What New York’s DSA Candidates Get Wrong About Their Voters

To anyone who’s been paying attention to New York City politics over the past several months, it appears that the traditional welfare-capitalist Democratic order has been turned entirely on its head. Candidates who openly identify as socialists and are endorsed by the Democratic Socialists of America (DSA) have won victory after victory, catapulting their members into dozens of elected offices. In addition to Zohran Mamdani, the now-mayor of New York City, Darializa Chevalier—the Democratic candidate for Columbia’s own House of Representatives district—is also a card-carrying member of the DSA.

To hear the candidates themselves speak of their victories, their wave is part of a permanent change not only in New York, but across the country, with themselves as representatives of a growing coalition of the working-class and people of color. DSA-affiliated member of the New York State Assembly Diana Moreno declared she was running as a representative of an “organized coalition of a multiracial working-class base.” Chevalier, meanwhile, promised to “bring the values of working-class people of color here in Harlem and Washington Heights and Inwood and [T]he Bronx into the halls of Congress” and claimed her campaign centered “working people in this district.” In his victory speech, Mamdani promised to usher in a “generation of change,” championing the cause of “those earning $20 an hour” and standing up for minority groups including immigrants, trans people, and black women.

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