive New York Working Families Party, which found itself siding with the establishment it has long fought by backing Brooklyn Borough President Antonio Reynoso, outgoing Rep. Nydia Velázquez’s handpicked successor, against DSA candidate Valdez. 

Jasmine Gripper, co-state director for the New York Working Families Party, said the efforts to sow division with DSA or to separate WFP from the left’s rise erased its legacy — helping to defeat efforts to gut the party and fight conservative Democrats like former Gov. Andrew Cuomo; winning a $15 minimum wage; and expanding investments in pre-K and paid sick and family leave— and ignored that WFP was part of a much broader coalition that helped Mamdani beat Cuomo last year. 

“The Working Families Party has been at the forefront of literally every major victory that has actually tangibly helped working families, and so to call us establishment is to not know our history and to not know the history of New York,” Gripper said. 

She said WFP’s role moving forward was to work in tandem with DSA, not to compete with it.

“There was a point where there was no one to the left of the [Working Families] party, and if you were to the left of the party, you were crazy,” she said. “Now we’re in a moment where there’s a whole entity that’s to the left of the WFP, and that is OK.”

The democratic socialists’ growing power seems to have inspired fear among liberals and conservatives alike. Outside groups spent heavily ahead of Tuesday’s primary, widely seen as a test of where the Democratic Party stands after its 2024 failures and ahead of the November midterms, to ward off the possibility that democratic socialists would chart the party’s next chapter. 

Special interests including the pro-Israel lobby and dark-money groups spent a collective $8.4 million in the three races against Mamdani’s endorsed candidates. In response, progressive groups made their biggest investments in recent history, with American Priorities, a new pro-Palestine super PAC, investing $2 million to back Mamdani’s picks and the progressive outfit Justice Democrats spending a combined $1.8 million backing Valdez and Chevalier. In total, progressive groups spent $1.3 million backing Valdez and $2.9 million backing Chevalier.

“This year we’ve continued to show that in New York it is the democratic socialist movement that is leading a transformative agenda with popular support,” said Gordillo, the NYC DSA co-chair.

Having more groups organized, resourced, and willing to fight the establishment makes the left stronger, WFP’s Gripper said.  

“Not only are the establishment Dems looking over their back for one of us, they’re now looking over their back for two of us,” she said. “At the end of the day, we build more power in our unity than we do being divided.”

As she spoke to The Intercept, Gripper was on her way to meet two democratic socialists who won elections at the state level Tuesday night. State Sen. Jabari Brisport comfortably held onto his seat, while challenger Eon Huntley toppled an incumbent in the state Assembly. Both were endorsed by WFP and DSA.

“I think it’s naive for anyone to expect that 100 percent of the time we’ll all be on the same page,” Gripper said. “But that doesn’t mean we’re each other’s enemy either.” 

Or, as Pennsylvania Sen. John Fetterman put it to CNN on Tuesday, “The dirtbag left is surging.”