The extent to which DSA basically embarrassed the WFP by showing what discipline looks like on an electoral level despite being basically dead up until a decade ago is incredible.
"The opaqueness of WFP’s endorsement process extends to national politics: after endorsing Elizabeth Warren over Bernie Sanders, the party drew extended scrutiny for refusing to release the vote totals of rank-and-file members. Even now, Sanders is closely associated with DSA, while Warren is synonymous with WFP."
I'm glad you mentioned this. When I have observed left spaces, this is often cited as the cardinal sin that proved that the WFP was fundamentally not a democratic organization, as it chose to split the left-wing vote despite a majority of their members preferring to back the more popular and more consistent candidate.
As Matt Bruenig put it back in 2019: "Warren got anywhere from 22 to 40 percent of the member vote. This further means that 82 to 100 percent of the WFP leadership voted for Warren. This is the stark split they don’t want to reveal but are nevertheless very incompetent at hiding." https://jacobin.com/2019/09/working-families-party-elizabeth-warren-endorsement
I still think people are waiting for contrition about this incident before any sort of reproachment, at least here on the West Coast.
The Working Families Party had the move and missed it. In 2022, WFP could have gone nuclear. Run Jumaane Williams as the real left-wing alternative. Split the Democratic coalition. Let Lee Zeldin walk through the wreckage. Push Hochul into political oblivion. Blow up the Albany patronage pipeline at the Board of Elections. Take the No. 2 ballot line. Force every progressive, every union operator, every nonprofit climber, every ambitious leftist, and every Democratic insurgent to come crawling to WFP as the new center of gravity.
That was the trade: four years of Republican rule in exchange for destroying Hochul, wrecking the Democrat machine, and becoming the indispensable progressive ballot line heading into 2026. Mamdani and AOC would have needed WFP. The institutional left would have needed WFP. Albany would have feared WFP.
(And as a bonus, Jerry Kassar would have watched the Conservative Party get shoved down to the D line, turning his ballot-line empire into a basement apartment and sending him softly into the political night.)
Instead, WFP chose caution. And if ifs were a fifth, we would all be drunk.
Now the future belongs to DSA. Lange’s piece makes that brutally clear. Antonio Reynoso has labor, local roots, boroughwide experience, Nydia Velázquez, and the old progressive establishment. In another era, he walks into NY-7. But this is not that era. Claire Valdez has Zohran Mamdani and NYC-DSA. That is now enough to make Reynoso the underdog in his own political backyard.
That is the whole story of succession. WFP tilled the soil. DSA is harvesting the crop. WFP built the anti-establishment lane, but DSA learned how to drive faster, louder, younger, and meaner. The WFP model became nonprofit staff, weighted endorsement councils, foundation money, opaque process, paper endorsements, and aging progressive brands. DSA became members, doors, discipline, memes, field operations, candidate charisma, and a mayor who now functions as the left’s biggest political weapon.
WFP is still useful. It has a ballot line. It can spend money. It can coordinate. It can help campaigns. But it is no longer the feared left-wing kingmaker in New York. It is a second fiddle, third-party line status. DSA is the movement. Mamdani is the avatar. AOC is the national signal. The institutionalist enclaves are crumbling one by one.
The WFP had a chance to trade short-term pain for long-term dominance. It blinked. Now it gets to watch the socialists inherit the machine it once hoped to command.
How is this an "if"? We don't have to imagine this because the Working Families Party DID run Jumaane as a "real left-wing alternative" to Kathy Hochul in 2022... and he got crushed!
If you know anything about campaigns, you’ll know the difference between running and what Jumaane did - particularly after the political quid pro quo. Either you know nothing about campaigns, or you’re a Hochul HACK.
2022 was an incredibly hostile year for leftist primary campaigns. NYC-DSA ran 7 insurgent candidates that cycle and 5 of them lost. Do you have any actual reason to believe Jumaane could have outperformed all of them and run a credible third-party campaign against Kathy Hochul, besides this fantasy you've concocted in your head?
Point one you just made. Hostile primaries translate into entire party wings staying home or getting behind the insurgency.
Point two is Kooky Kathy and her old white ass. Jumaane would have been targeting the Black vote and the progressives, forming a coalition. Kathy can't hold that, even now.
The campaign would have been more than credible. Republicans would have won the A line. Dems might have kept B, but might not have. Conservatives would definitely be on the D line. It would have been good political math. I'm sorry you can't count.
You must really love Kathy. Let me ask, is your last name Crangle?
Yes, but my point is that we have pretty clear evidence for how Jumaane would have done as a left wing challenger to Kathy Hochul in 2022: Not well! If he got less than 20% of the Democratic primary vote, then it's hard to imagine him making enough of a dent in a general election to even successfully be a spoiler.
It is common to, as this piece does, attribute the growth of NYC-DSA to Bernie Sanders' 2016 campaign. Certainly that campaign played a big role, but the real swelling of DSA's membership came after Trump won the first time. And after Trump won the second time, NYC-DSA went from what the author calls its "lowest point" in 2024 to its biggest success yet, winning the 2025 mayoral election. In other words, for all of NYC-DSA's success, it's pretty clear that its biggest electoral weapon is backlash to the Trump Administration.
“If it was just me and Claire and Zohran didn’t endorse her, we’re not even having this conversation,” Reynoso told The New York Editorial Board. “It’s over." *facepalm*
This is the same Antonio Reynoso whose campaign last year accepted “thousands of dollars” from real estate-linked contributors after he had promised NOT to take money from that sector?
What I really found fascinating was the mention in his interview that this all could have been avoided had Julia chosen to run
The extent to which DSA basically embarrassed the WFP by showing what discipline looks like on an electoral level despite being basically dead up until a decade ago is incredible.
