In a stunning set of victories, Democratic Socialist of America (DSA) candidates swept to victory in New York in both congressional and state legislative primary elections. New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani, whose own surprise win last year sent an earthquake through New York and national politics, endorsed three DSA U.S. House candidates who coasted to victories in their June 23 Democratic party primaries. Those candidates were Claire Valdez, who defeated Brooklyn Borough President Antonio Reynoso; Darializa Avila Chevalier, who ousted five-term Rep. Adriano Espaillat, and former mayoral candidate Brad Lander who easily beat two-term incumbent Rep. Dan Goldman.
Democratic socialists were also winners in two New York state Senate races and four state Assembly races, despite millions of dollars spent by super PACs to defeat them. Elsewhere around the country, DSA candidates won the mayoral primary in Washington, D.C., and will compete in this November’s mayoral runoff in Los Angeles. In the weeks ahead, DSA candidates will also be running in primaries in Michigan, Wisconsin and Florida.
Between The Lines’ Scott Harris spoke with John Tarleton, editor-in-chief of The Indypendent, New York City’s free progressive monthly newspaper, discusses his coverage of these Democratic Socialist primary victories, the issues the candidates ran on, and the impact their wins have on local and national politics.
JOHN TARLETON: Last week’s results, a sweeping triumph for Mayor Mamdani and the New York City chapter of the Democratic Socialists of America, which are really the engine that propelled Mamdani into City Hall and who backed a large slate of socialist candidates. He talked about the congressional candidates, but they also won five more seats in the state legislature, including knocking off three incumbent assembly members. And that’s also important for Mamdani’s future prospects. The city is greatly reliant on what happens in Albany. So as a real flex for legislators in Albany, and I’m sure many of them are thinking or maybe rethinking where they want to come down next year when Mamdani makes another “tax the rich” proposal. And also Democratic socialists won an assembly seat in Buffalo, New York, hometown of Gov. Kathy Hochul.
SCOTT HARRIS: John, I wanted to have you maybe talk about what were the major issues in these New York races? Israel played a prominent role, but of course there were a lot of bread and butter kitchen table issues that brought out so many voters to overturn these long-running incumbents that usually have a green light for as many terms as they want. But that wasn’t the case during the primary.
JOHN TARLETON: Right. So, Darializa Avila Chevalier, in her district, which is basically Manhattan north of 100th Street and then also part of the West Bronx, a heavily black and brown district with a sprinkling of younger white people that have moved in—but it’s still heavily working class black and Latino district. And her lead slogan of Babies Not Bombs was a way of taking her long-running concern and passion for Palestinian rights and making the argument that we should be spending our resources on supporting the people most in need in this country and not using it to send more bombs to blow up hospitals and schools and refugee camps in Gaza or Lebanon or Iran. And I went out one afternoon with a couple of these DSA canvassers and that’s a whole other story, the whole DSA canvassing machine. And I went out with them and they canvassed a public housing 14-story building in Harlem.
And when they had the chance to talk to people at the doors, nothing landed more immediately than the argument that we shouldn’t be spending our money to send more bombs to the Middle East when we should be spending it on our own needs. I think it kind of captured people’s both disgust with the carnage that Israel’s perpetrated and also the carnage and the stupidity of the war with Iran.
SCOTT HARRIS: It’s interesting to watch the reaction of the Democratic Socialists of America candidates’ victories in New York and elsewhere. You have Fox News, Republican Speaker of the House Mike Johnson and President Trump calling these candidates communists multiple times. They’re all speaking from the same script, obviously. And then on the other side of things, you have former President Bill Clinton’s political advisor, James Carville. He was quoted as saying, “There’s a schism in the party.” He says DSA candidates, who he labels as far left, should have no place in the Democratic party.
JOHN TARLETON: Yeah. Democratic voters seem to feel differently in more and more places with the Republicans. Look, they said for eight years Obama was a socialist. They said Biden was a socialist. I mean, they throw these labels around.
And now it’s like, “Oh, okay, now the Democrats are starting to dabble in supporting socialist candidates.” And so right, so they have to find some more extreme rhetoric. But on many issues, the stances the Democratic socialists are taking like Medicare for All and lowering housing costs and increasing minimum wage, etc., ending the wars, spending the money at home are broadly popular. And the only reason the Democratic leadership is so out of touch with their own base is because of their donor class. That’s who they’ve been oriented to servin. Corporate interests, the Israel lobby, all of that. The Democratic base has finally really decided it no longer trusts or supports much of what the establishment has to offer, certainly on Israel. I mean, the last two-and-a-half years of just watching this carnage all made possible by U.S. weapons has turned a lot of people off and we live in a world of interconnected communications, especially younger people.
Younger people have access to a wider range of media outlets and they were especially affected by this because they saw a lot more of it.
Visit The Indypendent at indypendent.org.
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