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It’s been a banner year for the Democratic Socialists of America. The two most prominent democratic socialists in the country — Bernie Sanders and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez — are currently two of the country’s most popular politicians and, come next January, there is a very good chance that the largest city in the America will be governed by a card-carrying member of the DSA. Zohran Mamdani’s decisive Democratic primary victory in June appears to have inspired a wave of young people to sign up to run for office — as many as 10,000 of them, according to one report.
The enthusiasm for socialist politics comes at a moment when popular opinion of the mainstream Democratic Party has reached its nadir. Recent polling has indicated the party has its lowest approval ratings in more than three decades, and, adding insult to injury, amid President Donald Trump’s historic grifting spree, polls show voters in battleground states view Democrats as more corrupt than Republicans.
Democratic socialists will have an opportunity to capitalize on this moment when delegates convene in Chicago for the party’s biennial convention this weekend — if they can work through their own internal turmoil first. Because, as wildly successful as the last year has been for the DSA, it has also been messy.
Last January, the DSA was forced to lay off staff amid a seven-figure budget shortfall, a decision that (naturally, for a group that prides itself on supporting workers’ rights) was made after ugly internal bickering. At the same time, the group was also navigating increasingly acrimonious infighting over the correct way to calibrate the organization’s response to Israel’s exceedingly brutal war in Gaza.
There are currently more than 250 democratic socialists in office across 40 states —with 90 percent of those elected since 2019. That rapid growth had forced the organization to professionalize in ways both big and small. After the budget crisis, they’ve moved away from the old system where members mailed a physical membership check to their office once a year, to monthly, recurring payments tied to one’s income level. And the DSA Fund — the party’s nonprofit arm — has retained the services of at least one slick D.C. pro: Lauren Hitt, who was a spokesperson for Kamala Harris’ presidential campaign. (Hitt worked as AOC’s communications director before joining the Harris campaign.)
But even as the organization has grown, some are frustrated by what they see as major missed opportunities in the wake of the 2024 election — opportunities they say the group was ill-equipped to take advantage of because of infighting at the DSA National Political Committee (NPC), and because, post-layoffs, they simply lacked the manpower to respond.
This weekend in Chicago will be a chance for a reset: A new class of leaders will be elected to sit on the 16-person NPC. They will be responsible not just for the party’s day-to-day administration, but for acting as the organization’s voice.
Hanging over that vote is another of the biggest dust-ups in the last year, over the party’s endorsement of one of DSA’s most-high profile avatars: Ocasio-Cortez, the New York congresswoman.
Last July — after the local chapter of the DSA voted to endorse AOC in her re-election bid — the national political committee rescinded its own endorsement. In a statement announcing the decision, the committee wrote, “A national DSA endorsement comes with a serious commitment to the movement for Palestine and our collective socialist project. … To build a socialist movement that’s capable of defeating capitalism, we must demand more from leaders in our movement.”
Megan Romer — who was co-chair of the NPC when the body voted to rescind AOC’s endorsement, and who is up for re-election this year — says the decision itself wasn’t difficult. “I think it was difficult for us to deal with feeling AOC’s politics shifted, because she had been what attracted so many of us in the first place,” Romer says. “It’s like your best friend invites you to a party, and then your best friend’s really embarrassing at the party.”
But the NPC’s statement rankled members of the New York City chapter of DSA, who, chapter co-chair Grace Mausser explains, had undertaken “a fairly rigorous endorsement process, where every member who was in AOC’s district voted — and they voted overwhelmingly to re-endorse — andthe NPC was attempting to overturn that.”
NYC-DSA’s decision, she adds, was based on a number of factors, not just one, as the NPC’s was. While the chapter wasn’t aligned with the congresswoman on every issue, Mausser says it has nonetheless been “a fruitful partnership.”
“We’ve been able to build out a stronger base in the Bronx. We’ve been able to collaborate with her on fighting Trump, on protecting Medicaid, and the fact remains that, second to Bernie, she is one of the most popular politicians in the country — and she identifies openly as a democratic socialist,” Mausser says. “There is a lot for DSA to gain in working with her.”
The matter was resolved last year — the NYC-DSA maintained its endorsement of the congresswoman — but simmering tensions are likely to flare up at the convention, particularly in light of AOC’s recent vote against a measure that would have cut funding for Israel’s Iron Dome system. Both a resolution to formally censure AOC and to review her DSA membership over her alleged “tacit support for Zionism,” as well as a separate but similar motion to censure and review the membership of the popular Los Angeles City Councilwoman Nithya Raman, will be considered at this weekend’s convention.
Such debates gesture at a larger tension between elements within DSA who want to build on the party’s recent electoral successes and build its legislative power, and others who are more interested in making sure the candidates the party supports embody all of DSA’s ideals —even if that means fewer DSA-affiliated politicians in office.
The motions to censure two of DSA’s highest-profile figures are among more than 100 resolutionsdelegates will vote on this weekend that will help chart the party’s course for the next two years. Among the more contentious resolutions is one that would change the rules around elections —allowing all DSA members, rather than just convention delegates, to vote in leadership elections — and several that will help shape the party’s orientation on Palestine.
Romer, for her part, is looking forward to holding these votes, regardless of the outcome. “It will be very helpful to have clarity from the membership on that because [as member of DSA leadership], a lot of times you’re trying to read tea leaves out of what was what was decided at convention. … And a lot happens in two years, right? The last convention was before October 7.”
The last convention was also before the biggest electoral victory for a socialist candidate in the U.S. in decades, and much of this weekend’s attention is likely to be focused on studying and sharing the lessons of Zohran Mamdani’s primary victory in New York.
“I’m really excited to be able to go to the convention, not just vote on things, but be able to share information and strategy and insight from what we learned being so involved in Zohran’s race with other chapters across the country,” Mausser says. “Zohran didn’t come from nowhere — he was an assembly member that DSA put into office in 2020. He organized with us. … We worked through tension with him, we worked through problems, we worked together on various initiatives, and that built the kind of closeness that you need to be able to build the trust to power that sort of mayoral campaign.”
She adds: “There are tensions and differences within DSA, and sometimes there’s conflict between an individual chapter and the national organization. But one of the reasons that that is so obvious and apparent is because we are committed to pretty radical democracy — especially for a political organization operating at the level we are.”