"The opaqueness of WFP’s endorsement process extends to national politics: after endorsing Elizabeth Warren over Bernie Sanders, the party drew extended scrutiny for refusing to release the vote totals of rank-and-file members. Even now, Sanders is closely associated with DSA, while Warren is synonymous with WFP."
I'm glad you mentioned this. When I have observed left spaces, this is often cited as the cardinal sin that proved that the WFP was fundamentally not a democratic organization, as it chose to split the left-wing vote despite a majority of their members preferring to back the more popular and more consistent candidate.
As Matt Bruenig put it back in 2019: "Warren got anywhere from 22 to 40 percent of the member vote. This further means that 82 to 100 percent of the WFP leadership voted for Warren. This is the stark split they don’t want to reveal but are nevertheless very incompetent at hiding." https://jacobin.com/2019/09/working-families-party-elizabeth-warren-endorsement
I still think people are waiting for contrition about this incident before any sort of reproachment, at least here on the West Coast.
Good article but I want to offer a correction, Lander was a member of DSA until 2023
The Working Families Party had the move and missed it. In 2022, WFP could have gone nuclear. Run Jumaane Williams as the real left-wing alternative. Split the Democratic coalition. Let Lee Zeldin walk through the wreckage. Push Hochul into political oblivion. Blow up the Albany patronage pipeline at the Board of Elections. Take the No. 2 ballot line. Force every progressive, every union operator, every nonprofit climber, every ambitious leftist, and every Democratic insurgent to come crawling to WFP as the new center of gravity.
That was the trade: four years of Republican rule in exchange for destroying Hochul, wrecking the Democrat machine, and becoming the indispensable progressive ballot line heading into 2026. Mamdani and AOC would have needed WFP. The institutional left would have needed WFP. Albany would have feared WFP.
(And as a bonus, Jerry Kassar would have watched the Conservative Party get shoved down to the D line, turning his ballot-line empire into a basement apartment and sending him softly into the political night.)
Instead, WFP chose caution. And if ifs were a fifth, we would all be drunk.
Now the future belongs to DSA. Lange’s piece makes that brutally clear. Antonio Reynoso has labor, local roots, boroughwide experience, Nydia Velázquez, and the old progressive establishment. In another era, he walks into NY-7. But this is not that era. Claire Valdez has Zohran Mamdani and NYC-DSA. That is now enough to make Reynoso the underdog in his own political backyard.
That is the whole story of succession. WFP tilled the soil. DSA is harvesting the crop. WFP built the anti-establishment lane, but DSA learned how to drive faster, louder, younger, and meaner. The WFP model became nonprofit staff, weighted endorsement councils, foundation money, opaque process, paper endorsements, and aging progressive brands. DSA became members, doors, discipline, memes, field operations, candidate charisma, and a mayor who now functions as the left’s biggest political weapon.
WFP is still useful. It has a ballot line. It can spend money. It can coordinate. It can help campaigns. But it is no longer the feared left-wing kingmaker in New York. It is a second fiddle, third-party line status. DSA is the movement. Mamdani is the avatar. AOC is the national signal. The institutionalist enclaves are crumbling one by one.
The WFP had a chance to trade short-term pain for long-term dominance. It blinked. Now it gets to watch the socialists inherit the machine it once hoped to command.
How is this an "if"? We don't have to imagine this because the Working Families Party DID run Jumaane as a "real left-wing alternative" to Kathy Hochul in 2022... and he got crushed!
If you know anything about campaigns, you’ll know the difference between running and what Jumaane did - particularly after the political quid pro quo. Either you know nothing about campaigns, or you’re a Hochul HACK.
2022 was an incredibly hostile year for leftist primary campaigns. NYC-DSA ran 7 insurgent candidates that cycle and 5 of them lost. Do you have any actual reason to believe Jumaane could have outperformed all of them and run a credible third-party campaign against Kathy Hochul, besides this fantasy you've concocted in your head?
No primary. We're talking a general.
Point one you just made. Hostile primaries translate into entire party wings staying home or getting behind the insurgency.
Point two is Kooky Kathy and her old white ass. Jumaane would have been targeting the Black vote and the progressives, forming a coalition. Kathy can't hold that, even now.
The campaign would have been more than credible. Republicans would have won the A line. Dems might have kept B, but might not have. Conservatives would definitely be on the D line. It would have been good political math. I'm sorry you can't count.
You must really love Kathy. Let me ask, is your last name Crangle?
https://youtu.be/5BD4TNLf9Z8?si=hz21ZdsjTyn5bGs9
Kathy Hochul appeared on the November ballot under the WFP line.
Yes, but my point is that we have pretty clear evidence for how Jumaane would have done as a left wing challenger to Kathy Hochul in 2022: Not well! If he got less than 20% of the Democratic primary vote, then it's hard to imagine him making enough of a dent in a general election to even successfully be a spoiler.
It is common to, as this piece does, attribute the growth of NYC-DSA to Bernie Sanders' 2016 campaign. Certainly that campaign played a big role, but the real swelling of DSA's membership came after Trump won the first time. And after Trump won the second time, NYC-DSA went from what the author calls its "lowest point" in 2024 to its biggest success yet, winning the 2025 mayoral election. In other words, for all of NYC-DSA's success, it's pretty clear that its biggest electoral weapon is backlash to the Trump Administration.
“If it was just me and Claire and Zohran didn’t endorse her, we’re not even having this conversation,” Reynoso told The New York Editorial Board. “It’s over." *facepalm*
This is the same Antonio Reynoso whose campaign last year accepted “thousands of dollars” from real estate-linked contributors after he had promised NOT to take money from that sector?
Couldn't be.