That was evident in last week\u2019s June 23 primary, which saw a new slate of elected officials swept in at the congressional and state levels<\/a>. As many as 15 candidates backed by the Democratic Socialists of America (DSA) claimed victory at the close of the polls on Election Night. <\/p>\n Mayor Zohran Mamdani, a democratic socialist himself, very strategically endorsed three fellow socialist candidates in congressional districts covering parts of Brooklyn, Lower Manhattan, Central and East Harlem, and the Bronx. All of them were victorious, with the biggest upset of the night being Darializa Avila Chevalier, a young \u201crevert\u201d Muslim and Afro-Latina, who ousted five-term incumbent Rep. Adriano Espaillat in the 13th Congressional District.<\/p>\n \u201cDemocrats eat their young. \u2026 They say wait your turn, wait your turn. Case and point, Charlie Rangel,\u201d said Christina Greer, a professor of Political Science at Fordham University and AmNews columnist, at a Citizens Union post-primary analysis event<\/a> on June 25. She has advised Mamdani\u2019s team on matters of race and politics. \u201cThere were people in the queue for 30 years waiting their turn and then there was a whole generation of Harlem competition who thought they\u2019d be somebody. Then along came Espaillat and it\u2019s a Latino district now.\u201d<\/p>\n Votehub data shows that Chevalier had white voters, younger voters, higher earners, college-educated voters, and about 55% of the vote in heavily Black precincts<\/a> in the primary over Espaillat in the race. Espaillat had 56% of \u201clower-income area\u201d voters and majority-Hispanic precincts<\/a>. For contrast, Brooklyn Borough President Antonio Reynoso had lower-income earners and 72% of the majority Black vote<\/a> in his race against Claire Valdez in the 7th congressional district, but still lost to the DSA candidate.<\/p>\n \u201cWe need protection against ICE. We need housing for people. We need equal rights for people. That message is starting to really land with voters,\u201d said Heba Khalil, state director for Emgage Action New York Metro Chapter, which is not a socialist organization but did support Chevalier. \u201cAnd thinking about what a historic moment this really is\u2026so I think it says a lot for Muslims, for Muslims of color.\u201d<\/p>\n Greer added that, \u201cEspaillat ignored Darializa to his own peril. He hasn\u2019t had serious challenges and is used to just cruising into reelection like so many elected officials.\u201d <\/p>\n Kyle Ishmael, the executive director of the Manhattan Democratic Party and a founding member of Back Chamber Consulting, was one of the driving forces behind Assemblymember Jordan J.G. Wright\u2019s reelection win in Assembly District 70 in Harlem, one of the few to survive this year\u2019s DSA sweep in the state primaries. <\/p>\n His opponent was DSA-backed challenger Conrad Blackburn<\/a>, who moved to the city in 2018 and became an outspoken criminal justice reform advocate. Wright won because he was a trusted \u201cbrand\u201d in the community, a native to the district with strong family and political ties, and at 31 years old, he is already a young \u201crising star\u201d with opportunity to grow, said Ishmael. He also advised the Mayor\u2019s team to largely stay out of the race in terms of official endorsements. <\/p>\n \u201cBy and large, what we saw in the election in the Democratic primary. \u2026 When Democrats fail to demonstrate who they are, then people look elsewhere. Success begets success. And the Dems have a void. The better question is where do Black folks fall on that political spectrum,\u201d said Ishmael.<\/p>\n He\u2019s not an \u201calarmist\u201d when it comes to the DSA organization as a whole, since there\u2019re always factions in a political party. But he takes issue with the recruitment process of a diverse candidate to appeal to Black voters. \u201cThroughout the course of the campaign, it was incredibly frustrating. \u2026 And I\u2019ll be frank, Conrad is with a bunch of white people and talking a good game about the history of Black socialists. It comes off \u2018holier than thou,\u2019 but you don\u2019t have the trust of the community,\u201d said Ishmael.