America’s de facto socialist party docketed a dozen victories on Election Day this week, with self-declared socialists winning mayoral offices and city council seats in various off-year elections across the country.
Candidates backed by the Democratic Socialists of America won more than half of the 23 races they were running in as openly avowed socialists, suffering relatively few losses at the ballot box, while the remaining DSA-endorsed hopefuls head to runoff elections.
Here are the winners, the washouts, and the contenders still in play.
Victors
So far, DSA has notched 12 triumphs, most notably the ascension of DSA darling Zohran Mamdani to mayor-elect of New York City. Soon to be the Big Apple’s head honcho, he had campaigned on DSA-aligned promises of free childcare, government-run grocery stores, fareless public transportation, and rent freezes.
DSA netted two wins in the Twin Cities with “revolutionary” Robin Wonsley and Soren Stevenson, a racial justice activist, securing seats on the Minneapolis City Council.
In 2021, Wonsley was one of three DSA members elected that year to the city’s chief governing body by defeating a 14-year incumbent councilman.
Working to “rein in the Minneapolis Police Department,” a returning Wonsley pledged this election cycle to ban pro-police imagery, specifically the Thin Blue Line symbol, on city property and build out the city’s “Diversion” program, an alternative to incarceration allowing defendants charged with a low-level crime, such as shoplifting or obstructing law enforcement without the use of force, to “avoid conviction.”
Stevenson, a self-proclaimed “survivor of Minneapolis police violence,” was part of the George Floyd-era racial justice uprisings when riot response officers fired off foam projectiles, one of which hit him in the face. A wounded Stevenson, who wore an eyepatch after the 2020 altercation, sued the city and won a $2.4 million settlement over the ordeal.
Atlanta will have its first socialist on the city council. DSA rising star Kelsea Bond was the far-and-away winner in her district’s wide-open contest for Atlanta City Council, beating out four others by capturing 64% of the vote. Bond, who will be the council’s youngest member, trumpeted broad vows to “Tax the Rich” and “Democratize Atlanta.”
DSA-backed Denzel McCampbell, formerly the communications director for Rep. Rashida Tlaib (D-MI), became the second democratic socialist to join the Detroit City Council. While campaigning, McCampbell and current Councilwoman Gabriela Santiago-Romero, who won reelection with nearly double the votes of her challenger despite no official DSA endorsement, teamed up on TikTok in hopes of forming a socialist alliance on the nine-member council.
Milwaukee Alderman Alex Browser, co-chair of the Milwaukee DSA, successfully defended his seat in a head-to-head matchup. Browser had won an earlier Milwaukee Common Council special election in April after a death left his district’s seat vacant. “I am bringing back sewer socialism to Milwaukee City Hall,” Browser said at the time on becoming one of the first socialists in City Hall since the 1960s.
Cambridge City Council newcomer Ayah Al-Zubi, a Jordan-born Muslim member of the Boston-based DSA chapter, clinched a seat in the fourth round of ranked-choice voting, edging out an incumbent councilor seeking reelection. Proposals for “collectively controlled community land,” a city-owned grocery, and public housing projects were the hallmarks of her campaign.
In Greenbelt, Maryland, local DSA leader Frankie Fritz won an opening on the city council via its at-large plurality voting process. Previously chairman of the DSA’s metropolitan D.C. branches, Fritz advocated for all-resident voting rights, regardless of U.S. citizenship, and the codification of non-cooperation orders prohibiting police from assisting federal immigration authorities.
Over in Carrboro, a town located near the University of North Carolina’s flagship Chapel Hill campus, Councilman Danny Nowell, a member of the DSA’s NC Triangle coalition, kept his seat in the uncontested Carrboro Town Council race. Nowell aims to “reimagine our approach to public safety,” prioritize “climate action,” and achieve “race equity.”
Two incoming Ithaca Common Council members, Ithaca DSA’s Jorge DeFendini and Hannah Shvets, cruised to commanding wins with 88.7% and 64.12% of the votes received, respectively, excluding early mail-in and absentee ballots. DeFendini, a former Ithaca alderman, won another four-year term alongside first-time candidate Shvets, a current Cornell University student who advocates for reparations for Black Ithacans and the city’s minimum wage to be raised to $25.
In Poughkeepsie, New York, “proud” democratic socialist Daniel Atonna, currently the co-chair of Mid-Hudson Valley DSA, had handily claimed a spot on the common council, winning twice the number of votes as his Republican competitor.
Losers
DSA saw nine of its formal endorsements fail to take home electoral wins this year, though many of them came close to clinching office.
