At our 2025 national convention, the Democratic Socialists of America adopted new, concrete criteria that candidates for elected office must meet in order to receive a national endorsement. These criteria are a step forward in moving our organization to prioritize candidates who are clearly committed to building the socialist movement.
Yet our National Electoral Commission Steering Committee (NEC SC), which handles the logistics of our endorsement process and recommends a result to the National Political Committee (NPC), is pushing forward endorsement recommendations that don’t consistently meet these criteria.
The criterion causing the most controversy in the endorsement debates on the NEC and the NPC is that the candidate or campaign openly and proudly identify with DSA and socialism. For example, do a candidate’s websites and social media clearly identify them as democratic socialists or do they use progressive buzzwords and downplay or completely avoid the socialist label?
The convention resolution was clear that the new criteria would result in DSA being more selective in our endorsements, which would allow for the NEC to more meaningfully intervene and support endorsed campaigns. Yet we are still endorsing a lot of candidates and aren’t leaning on our own clear criteria to focus us. As of June 2026, the NPC has already endorsed 21 campaigns this year — as many as we endorsed in all of 2025. This is a large number of campaigns even for a midterm election year. Many of these campaigns were endorsed through a rushed process and do not meet the standard set by our new national endorsement criteria.
Two examples of campaigns nationally endorsed this year that, from our point of view, do not meet these standards are Athens Area DSA’s mayoral candidate and NC Triangle DSA’s Carrboro Town Council candidate. The front pages of these websites lack prominent socialist labels or DSA branding, and the only reference to the candidate being a democratic socialist is limited to a small font and/or in the “about the candidate” section. While they appear serious and viable, they do not meaningfully present themselves as DSA campaigns. Contrast this with Portland DSA’s State Representative campaign and Rhode Island DSA’s Assembly campaign that integrate socialism and DSA throughout their sites and public communications.
More endorsements mean that the NEC can provide less material support for each campaign. Why has our DSA leadership not been able to follow through on upholding our new criteria? One reason may be a fear of “rejecting” chapters who we know are working hard on their campaigns. As electoral leaders in DSA, we should encourage chapters to see rejection of a national endorsement as an opportunity to improve rather than as a failure. A chapter’s campaigns might not be endorsed for a variety of reasons: they could still be developing their electoral skills and strategy and may need additional support or mentorship from DSA electoral staff, NEC members, or similar chapters who have successfully run nationally endorsed campaigns. Or their campaign may be out of step with the goals of national DSA.
Whatever the reason, the NEC should be explicit with chapters about why their campaign was not endorsed and support them to improve so their next campaign will meet the new standards. The campaign examples shared above absolutely have the ability to meet those standards, and could have, through direct collaboration with the NEC. In fact, we have worked with many campaigns to get them where they need to be to earn an endorsement. But if we aren’t communicating these standards and being consistent in enforcing them, campaigns will be less likely to meet them. Collaboration between the chapter and the NEC well in advance of starting the endorsement process can help the chapter proactively get the campaign to where it needs to be. These culture shifts and understanding may take time, but they are doable and straightforward.
Theories of Change
Another reason for endorsing candidates that don’t meet our criteria may be disagreement within DSA about our theories of change, or how we believe we will win socialism. That scenario is not as simple. Let’s dig into it.
As a big tent organization, DSA members all agree that we must organize the working class to win socialism. Our disagreements lie in how our electoral work can help us do that and what it would take for the working class to build socialism. Some tendencies in DSA believe that organizing the working class means electing enough democratic socialists to office to reform our governmental policies and build momentum for socialism from the inside.
As Bread & Roses members, we believe that winning elections in a capitalist society is not the same as taking state power. Our theory of change clearly places an organized working class, primarily organized in the workplace where workers have the most power, as the agents of change. We see electoral work primarily as a means to build the socialist movement through socialist electoral campaigns that fiercely agitate against capitalism and facilitate working class organization.
Running socialist electoral campaigns will bring more working class people into DSA, which will eventually help us build an organized mass movement capable of forcing elites to make concessions before ultimately removing them from power. As Bread & Roses members from Metro Detroit DSA argued in a recent article, DSA’s electoral work should be part of a broader strategy to organize the working class:
“[DSA] should focus our electoral work on creating our own party-like infrastructure so we can recruit and train socialist candidates from within our own ranks, who will think of themselves primarily as organizers of the working class, rather than purely as legislators.”
