Democratic socialists are winning in US cities with message of getting stuff done

A trio of Democratic socialist victories in mayoral contests in three of the largest cities in the US has unleashed a new wave of hope on the left of the party. Zohran Mamdani and Katie Wilson took office in New York and Seattle, respectively, this year. Janeese Lewis George is set to follow in Washington DC.

As momentum around leftwing candidates appears to build, focus will turn to Los Angeles over the coming months, where another member of the Democratic Socialists of America (DSA) will attempt to continue this winning streak.

The common criticism of democratic socialism is that its proponents put their ideological interests before matters of effective governance. But after a string of high-profile wins, supporters are hopeful that Mamdani and others will prove the two can go hand-in-hand.

Political sands are shifting inside the Democratic party, and its strongholds.

Beer in hand, Gustavo Gordillo, a Yale graduate who worked as a union carpenter before co-chairing New York City’s chapter of the DSA, took in the scene on Tuesday night at 99 Scott Studio in East Williamsburg, where the Queens assembly member Claire Valdez was holding a victory party after winning the party’s nomination for New York’s seventh congressional district ahead of November’s midterm elections.

They were joined by Mamdani, who had endorsed Valdez, and five victorious local Queens DSA-backed candidates who also won legislative primaries.

Voters want more from their politicians than rhetoric, Gordillo reflected on Wednesday morning. Mamdani’s ability to deliver basic services well – like clearing sidewalks after a snowstorm – goes a long way toward selling support for DSA leadership, and for undermining establishment Democrats who stand in their path.

“It was through trying to implement the affordability agenda that we made the case for electing more democratic socialists, because we need to tax the rich to fund the program, and the governor and the current power structure fought us all the way in this past session,” said Gordillo. “Our argument and our case that we’re making to New York is we need to replace the existing politicians if we actually want to create a city and a state that’s affordable for everybody. I think the mayor has prioritized pothole politics and sewer socialism as a way of showing that you can elect a democratic socialist to the highest level of office in the city, and that’s actually going to result in a government that is more responsive to working people.”

On Thursday, a New York City board voted to freeze rents for nearly one million apartments, handing Mamdani a major political victory on one of his central campaign promises.

Democratic socialists and progressive Democrats usually vote the same way in elected office, and easily fit into a Democratic coalition that includes political moderates and a handful of “blue dog” conservatives. But they are not the same.

Liberal Democrats believe capitalism can be managed with regulation, but remain supportive of its principles. Democratic socialists challenge the underlying principles of capitalism, and believe public policy should confront it; that the government should manage the economy and industry more directly, in the public interest.

Mamdani is the highest-profile democratic socialist running a US city today, but he is not the only one espousing its principles. Wilson, in Seattle, is a self-described democratic socialist, who won election (without the endorsement of the DSA) in November 2025 after rising to prominence for her advocacy for affordable housing, increased taxes on large corporations and workers’ rights.

The DSA has won elections in part because of an army of activists ready to knock on doors and work the phones for candidates. But as democratic socialists rack up wins in executive positions like mayoral seats, ideological questions are giving way to practical ones.

“It’s not just the knocking of the doors and the phone banking and getting out the vote, but also, like, what does it look like once we’re in office?” said Megan Romer, DSA national co-chair. “We’ve got people who are turning themselves into experts on policy, who are hitting the ground trying to figure out what municipal garbage policy looks like? Why are there so many potholes? Why aren’t they getting fixed? What is the issue here?

“That lets us really present not just an alternative that’s electorally viable, but that’s viable politically, and they can really hold these positions and get done what we ran to get done.”

That distinction is one reason LA’s mayor, Karen Bass, is in the political fight of her life. In November, Bass faces a runoff against the city councilwoman and DSA member Nithya Raman – a first for an incumbent LA mayor in more than 20 years. (The DSA’s local chapter has yet to formally endorse a candidate in the race.)

It is also a reason Lewis George, another DSA member, is expected to win the mayoral race in Washington DC after securing the Democratic nomination last week.

Swaths of the National Mall are walled off and torn up after events staged by Donald Trump’s White House. National guard soldiers patrol streets to little practical effect. Voters who viewed the conciliatory posture of the DC mayor, Muriel Bowser, toward the US president with skepticism opted for a change in approach with Lewis George. But the nominee focused her campaign on sewer socialism, the everyday concerns of people in the city, and reminded them of her priorities on election night.

“From the start of this campaign, we championed the principle that DC residents deserve a government that works,” Lewis George said in her victory speech. “Over time, failing public services eroded people’s faith in government as a force of good in their lives. As mayor, I will be relentlessly focused on delivering reliable public services to every DC neighborhood. These are not trivial issues. They are core government functions and we need them to work.”

Of course, plenty of mayors from other wings of the Democratic party, and other parties altogether, have their own ambitious initiatives to offer a “government that works” for their constituents.

In San Francisco, for example – arguably the bluest city in the US – the centrist Democratic mayor, Daniel Lurie, is riding high after recently announcing plans to offer free childcare to families earning less than $230,000 a year.

But in a handful of prominent cities, socialists are winning Democratic primaries because of a perception that the system is not working, said Corbin Trent, a former campaign aide to Bernie Sanders, the US senator from Vermont and a powerful figure on the Democratic party’s progressive left.

Many establishment Democratic candidates had essentially argued “hey, things are mostly good – we gotta tweak some edges, but this is the greatest country ever, you know,” suggested Trent, who also worked on the 2018 insurgent campaign of Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, the influential progressive congresswoman.

“And then they got beat by the guy who said that this was a shithole,” said Trent. “And they didn’t get it. And interestingly, they still don’t get it. They still don’t understand that actually people are not thrilled with this society, they’re not thrilled with this economy, they’re not thrilled with this democracy, they’re not thrilled with this foreign policy. Go figure.”