<\/p>\n The Black vote historically hasn\u2019t always been homogeneous. In fact, the city has been home to people like Hubert \u201cFather of Harlem Radicalism\u201d Harrison<\/a>, who became the leader of the socialist party in 1911. He inspired historical Black figure and devout capitalist Marcus Garvey<\/a>, among others. But, even in his time period, people argued over whether socialism collectively benefited Black Americans, or centered on class and issues prevalent to white socialists. <\/p>\n NYC\u2019s Black and Brown socialists <\/p>\n The Bronx, in particular, has a groundswell of socialists born and raised in the city who are a part of DSA or other organizations. Some people said they want the government to look out for people, Medicare for All, fair housing, and a solution to the homelessness crisis. But being a Black socialist is not a monolith.<\/p>\n \u201cI don\u2019t think the color of my skin makes me a different type of socialist. I don\u2019t like being separated from socialism as a whole because of the color of my skin, if that makes any sense. Like socialism is socialism, we wanna help everybody,\u201d said New York Communities for Change\u2019s (NYCC) James Inniss<\/a>, a Bronxite, rising star in the DSA, and a friend to Blackburn and Mamdani. \u201cNow, I am a Black American man who grew up in a Black community, so my focus is going to be my community. \u2026 [But] We all want our rent freeze, we all want to tax the rich.\u201d<\/p>\n Inniss believes it is \u201csilly\u201d to expect people to wait their turn for public office, especially when issues are pressing and doing so can lead to a disconnect from the community they aim to represent. That being said, he definitely doesn\u2019t want to become \u201cthe mainstream\u201d or like a \u201cMAGA Republican bad guy.\u201d The point isn\u2019t \u201ctribalism\u201d to attain power, or make Mamdani a celebrity \u201ckingmaker,\u201d or just \u201cflexing\u201d on social media, he said, and he\u2019s warned his fellow socialists about this discourse. The plan is to make change at the state and federal level for everyone to thrive, he said.<\/p>\n Inniss said to the critique about recruiting candidates, that in the case of the Harlem race, the UAW labor union initially reached out to Blackburn before the DSA did to run against Wright but received very little attention. <\/p>\n Also based in the Bronx is the Party for Socialism and Liberation (PSL), a grassroots organization. Andre Easton, a native Bronxite and PSL member, is running in the 15th Congressional District race where incumbent Congressmember Ritchie Torres won his reelection in the Democratic primary. Easton adamantly supports the Palestinian cause and has anti-capitalist views. He doesn\u2019t have a DSA endorsement, and because his organization is a smaller operation, expects to lose to Torres in the general election. <\/p>\n \u201cI\u2019m a socialist in the shape of a Kwame Ture<\/a> Pan-Africanist, in the sense that I recognize that the duty of all Black people who seek to engage in revolutionary change is to build a movement,\u201d said Easton. \u201cThe thing that separates us from the DSA is that we are socialists and not Democrats. We do not believe this Democratic Party can be an effective vehicle for the change that not only Black people, but the working class in this country need.\u201d<\/p>\n Easton believes the Bronx is undeveloped politically, which the data supports because of abysmal voter turnout. He said that in a district of over 750,000 people, Torres got 23,531 votes.<\/a><\/p>\n \u201cThere\u2019s this idea that the Bronx or that poor people do not have the capacity to think about anything beyond their survival. And I think that that idea is inherently racist in the sense that when Black people were kidnapped from Africa and brought here, you were brought as mules as workers that were not meant to be thinking people,\u201d said Easton. \u201cAnd that\u2019s exactly how Democratic leadership has engaged us, as mules. That we are useful as voters, but not as political actors that have agency. \u2026 So it works in Ritchie\u2019s favor to have a low turnout.\u201d<\/p>\n New York City\u2019s Black Democrats<\/p>\n Many analysts pointed out that there was a low voter turnout in the primaries across the board<\/a>. This may be due to the fact that there were almost no citywide races and only a few competitive congressional district races. A total of 531,000 New Yorkers voted in this year\u2019s primary. For context, according to the city\u2019s Board of Elections (BOE)<\/a>, there were over 3 million active registered Democratic voters citywide as of February 2026.