To that end, we see the primary role of the elected official once in office as establishing a clear democratic socialist pole in opposition to capitalists and political establishment elected officials. For example, Portland DSA holds four of the twelve seats on Portland City Council. This is not a majority capable of passing socialist reforms, let alone overhauling Portland government toward socialism, but our socialists in office there can and do act as the public opposition to the business lobby and mobilize Portlanders through ongoing campaigns like the fight against data centers. There may be real opportunities for socialists to work with fellow legislators to pass reforms that improve conditions for the working class. However, those legislative wins should never come at the expense of workers organizing for power.
An exciting, openly socialist electoral campaign has the power to galvanize working class individuals towards socialist politics — whether or not the candidate wins. The best example of this nationally is Bernie Sanders’ campaigns for president in 2016 and 2020. Bernie himself is not a member of DSA, but he openly identifies as a democratic socialist and DSA ran an Independent Expenditure campaign to organize our members to campaign for him and bring more of the working class into DSA. As a result, democratic socialism shot up in popularity. From election day in 2016 to May 2017, DSA membership grew from 8,500 to 21,000. By 2021, DSA had 93,000 members. This is why it is so important for our campaigns to openly identify with DSA and socialism.
Running to Win
Having a clear strategy and running to win is integral to building a serious political party. As is valuing the time and effort of volunteers, who will be less generous in dedicating their free time to a campaign that’s seen as unwinnable. However, this term’s NEC Steering Committee has valued perceived viability above other priorities, such as socialist identity and the ability to grow a chapter and develop new leaders through campaigns. Two nationally endorsed campaigns that show you can be both viable and unabashedly socialist are those of Jake Ephros, a Bread & Roses member, and Joel Brooks, a Socialist Majority Caucus member, who ran with a strong strategy to win and a very clear identification with democratic socialism. Both of them won their elections in the runoff for Jersey City Council. Roman Broszkowski outlined the ambitious scope of these efforts. Over the course of the election, the two campaigns “knocked 71,000 doors, supplemented by 122,000 phone calls. With the help of 422 canvassers, the campaigns had reached 15,000 people — more than one in six Ward B and D residents.”
An electoral campaign is one tactic to get socialist messages out. In the Brooks and Ephros example, it is very possible that almost 200,000 people in Jersey City saw the words “democratic socialism” on various campaign materials like printed literature or digital platforms, and hopefully learned more about it throughout the campaign cycle. If Brooks and Ephros hadn’t openly identified as democratic socialists, perhaps only 15,000 people would have learned about democratic socialism, the number of people they actually reached through conversations door-to-door and over the phone. That number would be even lower if the canvassers did not bring up their political ideology in every conversation.
We cannot change people’s minds about socialism or convince them to become socialists without being openly socialist ourselves and talking to other people about socialism. Socialist politics are popular and elections are an important opportunity to invite working class voters into our movement.
Beyond Blue States
To build the party DSA is committed to building, we will need to reach beyond reliable Democratic voters and be willing to experiment with outreach to low-propensity voters, a strategy that was key in electing Zohran Mamdani. For DSA, this means bringing our explicitly socialist message to voters outside of “safe” blue states.
Some tendencies in DSA will argue that differing local conditions should determine how much a candidate can emphasize socialist messaging, or that campaigns should focus on highlighting socialist policies that aren’t labeled clearly as socialist. We would argue that differing conditions could determine a campaign’s field strategy, the strategy for whom to contact, when and how, but that should not change whether or not the campaign uses socialist messaging. We message as socialists to help change people’s minds about socialism and to educate people on how socialism will solve the failures of capitalism that we are living every day. We have seen strong DSA candidates win all over the country, not just in liberal blue cities where it may be deemed safer to be an outspoken socialist. For example, Bread & Roses members JP Lyninger, Robert Levertis Bell, Richie Floyd, and Jesse Brown won their elections as explicit democratic socialists in Kentucky, Florida, and Indiana.
Whatever the race, whether or not a campaign meets our new endorsement criteria of openly identifying as a democratic socialist should be easy to assess. If we set out ten different election mailers on a table, the DSA candidates should stand out clearly from the progressive Democrats. It shouldn’t be confusing at all to differentiate DSA candidates, who ultimately want to replace capitalism with socialism, from Democrats who are selling out to corporate interests while pretending to fight for our rights. DSA candidates who receive a national endorsement should lead the way in showing how this is done.
