Was it his charisma, communication skills or his captivating short-form videos? His high-profile endorsements or his clothing style? These elements were said to have contributed to Zohran Mamdani’s record-setting success in New York’s June mayoral primary.
But another major factor in his win may have been his ties to the local chapter of the Democratic Socialists of America (DSA).
Known for its endorsement of the Vermont independent senator and socialist Bernie Sanders’s run for president, as well its role in electing the New York congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, the group has re-energized US left political movements in recent years, even while eliciting critique and fear from conservatives and some Democrats.
Related: As food prices rise, Mamdani wants public grocery stores in New York. Can it work?
In Mamdani’s campaign, a stunning 60,000 volunteers knocked on 1.6m doors across New York City, home to 3.6m housing units. The effort reportedly led to conversations with a quarter of all New Yorkers who voted in the primary.
Though the campaign has not yet released data showing how many of those volunteers were mobilized by NYC-DSA itself, Gustavo Gordillo, a co-chair of the chapter, says his organization turned out thousands. Though other organizations, such as the grassroots political group Drum Beats, also brought out volunteers, he said the chapter had an “unparalleled field operation in New York City”.
“New York City DSA formed the heart of the field team,” he said.
But the road ahead for Mamdani, who is a state assemblymember, may still be bumpy. Mainstream Democrats have been slow to embrace the democratic socialist, who ran on universalist material policies like a rent freeze and fast and free buses.
In the past, centrists and conservatives have defeated DSA primary winners in elections that looked eminently winnable, such as India Walton in the 2021 Buffalo mayoral race. And rightwingers have already launched heavy smear campaigns against Mamdani, with polls showing the race could be tight. Fellow Democrat and former New York governor Andrew Cuomo, whom Mamdani defeated, switched to an independent party run just to stay in the game, and incumbent Eric Adams is vying to keep his seat.
The Democratic strategist Hank Sheinkopf, a centrist, said: “Mamdani’s primary victory in the nation’s cultural financial and media capital is the greatest challenge faced by traditional Democrats in more than 50 years.
“The future for the Democrats is unclear,” he said.
Asked if mainstream Democrats should embrace the young socialist, he said much of the base the party needs to energize to win elections in New York and elsewhere is moving to the right, and “will not accept” a socialist.
Even so, NYC-DSA says it is ready for the battle, and if Mamdani wins, it could catapult the group from the sidelines to the center of the party.
“The opposition is in total disarray right now [and] their fragmentation is only going to be a source of weakness,” said Gordillo. “We’re ready to mount an offensive campaign that replays a lot of what succeeded in the primary with the army that we’ve amassed.”
Electing socialists
When formed in 1982, DSA had 6,000 members nationwide; that number grew modestly over the next 25 years. Then, in the mid-2010s, in the wake of democratic socialist Sanders’s run for president – and Donald Trump’s subsequent 2016 presidential victory – membership began to soar.
Today, DSA boasts 80,000 members who oppose capitalism and advocate for the public ownership and democratic control of key sectors and resources such as healthcare, and the shift of power to workers from corporations.
Though socialism was once a dirty word in the US, especially after crackdowns on socialists and communists in the 1950s, more than half of young Americans hold a positive view of it today, according to the rightwing Cato Institute thinktank.
Though DSA factions have often sparred over the role elections and endorsements should play in the movement, the group has increasingly entered the sphere in recent years. The national group is supporting candidates in municipal elections from Ithaca, New York, to Atlanta, Georgia, with local chapters backing additional candidates in Boston’s mayoral race, council runs in Richmond, California, Detroit, Michigan, and others. In Minneapolis, a DSA-backed mayoral candidate, state senator Omar Fateh won his primary this month, ; unlike Mamdani, Fateh has also won endorsement from local party officials.
The New York City chapter, now home to 10,000 members, began prioritizing elections in 2017, creating an electoral working group. Since then, it has secured two New York City council seats and six New York state assembly seats, including Mamdani’s, which he has held since 2020. Another 250-plus DSA-backed officials hold office nationwide, including progressive “Squad” democrats in Congress: Rashida Tlaib and Greg Casar, and Chicago’s mayor, Brandon Johnson.
NYC-DSA employs a methodical volunteer model for each of its endorsed candidates. It has also been highly selective about who it chooses to support.
“You have to go speak to multiple branches of the chapter, talk to the electoral working group, go through multiple rounds of votes within DSA,” said the DSA-backed New York state senator Jabari Brisport, who represents a Brooklyn district.
