U.S. Reps. Dan Goldman and Adriano Espaillat lost their primaries to former City Comptroller Brad Lander and community organizer Darializa Avila Chevalier, respectively.
Both challengers had the backing of Mayor Zohran Mamdani, as did Claire Valdez, a first-term Assembly member and DSA candidate who beat two more experienced elected officials, Brooklyn Borough President Antonio Reynoso and City Council Member Julie Won for the Congressional district seat held by the retiring Nydia Velázquez.
Did they merely ride Mamdani’s coattails to victory? Was the DSA platform, controversial as it is to many voters, so popular that it propelled them to victory? Were voters tired of incumbency? All of these were certainly contributing factors, but they were not the lone reason they won.
The truth is that the DSA, like them or not, did two things exceptionally well: get on the ground, and get out the vote. And unless and until more mainstream Democrats take the same approach, they risk losing out to a faction determined to pull the party to its left fringes in much the same way that “America First” conservatives pulled the Republican Party to the right fringes.
The turnout in this year’s Democratic primaries is projected to be less than half of the turnout seen in the mayoral primaries a year ago. But the results showed higher vote totals in areas where the DSA actively competed for seats.
Valdez told QNS, our sister affiliate, that her campaign had more than 4,000 volunteers who knocked on some 300,000 doors across the 7th District in Brooklyn and Queens. She wound up winning 56% of the vote in a three-way race, and ran up the score in areas where DSA politicians have done well in the past, including northwestern Queens, where Mamdani once represented, and northern Brooklyn.
The DSA organized an army of volunteers who canvassed door-to-door, made phone calls, and drummed up support for their candidates leading up to the primary.
It’s a basic formula, doesn’t cost very much, and has plenty of success. But the DSA didn’t trademark this; any candidate of any political persuasion can do it, including mainstream Democrats.
There are plenty of reasons for moderate and independent New Yorkers to be concerned about the rise of the DSA and its platform, which many observers argue is too far to the left economically, asks government to do more than it should, and is anti-Israel.
But to defeat the DSA, the mainstream Democrats need to follow Teddy Roosevelt’s advice and get “in the arena.” They need to directly engage the voters on the ground, return to old-fashioned grip-and-grin politics with the people they want to represent, and convince the electorate to go their way.
Will the Democratic Party finally listen?