The Democratic Party has a decision to make: Whether to embrace or reject a growing insurgent movement within itself — the Democratic Socialists.
Many people are viewing Tuesday night’s New York elections as a win for New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani.
Darializa Chevalier, Claire Valdez and Brad Lander, the three primary candidates endorsed by Mamdani, all won their respective Democratic primaries for the U.S. House in New York against their less progressive competitors — including two incumbent lawmakers.
The results have raised fresh doubts about whether the Democratic establishment can maintain its influence within the party. Peter Savodnik, a senior editor at The Free Press, said the national impact remains uncertain.
“There’s no doubt that there is an ascendant wing on the left that is now rapidly anti-American, anti-bourgeois, anti-Semitic, anti-progress, anti-technology, anti-everything that I think has defined American exceptionalism over the past two and a half centuries,” he told the Deseret News.
If New York suggests momentum for democratic socialism, Utah’s election night told a different story, and one that Savodnik believes is more in line with the majority of American Democrats.
The progressive Bernie Sanders-backed Nate Blouin lost in Utah’s only blue district to Ben McAdams, a seasoned politician who is seen as a moderate.
Utah Democrats chose someone who is willing to work across the aisle over ideological purity when they selected McAdams for the newly created 1st Congressional District.
“I think the great hope is that places like Utah lead and places like New York are then forced to fall into line,” he said.
Savodnik made the point that media and political observers often overlook what he called the “invisible majority” because those voters are less online and less vocal. Yet they are often the voters who decide elections.
Tensions within the Democratic Party
Positions embraced by the New York candidates in the progressive wing of the party include abolishing prisons, defunding law enforcement, granting voting rights to illegal immigrants, using taxpayer dollars to fund transgender treatments, expanding the U.S. Supreme Court and forgiving all student loans, per Fox News congressional correspondent Bill Melugin via X.
Deleted posts by Chevalier, who won the NY U.S. House 13 Democratic primary, include her saying the border should be abolished and that “Israel doesn’t exist,” calling the United States “a disgrace,” and using expletives to describe former President Joe Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris. (WARNING: Graphic language in link).
In another since-deleted post, she said, “I forgot to get napkins, so I just wiped my hand on the American flag behind me.”
Pennsylvania Dem. Sen. Jon Fetterman posted his disapproval of Chevalier, labeling her “Anti-Israel. Anti-America. Anti-Western Civilization.”
New York Attorney General Letitia James told CNN that she and other Democratic leaders are “disappointed” in Mamdani, reflecting an increasingly visible clash between establishment Democrats and those who are members of the Democratic Socialists of America, whose strategy centers on reshaping the party from within through primary elections.
Some of the candidates he endorsed “do not understand the politics of New York City, the cultural differences from district to district, who have not been part of the history and the struggle of some of these districts, and are relatively new to the body politic,” she said.
Following his loss, Blouin posted on X that he had joined the Democratic Socialists of America.
Savodnik compared the current situation of the Democratic Party and its directional decision to the challenges Republicans faced in 2015.
“The party has a decision to make, not all that dissimilar to the decision that was foisted on Republicans back in 2015 and 2016 with regard to MAGA,” he said.
“People who are not in power don’t play by the established rules, they do whatever they have to do to get power, and if that means taking over a sclerotic and drifting party that has forgotten why it exists, then great, that’s what they’re going to do,” Savodnik said.
He’s critical of the tactic some Democrats are taking, like former Democratic National Committee Chair Jaime Harrison, who on Tuesday said in an X post, “If you hate the Democratic Party, then please don’t run for our nomination,” and “focus on building the party you actually support.”
Savodnik said that Harrison misses the point entirely:
“The notion that somehow, a once powerful person, or sort of like a nominally powerful person inside the Democratic apparatus, is going to dissuade radicals from running and seizing power inside of his party is asinine.”
During a panel last August, DSA co-chair Ashik Siddique mentioned that some members of the organization see the trajectory as a “dirty break,” which means leveraging the Democratic Party as a host for their platforms until they break away, take over or are even “forced out.”
Utah or New York: Which is the outlier?
Savodnik sees New York as a warning sign and outlier to the “many, many young people and young families who are living outside of these hubs of discontent.”
“I think it would be a mistake to think that New York is somehow leading America in some radical direction. I think that remains very much up in the air,” he continued.
Where Savodnik says Utah may be closer to the national mood, Luke Lyman, an associate editor at the New York Post, says New York is more aligned to the future of the Democratic Party.
Lyman’s point was not that every city is like New York, but that successful campaign strategies — used by Mamdani and the candidates he endorsed— become national models. He argued that McAdams’ victory should not be interpreted as evidence that moderate Democrats are winning the ideological battle.
“I don’t think moderate Democrats can really take much comfort in the McAdams victory,” Lyman told the Deseret News. He views McAdams’ win as an exception created by local political conditions — not proof that the party nationally is moving back toward the center.
If Democratic Socialists keep notching wins across the country, candidates elsewhere will borrow the messaging, priorities, and campaign style, Lyman explained, “it wins until it stops winning.” And until then, the party’s ideological center of gravity will continue moving left, he said.