Two-term Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey fended off socialist challenger, Twin Cities DSA’s Omar Fateh, in a contentious fight for Frey’s job.
Fateh, the son of Somali immigrants and the Minnesota Senate’s first Muslim member, aims to achieve racial justice through “restorative urban planning” by doling out reparations to black neighborhoods. As state senator, Fateh says he has helped pass some of the “most progressive policies in Minnesota’s history,” from tuition-free college for low-income residents, including “undocumented immigrants,” to a statute mandating that the state’s electricity sector be 100% carbon-free by 2040.
Frey and Fatah faced off directly after an initial round of ranked-choice voting eliminated a crowded field of candidates who accumulated nowhere near as many first-choice votes as those two frontrunners. In the second tabulation, Frey gained a slim majority (50.03%) and was finally declared the winner.
Environmental justice organizers Michael Wilson and Adam Schneider of Twin Cities DSA ran for Minneapolis Park and Recreation Board but failed to pick up at-large commissioner positions following five rounds of ranked-choice voting tabulation.
In the Boston-area race for Somerville mayor, City Councilor Willie Burnley Jr. was bested by a slight margin of 11,185 votes (54.3%) to his 9,054 (43.9%), per Tuesday’s preliminary tallies.
A democratic socialist endorsed by the DSA’s Boston chapter, Burnley had championed a wide range of radical-left positions, telling constituents that he would, as mayor, blacklist pro-Israel businesses and obstruct deportation operations.
Burnley’s campaign promises included implementing a so-called Green New Deal for Somerville Public Schools, rejecting federal funding that would require the city of Somerville to cooperate with Immigration and Customs Enforcement, and ceasing city contracts with companies whose business “sustains Israel’s apartheid, genocide, and illegal occupation of Palestine.”
In college-town Fort Collins, Colorado, democratic socialist Zoelle Lane lost her bid for city council by 2,823 votes (64.6%) to 1,732 (35.4%), according to unofficial counts of the Nov. 4 general election.
Lane had earned the endorsements of DSA Fort Collins as well as the national DSA. On the campaign trail, Lane similarly sought to institute a Green New Deal for Fort Collins, meaning “no more fossil fuels” within city limits, and ensure that city resources are not used to enforce U.S. immigration law.
In Tacoma, Washington, a port city situated along the Puget Sound approximately 30 miles outside Seattle, the Tacoma DSA’s co-chair Zev Cook failed to become the first-ever transgender official elected to the Tacoma City Council.
Nearby in the city of Renton, an inner-ring Seattle suburb, Michael Westgaard fell short of the votes needed to win a seat on the city council. Westgaard, an active member of the DSA’s south King County branch, sought to “redefine public safety” by pulling back Renton’s reliance on police as first responders to emergency situations and replacing them with mental health professionals, community counselors, and crisis workers.
In upstate New York, labor leader Tammy Honeywell, a democratic socialist who ran for Onondaga County legislator, was defeated during the Democratic primary in June, although she had the backing of both Syracuse’s DSA chapter and the DSA parent organization.
Honeywell’s opponent, the Onondaga County Democratic Committee’s designated candidate, went on to flip the legislature’s 8th District this week, beating the Republican incumbent in a landslide with over 75% of the total votes.
Anti-police activist Maryah Lauer narrowly lost the April municipal election for Colorado Springs City Council, coming in second—by about 515 votes—out of five candidates in that district. Lauer, the co-founder of Colorado Springs DSA, was credited with spearheading the citywide “Stop Cop City” campaign, which struck down a 2023 ballot proposal that would have helped fund a new training facility for the Colorado Springs Police Department.
Not yet decided
Two democratic socialists vying for Jersey City Council will compete in the Dec. 2 runoff as the top-ranking candidates in their respective races after none of the contenders cleared the majority threshold.
North New Jersey DSA’s Joel Brooks and Jake Ephros, both of whose nearly-identical campaign logos bear the red rose of socialism, each captured about a quarter of the vote. They have similar platforms, some parts matching verbatim, such as their desire to end the privatization of municipal services through the phasing out of private contracts from city utilities.
Brooks squeezed out a slight lead, 24.4% to 21.7%, over the running mate of former Gov. Jim McGreevey (D-NJ), now a mayoral candidate also advancing to a runoff. McGreevey had handpicked a slate of city council candidates as part of his political comeback campaign.
Ephros is slated to face off against the former mayor’s daughter, whom he trailed behind slightly on Tuesday night with fewer than 250 votes.