<\/p>\n \u201cAs human beings we\u2019re not turning up to the polls. You would think with the Callais case<\/a> in the Supreme Court and everything with the nation. I saw more people show up for the Knicks than the polls. All the cutbacks have taught us nothing,\u201d said Ny Whitaker, founder and chief strategist of PROJECT NYNE LLC. <\/p>\n Whitaker is not a particular fan of the DSA, but she thinks the struggle to engage voters is \u201cnot a Dem problem, it\u2019s an everybody problem. This is about our humanity and our democracy and no one deems it important to show up to the polls. It\u2019s larger than the Democratic Party.\u201d<\/p>\n Still, the response to the primary shake-up from prominent Black Democrats, like New York State Attorney General Letitia James<\/a> and former Democratic National Committee (DNC) Chair Jaime Harrison<\/a>, was disappointment with Mamdani\u2019s endorsements and less so about turnout. House Democratic Leader Hakeem Jeffries, who backed Espaillat and former U.S. Rep. Dan Goldman in the 10th congressional district, said that primaries for Congress are every two years and the reality is that there\u2019s a handful of incumbents who fall short. He claims it hasn\u2019t overly impacted his working relationship with Mamdani.<\/p>\n \u201cWe really have to move forward together on the governing side in an all-hands-on-deck fashion because we\u2019re dealing with a level of extremism that Donald Trump and the Republicans are unleashing on the American people that is unprecedented,\u201d said Jeffries on June 24 in an interview with MS NOW. \u201cI think we\u2019ve both been clear that we\u2019ve agreed to disagree on some of these endorsements.\u201d <\/p>\n Jeffries\u2019 position has been under the gun since last year <\/a>when Brooklyn Councilmember Chi Oss\u00e9, a 27-year-old DSA member, made his intentions to primary him. He ultimately didn\u2019t receive the backing of his own party<\/a> and dropped plans to run. <\/p>\n \u201cI was pro-Chi Oss\u00e9, I was in his kitchen cabinet trying to make that happen, to be perfectly honest with you. I think it was early, and I don\u2019t think what NYC DSA ended up being, a few days ago, was what they thought they were at that time. And I don\u2019t think they saw their strength was what it was,\u201d said Inniss about his regret on the situation. \u201cThe mayor\u2019s endorsement, we really didn\u2019t know how strong it was back then.\u201d <\/p>\n Inniss said that not just Black socialists or Black DSA members, but as a whole, DSA members after the primary have regretted voting \u2018no\u2019 to Oss\u00e9\u2019s congressional bid. But at the time in the forum, he said people felt like it couldn\u2019t happen. He said the political landscape has literally been changing rapidly over the last six months for socialists, who are traditionally used to losing in elections. \u201cWe\u2019re kind of used to getting a short end of the stick and that doesn\u2019t seem to be happening anymore,\u201d said Inniss about raising expectations. \u201cWe just have to catch up.\u201d<\/p>\n After the primary concluded, many progressives marked Jeffries as their next target with renewed fervor, booing and screaming, \u2018you\u2019re next.\u2019 Plenty of Black Democrats were outraged, while others understood why he was being targeted. <\/p>\n Barry Cooper, founder of The BRO Experience Foundation in Brooklyn, believes that Jeffries is in danger \u201cfor being naive.\u201d As an organizer and youth advocate in Bedford-Stuyvesant, Brooklyn, he\u2019s been involved with politics for several years and has concluded that he does not like DSA tactics. He feels that Black candidates in gentrified communities, like Assemblymember Stefani Zinerman, are targeted. Zinerman just lost her primary to DSA-backed candidate Eon Huntley<\/a> on June 23. <\/p>\n Cooper believes that keeping wealth in historically Black communities and curbing the trend of people leaving the city is rooted in pay parity, increased wages, and homeownership. He also takes issue with the international agenda taking precedent over local issues in state or city elections. \u201cThey have one message and no one veers from it. We don\u2019t know what a Democratic socialist is. They so left that they\u2019re right. MAGA don\u2019t give a damn, they say the talking points,\u201d said Cooper. \u201cAnd in the assembly it doesn\u2019t matter. They don\u2019t vote in Palestine or create legislation in Israel.\u201d<\/p>\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/07\/Analysis.jpg\")
The Citizens Union Foundation held a post-primary analysis at a bookstore in Manhattan on Thursday, June 25, 2026. (Ariama C. Long photo)<\/p>\n