Socialist candidates are surging in a series of 2025 races as the fight for local office becomes a bellwether for the direction of the Democratic Party.
Progressive Democrats have outperformed expectations in the early 2025 election cycle, leading or winning party support for mayoral and other city races. The contests, in Democratic strongholds from Minneapolis to New York City to Seattle, suggest that voters are open to a radical departure from their party’s mainstream, with candidates promising socialist policies, including government-run grocery stores.
But the elections also signal that the candidates are capitalizing on an upswell in anger at their party establishment, which was swept out of power in the 2024 elections. In repeated surveys, the Democratic brand is facing decades-low approval ratings, while congressional leaders struggle to effectively challenge President Donald Trump.
At the national level, progressive Democratic symbols such as Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY) and Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT) are drawing large crowds as they travel for Sanders’s “Fight the Oligarchy” tour. Sanders is scheduled to be in West Virginia and North Carolina this weekend.
Democratic leaders are simultaneously being watched for how they handle Zohran Mamdani’s insurgent campaign. The self-proclaimed socialist is the Democratic nominee to become the next mayor of New York City. Mamdani has received backing from Sanders, Ocasio-Cortez, and their allies but lacks endorsements from top leaders such as Hakeem Jeffries (D-NY) and Chuck Schumer (D-NY), the minority leaders of the House and Senate, respectively.
Ocasio-Cortez has urged the party to support Mamdani, particularly after the New York Times reported Wednesday that Trump has spoken to former Gov. Andrew Cuomo, who is running an independent bid after losing to Mamdani in the primary.
Mamdani-aligned candidates perform well in primaries
Mamdani generated national headlines when he handily won the Democratic primary for New York City mayor back in June, defeating Cuomo, whose controversial term as governor limited his ballot performance. Mamdani’s win was a clear and, for some, surprising message, but his campaign is not the only one that is creating a matchup between centrists and progressives.
In Seattle, three centrist leaders are facing a slew of progressive Democratic challengers for mayor, city attorney, and council president positions. All three, considered moderates within their parties, were elected in 2021, and each is likely to face a progressive competitor in the runoff after Tuesday’s primary election.
In the mayor’s race, incumbent Bruce Harrell is facing progressive activist Katie Wilson. As of 4 p.m. Wednesday, preliminary results for Seattle’s primary have Wilson in first place with 47.97% of the vote, while incumbent Harrell came in second with 43.48%, per Fox 13 Seattle.
The state of Washington uses a top-two primary system, meaning the two candidates who receive the most votes will advance to the general election in November.
Harrell has the backing of Gov. Bob Ferguson (D-WA), local labor organizations, and several elected leaders. Wilson, the executive director of the Transit Riders Union, has the backing of local Democratic organizations and a handful of state legislators.
The mayor was already facing an uphill battle for another term, as Seattle hasn’t reelected a mayor in 20 years. Meanwhile, a similar situation is unfolding in Minneapolis.
The Minnesota Democratic–Farmer–Labor Party, a Democratic Party affiliate, endorsed socialist state Sen. Omar Fateh over two-term incumbent Mayor Jacob Frey at their convention in July. The city uses ranked choice voting, so there will be no primary, just the November general election.
The endorsement drew national attention, particularly as people began to connect Fateh and Mamdani and their socialist views. Fateh said the DFL’s endorsement is a “message that Minneapolis residents are done with broken promises, vetoes, and politics as usual.”
But the party’s endorsement is under scrutiny and being challenged by over 100 members of the DFL, including Frey. The challengers argue that there was an “extraordinarily high number of missing or uncounted votes” due to the new electronic voting system used at the DFL’s convention. A 60% majority is required to secure an endorsement, per convention rules.
“Only 578 votes were recorded in the mayoral ballot conducted using the electronic balloting system, despite the fact that over 1,000 delegates and alternates were checked in at the time of the first ballot,” Frey’s campaign said in a press release.
The DFL has pushed back against the complaints, according to ABC News affiliate KSTP. A hearing on the challenges is set for Aug. 17.
A socialist message performed well with Minnesota’s Democratic electorate as Sanders handily beat former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton in the 2016 caucuses. However, democratic socialists have never won statewide, with only a handful successfully securing a leadership position in cities such as Minneapolis.
If Fateh becomes mayor of Minneapolis, he will be working closely with the three proclaimed socialist members of the Minneapolis City Council.
Fateh’s agenda has been similar to that of his national socialist allies: a higher minimum wage, rent control, universal healthcare, and banning police from interacting with U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement as Trump continues to crack down on illegal immigration. In 2020, Fateh led legislation for tuition-free college for low-income students and higher wages for rideshare drivers, such as Uber.
The Washington Examiner reached out to Wilson and Fateh for comment.
Socialists become easy GOP target
The rise of progressive Democratic candidates has been giving Republicans a ready-made message that the Democratic Party is moving away from common sense and aligning with socialists and illegal immigrants instead of working for the everyday American.
Republicans also believe the success of people like Mamdani and Fateh aids the GOP argument that Democrats are out-of-touch with voters and haven’t learned the lessons of the 2024 election, when former Vice President Kamala Harris lost every single swing state to Trump and underperformed with critical voting blocs that former President Joe Biden had solidly under his wing in 2020.
Minneapolis GOP chairwoman Diane Napper told the Washington Examiner she thinks the rise in support for the Democratic Socialists of America and candidates like Fateh and Mamdani comes from a “lack of education” among supporters.
“They’re being promised all kinds of things, and they don’t understand what the consequences of those would be,” Nadder said in an interview. “We have several DSA members on our City Council currently, and right now, they’re looking at how they can tax the rich more, and how they can create government-run grocery stores, all the policies that don’t make sense in a capitalist society, for free society, I’ll say that.”
Nadder added that she sees a path in which Democrats and Republicans can come together and defeat DSA candidates, of which she believes their leadership in cities like Minneapolis would be “disastrous.”
“Some, not all of them, some Democrats, they just see Republican and they see red, you know, they see Trump, and there’s a lot of heat involved,” the chairwoman said. “But we know that there are Democrats who don’t want this socialism here in Minneapolis or anywhere else in the state or the country, for that matter.”
“If [Fateh] does become mayor, they’re going to have to make a decision,” Nadder added. “And I don’t know that they’re going to become Republicans, but I think they will be speaking out even more loudly than they have been. … So I do have hope that we can stave off the DSA. We just have to get the message out there, and we have to do it quickly.”
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Progressive Democrats have argued that following a centrist playbook didn’t work in the last election and that it is time for fresh, young blood in leadership, both at the state and congressional levels.
“The political establishment has too often missed the needs of working people, and that’s why you’re seeing authentic, progressive candidates succeed,” Fateh said in a statement to the Minnesota Star Tribune.