The Democratic Party‘s centrist wing is escalating its fight against the Democratic Socialists of America, with the think tank and advocacy organization Third Way launching a $15 million campaign to blunt the socialist movement’s growing influence ahead of the 2028 presidential race.
Third Way is planning to fund public opinion research, opposition research, digital advertising, and outreach to activists and influential party figures to counter the DSA’s growing influence and prevent it from becoming synonymous with the Democratic Party’s brand.
“It’s imperative to us that this is just not a faction within the Democratic Party that we can appease,” Kate deGruyter, a senior vice president at Third Way, told the Washington Examiner. “The party cannot be associated with these kind of far-left radical ideas and stances.”
The initiative follows Abdul el Sayed’s victory over Rep. Haley Stevens (D-MI) in Michigan’s Democratic Senate primary, a race widely viewed as a proxy battle between the establishment and its ascendant progressive wing. While el Sayed’s victory was narrower than many expected, it nevertheless marked one of the movement’s biggest wins in a battleground state. It also heightened concerns among centrists that socialists are building momentum beyond the country’s bluest cities. Michigan’s importance is only magnified by its place near the front of Democrats’ 2028 presidential nominating calendar, raising the stakes for a party already looking ahead to its next presidential contest.
Michigan was hardly the only sign of progressive momentum. Democratic voters recently elected socialist Janeese Lewis George as mayor of the District of Columbia, while DSA-backed Los Angeles City Councilwoman Nithya Raman advanced to the general election in the city’s mayoral race. In Colorado, socialist Melat Kiros unseated nearly 30-year incumbent Rep. Diana DeGette (D-CO) in one of the year’s biggest primary upsets, while Tuesday’s primaries saw state Rep. Donavan McKinney defeat Rep. Shri Thanedar (D-MI). Not every progressive prevailed, however. Former Rep. Cori Bush fell short in her bid to reclaim her Missouri House seat despite backing from a local DSA chapter.
DeGruyter argued Republicans have successfully used the DSA’s most progressive positions to define the broader Democratic Party, leaving Democrats with an image problem among swing voters.
“We’ve seen a rise of the Democratic Socialists of America in a number of different races over the last year, and their aim is very clear,” she said. “They want to be a dominant force in national politics, and we believe that presents a mortal threat to Democrats’ ability to win in the red and purple places that make majorities.”
She pointed to the 2024 election as evidence that many voters viewed Democrats as more ideologically extreme than Republicans.
“What we had seen back in 2024 is that far too many voters, when they looked at the race between Trump and Harris, still thought that it was Democrats that were more extreme than Republicans,” deGruyter said.
Third Way’s effort is not aimed at defeating any one candidate, deGruyter said, but at reshaping the debate inside the Democratic Party before the 2028 presidential race begins.
“It’s really this kind of elite ecosystem where the DSA has become incredibly influential,” she said. “If we’re going to stop that from becoming synonymous with the Democratic Party, we’ve really got to meet and counter why those are ideas that are going to fail us in this effort to be able to win back power.”
She said the organization hopes the initiative will shape not only this year’s midterm elections but also the Democratic presidential primary that follows.
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“Getting this right now matters because we’ve seen time and again embracing some of these extreme positions early on can be incredibly damaging, not just in the primary but far down the line,” deGruyter said. “Voters are smart, and somebody who tries to do a huge about-face is not going to be perceived as somebody who is true and trustworthy.”
The next major test comes next week in Wisconsin, where state Rep. Francesca Hong, a socialist from Madison, is competing in the Democratic gubernatorial primary in another closely watched battleground state.