What to know about democratic socialists

Campaign What to know about democratic socialists Comments: by Julia Mueller and Tara Suter - 06/26/26 6:00 AM ET Comments: Link copied by Julia Mueller and Tara Suter - 06/26/26 6:00 AM ET Comments: Link copied

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Democratic socialists are gaining ground on the national political scene, championing left-of-establishment ideals and rattling mainstream Democrats with big wins ahead of the midterms.

New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani pushed the democratic socialist movement further into the national spotlight with his historic election last year, joining the ranks of Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.) and Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.).

After recent primary elections, a democratic socialist is on track to win the mayor’s office in Washington, D.C., while another advanced to this fall’s mayoral runoff in Los Angeles. A pair of Mamdani-endorsed democratic socialists emerged victorious from their congressional primaries in New York on Tuesday, with one defeating a top House progressive in a signal of the movement’s growing strength.

Proponents of the democratic socialist ideology are pushing for progressive change and a rejection of leadership by the so-called capitalist class. And the Democratic Socialists of America (DSA), the grassroots activist organization boosting candidates across the country, is growing its political machine ahead of the 2026 and 2028 elections.

Here is what to know:

DSA aims to ‘transform’ society

The DSA aims to “transform” American politics with a focus on the working class, promoting economic equality and social justice while rejecting existing profit-driven structures and capitalist frameworks.

“We’re out to transform society in a very basic way across the board, but we want to do it with everybody making decisions together as much as possible,” Ashik Siddique, co-chair of DSA, told The Hill in a Thursday interview.

The DSA is the main organizational machine for the movement, but it is a nonprofit activist group, not a political party voters can register with. And some candidates may identify with the democratic socialist ideology without being card-carrying members of the vanguard organization.

On its website, the DSA describes democratic socialism as “a system where ordinary people have a real voice in our workplaces, neighborhoods, and society” and outlines a push for collective ownership of “key economic drivers that dominate our lives” — pointing to energy production and transportation, Medicare for All, police defunding, and the Green New Deal as among its goals.

“People want to expand high-quality public transit, that people want universal childcare, people want to raise minimum wage to a living wage. All these things are very popular when people hear that these policies are even on the table,” Siddique said.

As a candidate last year, Mamdani championed rent freezes, universal childcare, free city buses and city-owned grocery stores.

In D.C., the metro DSA chapter is aiming to invest in policing alternatives to address crime, calling “routine collaboration” between Immigrations and Customs enforcement and the local police one of the failures of the current mayor. Progressive Democratic mayoral nominee Janeese Lewis George has pitched an aggressive resistance to federal overreach, prompting President Trump to warn that the government could “take back” D.C. if a “crazy socialist” is elected this fall.

In Los Angeles, DSA mayoral hopeful Nithya Raman has pledged progressive approaches to homelessness and housing costs. The Los Angeles DSA chapter has not yet endorsed in the mayoral race, but its objectives include defunding the police and abolishing prisons.

Ocasio-Cortez has been a notable proponent of the Green New Deal, legislation proposing an expansive swath of environmental and economic reforms, including the growth of high-speed rail, implementation of a “social cost of carbon” rule and the establishment of a state jobs program based on Great Depression-era initiatives.

The DSA has also previously taken a critical stance toward the U.S. Constitution, saying in a 2024 statement that the document on which the American government operates “establishes a political order explicitly designed to enshrine rule by elites.”

The ultimate goal, the group said in a 2024 program, is “a new democratic constitution that establishes civil, political, and democratic rights for all, is based on proportional representation in a single federal legislature, and ends the role of money in politics.”

The DSA’s platform on its website calls for noncitizens and those with criminal convictions to receive full voting rights; statehood for Washington, D.C.; getting rid of the two-party system via proportional representation; increasing the number of House seats; having the president be elected by the popular vote and restricting judicial review by the Supreme Court.

The City Journal, a publication of the right-leaning think tank the Manhattan Institute, recently reported on a potential reboot of the DSA’s platform, including plans to scrap the Senate, defund the Defense Department, and replace the president and Supreme Court with an executive and judiciary “subordinate to Congress.”

