DSA Won Big in New York, but So Did the Democratic Establishment

Tuesday’s elections in New York were no doubt a welcome reprieve for Mayor Zohran Mamdani, who has recently faced criticisms from the Left for a growing list of betrayals and failures, including his refusal to fire police commissioner Jessica Tisch. That criticism had spilled over into open protest against the mayor in October, particularly after the shooting of Bronx resident Oscar Belgal by ICE ignited outrage over his handling of the NYPD. But last night, rather than face crowds of jeering protesters, the Mayor was instead basking in the glow of the victories of all four of his endorsed candidates alongside hundreds of their enthusiastic supporters. These included DSA members Claire Valdez and Darializa Avila Chevalier, former Comptroller Brad Lander, and, curiously, Governor Kathy Hochul. 

The most resounding and impressive victory of the evening by far went to Chevalier, who won her district in Northern Manhattan and the Bronx with 87.5 percent of the vote. Her challenger, Republican Jomo Williams, earned less than 12 percent. This incredible landslide shows clearly that Chevalier’s platform, which includes calls for taxing the rich, universal healthcare, housing for all, and the abolition of ICE, among other progressive demands, resonates with large sections of her new constituents. Her victory also shows that candidates can run as open socialists, and even face off against the police on the streets, without fear of “alienating their base.” In fact, Darializa’s combative tone and her now famous confrontation with police the day of the Bronx ICE shooting no doubt won her several votes.

Although Chevalier, along with the DSA, has strongly criticized the mayor for his failure to fire Tisch or to disband the NYPD’s hated Strategic Response Group, Mamdani nonetheless — though perhaps a bit awkwardly — stood by her during her acceptance speech. Chevalier blasted ICE and talked about the importance of affordable housing, while wearing a Keffiyeh, symbolizing her support for Palestine. Surprisingly, her speech said little about international politics, and the only time Palestine was mentioned was when the audience spontaneously began chanting “Free Palestine.”  

In addition to Chevalier, the DSA won a second congressional seat in District 7, where Valdez, also endorsed by Mayor Mamdani, sailed to an easy victory with more than 83 percent of the vote against her Republican challenger. Valdez, who is a member of the DSA, will replace establishment Democratic congressperson Nydia Velázquez, who is set to retire in January. Like Chevalier, Valdez ran on a platform of universal healthcare, housing for all, and the abolition of ICE. Importantly, unlike Mamdani, neither Valdez nor Chevalier endorsed or said they would vote for Governor Hochul.

As a result, the DSA will now have three congresspeople from New York: Alexandria Ocasio Cortes, Claire Valdez, and Darializa Avila Chevalier. If you throw in the newly elected congressperson and former DSA member Brad Lander, whom Mamdani also endorsed, the mayor will now have a sizable coalition representing his interests and many of his ideas in Congress. What the Mayor and his allies choose to do with this newfound power and platform remains to be seen, but it is clear already that there are some meaningful differences between the mayor and the DSA’s new electeds.

But Chevalier’s was not the only election night celebration that Mamdani attended. Before heading up to the Bronx, the mayor spent the early evening after the polls closed with Governor Kathy Hochul and her supporters. In the speech he delivered there, Mamdani described the votes that day as a “turning point” for the Democratic Party, saying that “we have begun the work of transforming our party and making it belong to working people once again.”

Although Mamdani’s plan to transform the Democratic Party is highly unlikely to succeed, his endorsement was absolutely essential to transforming Hochul’s campaign, and not for the better. Less than two years ago, Hochul looked like a lame duck. Still recovering from a tight 2022 election race, where New York Democrats had lost five congressional seats in part because of her failure to turn out Democratic voters, her prospects for winning the nomination, much less re-election, were looking thin. Her approval ratings were consistently in the low forties (near or below President Trump’s), and polls showed that a 2026 match up against a strong Republican candidate could be close. 

But then along came Mayor Zohran Mamdani. His phenomenal rise to power was a wave that, like yesterday’s “blue wave,” lifted every boat with a capital “D” on its prow, and his early and very public endorsement of Hochul breathed new life into her campaign. Tuesday’s results showed exactly the power of that endorsement. Not only did Hochul win re-election, she absolutely crushed her Republican opponent Bruce Blakeman by more than 20 points. Much of this victory can be attributed to the same set of forces that led to similar Democratic victories across the country: hatred of Trump and the Republican Party; anger about ICE terror and the war on Iran; and frustration about rising prices and the cost of living. Indeed, much of the success of Democrats across the country was more about hatred of Trump than anything the candidates themselves had to offer. But Hochul’s victory was not only thanks to the failures of Trump. Mamdani’s endorsement played a key role in rehabilitating the centrist Democrat’s image ahead of the elections, transforming her from a frumpy, unappealing centrist into an ally of the most popular and one of the most progressive-leaning politicians in America. Likewise, the Mayor’s repeated arguments that the Democratic party can be made to represent the interests of working people and the oppressed, only helps the party to more easily conceal its ongoing attacks on them. Even worse, this is happening at a time when the party itself is being rejected by huge swaths of the working class and is most in need of such help.

And this is a contradiction that the DSA and the Left more broadly has to wrestle with: it is impossible to build working class power in coalition with or by supporting the very same people who are attacking the working class daily. By endorsing Hochul, Mamdani not only guaranteed her victory against her equally unsavory Republican opponent, he helped paper over the tainted image that she and her party represent. It is precisely this kind of narrow and pragmatic popular front mentality that has led time and again to the eventual destruction of the left wing of any partnership with the Democrats. 

Both DSA candidates and establishment candidates won big riding the blue wave and Mamdani’s popularity and anger against Trump. But it remains to be seen how much these new DSA candidates will distinguish themselves from and against the rest of the Democratic Party, or allow themselves to be subsumed by it. But regardless of what path Chevalier and Valdez choose to follow, the DSA are already providing cover for and assistance to the establishment wing of the party, and this contradiction cannot hold for long. Either the DSA becomes more entrenched in the Democratic Party, or it will have to break from it. By not endorsing Hochul Darializa and Valdez showed signs that they may govern differently than Mamdani, but their indebtedness to him and the DSA ballot line strategy will make that difficult.