New York continues to be a hotbed for socialist organizing, even as the national tide turns against Democrats and daunting wedge issues, like rising crime, emerge for the broader left. New York City’s chapter of the Democratic Socialists of America is running a slate of five insurgent candidates and backing the reelection of incumbents who first won in 2018 and 2020. North of the city, in the Hudson Valley, another DSA-backed challenger has a strong chance to knock off a Democratic assemblyman who has held office for more than twenty years.

Even with DSA’s growing volunteer base and fundraising clout, this election could present serious challenges for the socialist organization. Since exploding in popularity in the wake of Bernie Sanders’s 2016 presidential campaign, DSA has become a significant force in New York politics, drawing the ire of power brokers who had traditionally determined the direction of most Democratic primaries. Each election cycle has brought new victories, as well as opportunities for DSA’s opponents to begin fighting, in earnest, against socialist power. Incumbent Democrats and their allies in the real estate industry and organized labor — the unions that reflexively support Democrats in power — no longer sleepwalk into campaigns against DSA. Slothful, Joe Crowley–like targets are harder to find.

Morphing from a marginal discussion group of aging leftists into a youth-driven electoral powerhouse in the span of five years is a remarkable achievement. In addition to helping to send Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Jamaal Bowman to Congress, DSA boasts two state senators, four state assembly members, and two New York City Council members. The DSA members in Albany behave as a voting bloc and exert pressure on progressive Democrats who don’t identify as socialist. DSA has successfully integrated into the larger activist infrastructure of New York politics, helping to empower a tenant movement that is no longer on the defensive.