Siddique said in a text message that those plans are a “preliminary version of edits” to the platform, while a final version is coming “soon.”

“But we want to be clear that a broader long-term vision for what a democratic socialist society looks like, where people have full democratic control of our government, our workplaces, and communities, should not be confused with shorter-term visions of governance, for which you should look to our candidates’ actual platform.”

Candidates gain momentum in key races

The DSA’s growth has been on “an exponential curve” in recent years, Siddique said.

After surfacing in the 1980s as a left-wing advocacy group, the DSA was jolted into mainstream politics when independent Sanders, who was not a member but identified as a democratic socialist, ran for president in 2016. The group said Trump’s win that year drove thousands more to join.

The DSA’s New York chapter endorsed Ocasio-Cortez in her challenge against then-Rep. Joe Crowley (D-N.Y.) in 2018, and she entered Congress alongside fellow DSA members — who were part of the so-called progressive Squad — including Rep. Rashida Tlaib (D-Mich.) and, the next cycle, former Rep. Cori Bush (D-Mo.).

Siddique said the group had around 5,000 members nearly a decade ago, and it’s now climbed to more than 100,000 members and 200 chapters across the country.

And on the heels of Mamdani’s historic win, DSA candidates are notching notable victories in the midterm cycle.

This month, Lewis George outperformed a moderate primary rival in D.C., all but assuring she’ll take the helm of the nation’s capital through Trump’s second term. A week earlier, Raman advanced to a November runoff against incumbent Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass (D).

This week, Democratic socialist candidates Claire Valdez and Darializa Avila Chevalier — backed by Mamdani and the New York City chapter of the DSA — cruised to victory in their New York congressional primaries, with Avila Chevalier ousting Rep. Adriano Espaillat (D-N.Y.).

The Big Apple chapter announced Thursday that it had added more than 400 members since primary polls closed on Tuesday evening.

But the weeks ahead could be a test for the movement’s power outside the Empire State — where most of the DSA base is concentrated — as DSA candidates vie for Congress in primaries in Denver, Detroit and South Florida.

Rise underscores rift with Democratic Party

In New York City’s Tuesday primaries, congressional races showcased divides within the Democratic Party as the democratic socialist movement builds.

Mamdani backed Avila Chevalier over Espaillat, the Congressional Hispanic Caucus chair who gave Mamdani a significant endorsement in the 2025 mayoral race following his Democratic primary win. And he supported Valdez to replace outgoing Rep. Nydia Velazquez (D-N.Y.), who had endorsed a different candidate as her successor.

The races underscored how Democrats are diverging amid wide-ranging conversations about the party’s future, from generational change to economic approach.

In his interview with The Hill, Siddique expressed frustration with what he perceived as a lack of left-leaning policy and candidates in the 2024 election, blaming then-Vice President Kamala Harris’s loss on her stances on issues including the humanitarian crisis resulting from Israel’s war in Gaza and climate change.

“Part of why we think Kamala Harris lost was because there wasn’t anybody pushing left or demanding more in the primary, so, just so many issues were just barely raised at all, like Palestine, like while the genocide in Gaza … was underway, was barely discussed on the campaign, things like climate change, other major issues were really not at the forefront, and it just became a slide to the right, and that lost a lot of the voting base of the Democratic Party, and many people who don’t vote reliably just didn’t feel motivated at all,” Siddique said.

As the movement picks up steam, DSA is also eyeing a 2028 presidential bid.

Ocasio-Cortez is the most prominent name from the movement being floated as a potential contender.

Siddique said there are conversations happening in the organization about a potential presidential candidate, saying the DSA has “a process of having discussions, and then hopefully … it’ll culminate in a collective decision about who it would be.”

“A lot is changing very quickly in the United States, and the types of wins that we’ve had [in] the last week, I think, is raising our ambitions that somebody who represents these politics could be really viable,” he said.

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