The robust endorsement pays off, Brisport said. “When you’re running with a DSA endorsement, you really have a whole operation of dedicated volunteers who want to advance socialism,” he said. “They help with everything from field organizing to comms to fundraising.”
For NYC-DSA, electoral campaigns are not only focused on single candidates but also on building support for their movement, said Phara Souffrant Forrest, another DSA state assemblymember from Brooklyn.
“When DSA campaigns for a candidate … we’re organizing their district around shared values like housing justice, healthcare for all and workers’ rights,” she said.
The chapter does not use paid canvassers, though Mamdani’s campaign hired roughly 50 for specialized outreach.
“Our main asset, which money can never buy, are volunteers who are passionate, who feel ownership over a campaign because the win would be personal for them,” said Sarahana Shrestha, a DSA assemblymember representing a south-eastern New York district.
Her campaign brought in many voters who had otherwise “given up on electoral politics”, she said. DSA members appeared to do the same in the mayoral primary, mobilizing thousands of new voters.
‘Cadre candidates’
Some DSA endorsees – such as Ocasio-Cortez, who the group supported in her 2018 campaign – receive DSA backing upon request once they have launched their campaigns. Others, like Mamdani, are “cadre candidates” who have strong pre-existing ties to the organization and are recruited by and from the chapter.
Since joining NYC-DSA in 2017, Mamdani has been deeply involved with the organization, helping lead other electoral campaigns and working closely with the chapter on his successful 2020 assembly run.
Once in office, Mamdani became an integral part of NYC-DSA’s socialists in office committee, designed to facilitate chapter communications with elected socialists. Today, many of his staffers are chapter leaders. And when launching his mayoral campaign, “he said that he would not run at all if he did not receive our endorsement,” the NYC-DSA organizer Michael Thomas Carter wrote in Drop Site News.
“While the coalition that coalesced around his campaign was much broader than NYC-DSA, in this very direct sense our organization is responsible for his mayoral run,” he wrote.
This commitment to the chapter has been a throughline in Mamdani’s career, said Gordillo.
“He’s been really tested to learn how to exercise leadership while also being accountable to a base, because he’s done that in DSA pretty often,” he said.
Mamdani has championed some NYC-DSA campaigning efforts he did not pioneer, such as the successful fight for a bill to expand publicly owned renewable energy, which Gordillo helmed. But he has been a leader on other initiatives, such as the “Not on Our Dime!” bill, which aims to pressure Israel to follow international law and on which he was the lead sponsor. (Ending US support for Israel’s military is a key issue for DSA, whose national organization ended its support for Ocasio-Cortez and former New York congressman Jamaal Bowman over insufficient support for the issue.)
That back-and-forth has continued through the mayoral campaign, with the chapter’s political operatives also helping him make connections and shape his platform.
“He met with our Labor Working Group a lot to learn more about what were the top demands for different unions where we have a lot of member density,” said Gordillo, who is a union electrician by day.
Transformative change
Mamdani won more votes than any other mayoral candidate in New York City primary election history. Brisport said that’s a testament not only to the power of NYC-DSA’s organizational skills, but also to the popularity of their political values.
“Clearly there is something in the air that is shifting, because open socialists are running for office and winning, showing that our ideas are good, workable things that people actually need,” he said.
Mamdani’s embrace of the democratic socialist label has been a boon for NYC-DSA, with about 4,000 members joining since he launched his mayoral campaign. It will also be a test for the chapter and for American socialism.
Related: Mamdani’s win signifies hope and a political voice for Muslim Americans
“Zohran ran as an open democratic socialist and the billionaire class, the most powerful forces in the world and in the city, are aligning against him,” Gordillo said. “They will be finding every moment to amplify anything that they can say is a mistake or a failure, and because he ran in a way that was so tied to the movement, I think that any of his shortcomings will also be attributed to us.”
The chapter is now preparing to mobilize volunteers around the general election, but also organizing to support Mamdani’s key policies like a proposal to increase taxes on the rich. The organization is prepared to hold Mamdani accountable to socialist values, but also to communicate his successes to the public, said Gordillo.
“We will make sure that the billionaire class and corporate interests can’t just fearmonger about him, or hide it when he fulfills his campaign promises,” he said.
“The fate of the left in New York rests on the success of the Mamdani administration, so ensuring that there is a successful mayoralty is going to have to become our top priority.”
