Hours after their ballot box victories in a handful of congressional primaries in New York City, the Democratic Socialists of America (DSA) set their sights west.
“Today, the East Coast, next week the Mountain West,” the DSA wrote in a social media post last week.
The post came after DSA-aligned Darializa Avila Chevalier, a 32-year-old far-left community organizer, ousted incumbent Democratic Rep. Adriano Espaillat, the Congressional Hispanic Caucus chair, and state Assembly Member Claire Valdez, another socialist, won a congressional primary by beating an establishment-backed candidate.
The victories by Chevalier and Valdez, who were heavily supported by socialist New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani, further emboldened the far left as it takes on the center-left establishment in a high-stakes battle for the future of the Democratic Party.
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The DSA is now looking to replicate its playbook across the country, starting Tuesday in the Democratic primary in Colorado’s 1st Congressional District, a solidly blue seat anchored in Denver that then-Vice President Kamala Harris carried by a whopping 56 points in the 2024 election.
Democratic Rep. Diana DeGette, who was first elected to Congress three decades ago, is facing two primary challenges, including DSA-backed Melat Kiros, a first-time candidate and former attorney born four months after DeGette first took office.
Kiros, who lost her job as a lawyer in New York after writing an essay critical of Israel, is also supported by Justice Democrats, the nearly decade-old political group known for heavily supporting “Squad” members Reps. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Ilhan Omar, Ayanna Pressley, and Rashida Tlaib as they toppled entrenched incumbents in their initial elections to Congress.
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“ELECT ANOTHER SOCIALIST TO CONGRESS ON JUNE 30TH,” a DSA social media post states as it urges supporters to lend a hand to the Kiros campaign.
The far left is also training its firepower in two high-profile statewide Democratic primaries in early August in key battleground states: the Senate showdown in Michigan and Wisconsin’s gubernatorial contest.
DSA-aligned Abdul El-Sayed, a former Wayne County health director who unsuccessfully ran for governor eight years ago, is one of three major candidates trying to succeed retiring Democratic Sen. Gary Peters.
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And Wisconsin state Rep. Francesca Hong is on the rise among a crowded field of candidates in the race to succeed retiring Democratic Gov. Tony Evers.
“It’s a great day to be a democratic socialist,” the DSA-aligned Hong posted on X last week. “Wisconsin is next!”
Mamdani’s stunning Democratic mayoral primary victory a year ago sent political shockwaves across the country and cemented the DSA as a major political force.
A year later, Mamdani’s kingmaker status was further enhanced by last week’s results in New York City. Possibly looking to the national stage, the mayor said, “My goal is to make America a place that every American can afford.”
Democratic strategist Joe Caiazzo, a veteran of progressive champion Sen. Bernie Sanders’ 2016 and 2020 presidential campaigns, told Fox News Digital, “Some of the DSA and the majority of the left wing of the Democratic Party appear to be the only ones truly engaging in a conversation about economic populism in a period where costs continue to soar, and there is seemingly no plan from anyone in Washington to rectify that problem. You can see why it’s appealing.”
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It’s not just strategists from the progressive wing of the party that acknowledge the increasing power of the far left.
Matt Bennett, one of the leaders at the Third Way, a leading center-left Democratic organization, noted, “There is enormous energy around the far left in very, very blue places, like New York City” and that “they are succeeding in their mission to oust incumbents or mainstream Democrats from blue seats and make them bluer.”
But outside what has been labeled New York City’s “commie corridor,” which includes parts of Brooklyn and Queens, where voters in recent years have consistently backed far-left and socialist candidates, more mainstream Democrats prevailed in Tuesday’s primaries.
In the high-profile showdown to succeed retiring longtime Democratic Rep. Jerry Nadler in Manhattan, former Nadler staffer Micah Lasher came out on top.
Miles north of New York City in the state’s swing 17th Congressional District, Army veteran Cait Conley won the primary and will challenge GOP Rep. Mike Lawler in a key midterm contest that is one of a handful which will determine if Republicans hold the slim House majority.
In Utah, former Democratic Rep. Ben McAdams defeated progressive rivals to win the primary in the newly redrawn and blue-leaning 1st Congressional District. In Maryland, just outside of Washington D.C., in the race to succeed longtime Rep. Steny Hoyer, Adrian Boafo, who was supported by Hoyer, topped a crowded and diverse Democratic primary field.
And in South Carolina, Nancy Lacore, a former Navy admiral who was fired by War Secretary Pete Hegseth, won the Democratic primary in a Republican-leaning district Democrats had hopes of flipping.
Bennett said the New York City races grabbing outsized attention “are not representative districts, and it remains the case that the far left, in the Trump era, has failed to flip a single seat in Congress from red to blue, House or Senate.”
“They’re doing nothing to put a check on Trump or get power back,” he argued. “And in fact, they’re making it harder, because they’re handing Republicans very potent ammunition to use against Democrats in swing districts the way the GOP used ‘defund the police’ very effectively in 2020.”
Veteran center-left Democratic strategist Matt Corridoni, who advises the political groups The Bench and Majority Democrats, said, “I think if we’re only focusing on New York we’re missing the forest through the trees.”
Corridoni said, “There are dozens of examples across the country of these sort of purple reddish districts where we’re getting candidates who are tapping into the energy that voters are feeling right now.”
Despite the success of center-left candidates, it’s the far-left that’s grabbing the media spotlight.
And that’s giving Republicans more ammunition as they portray all Democrats as radicals.
Since Mamdani’s shocking Democratic mayoral primary win a year ago, Republicans have used him as a cudgel as they work to hold their razor-thin House majority in this year’s midterm elections.
National Republican Congressional Committee spokesman Mike Marinella argued, “Zohran Mamdani’s socialist brand is as toxic as it comes.”
Pointing to Tuesday’s results, Marinella charged that “it was the night the Democrat establishment officially surrendered to Zohran Mamdani and the socialist wing of their party. Every House Democrat, in safe and competitive districts alike, will now answer to the radicals calling the shots. And Americans should be terrified by where the Democrat Party is headed.”