On September 6, Bernie Sanders and Zohran Mamdani packed a public school auditorium in Brooklyn. When asked what to do to make their vision of politics successful, Zohran answered, “Join DSA.” As those paying attention to New York City and State politics know, Mamdani’s victory in the New York City mayoral primary did not emerge solely from a savvy media strategy and a likable candidate. Zohran proudly calls New York City Democratic Socialists of America (NYC-DSA) his political home, and we worked hand in hand to develop the campaign strategy, culture, and day-to-day execution to make him the mayor of the largest city in the United States.

Now New York City’s left finds itself in thrilling but unchartered waters. As Ralph Miliband reminds us, “electoral victory only gives one the right to rule, not the power to rule.” Our path forward, to governing in New York City, must build upon the electoral and co-governance strategy that NYC-DSA has been developing and refining for nearly nine years. We have a model for winning mass campaigns; we have a model for true co-governance with legislators; now we will bring our experience to city hall.

Mamdani became an active member of the NYC-DSA chapter in 2017, during a period of tremendous growth for our project. Inspired by the surprise success of Sanders’s socialist message in the 2016 Democratic primaries and hardened by Donald Trump’s harrowing victory, socialists and leftists across the country felt inspired and compelled to become a more effective force.

In New York City, NYC-DSA tested our theory that socialism could win by experimenting in two city council races in Brooklyn: Khader el-Yateem and Jabari Brisport. In both races, NYC-DSA organizers, including a young Mamdani, built independent field operations that recruited hundreds of unpaid, highly motivated volunteers. Though we lost both races, we learned that our model, which demands that volunteers be trusted with campaign leadership and strategy decisions, is highly scalable, and if the conditions are right, we can win.

That ethos has guided every NYC-DSA race, including Zohran’s initial race for state assembly in 2020. All eleven of our elected socialist officials (“socialists in office,” or “SIOs”) have won their seats thanks to the commitment to distributed leadership and invitation into strategic decision-making that our campaigns prioritize. As observers look to Zohran’s race to see the future of the Democratic Party, we know the reason he won and it is simple: trust the volunteers.

Unlike traditional, establishment campaigns, we intentionally identify, train, and elevate people who have the capacity, interest, and potential to lead canvasses themselves. These highly skilled field leads ensure canvassers are trained, manage canvass materials, and handle any on-the-ground issues or questions. Some field leads are brought into even higher-level strategy. Known as field coordinators, these volunteers manage other field leads and have input into key decisions about where, when, and how a campaign canvasses.

It would have been impossible for staff to personally manage the amount of canvassing that was happening. There were dozens of events every weekend; staff couldn’t physically be in all those places. So you have to train people.

And then you have to trust them.

There will be some mistakes. But traditional political campaigns do not have this trust. They don’t believe that regular people who are excited by a political movement can handle this level of responsibility, and as a result, they tell themselves: “field doesn’t scale in a citywide or statewide race.” That is true — if you don’t trust your volunteers.

Though canvassing is at the heart of every NYC-DSA campaign, this commitment to the political development and strategic acumen of our core volunteers expands beyond the field into other tactical areas, like communications, fundraising, and policy. Establishment campaigns and the professional political class want us to believe they have inimitable skills. NYC-DSA believes that everyday New Yorkers have the ability and power to run our own political operation, and Zohran’s campaign put that belief into action.

The breadth and excitement of the campaign also brought more organizations into this campaigning style. Organizations that have invested years into the political development and leadership of their members — like CAAAV: Organizing Asian Communities; DRUM – Desis Rising Up and Moving; Jews For Racial & Economic Justice (JFREJ); and United Auto Workers Region 9A — were able to seize this mentality and deeply activate their members on not only canvassing but campaign strategy.

A truly powerful political operation, however, goes beyond simply winning elections. We are not interested in simply electing politicians who self-identify as socialists and relying on their individual principles to guide them to the right choices. Individuals falter — a stronger force is necessary to grapple with the complications of governing as socialists. So, in 2020, after five socialists won New York State legislative offices and joined State Senator Julia Salazar in Albany, we formed the Socialists in Office Committee (SIO); it would soon be joined by the City Socialists in Office Committee (CSIO) the following year.

These committees were designed to enable NYC-DSA to strategize alongside our elected officials. The elected officials and their staff meet with NYC-DSA leadership every week to share information, collectively choose priorities, and cohere on key votes. The primary purpose of this co-governance model is to enable an inside/outside strategy, where elected officials and staff with inside information and access can inform organizers on the outside about how they can best apply pressure to achieve our collective goals.

This strategy has been used to implement some of the most transformative state policy in the last decade, including tax increases on the wealthy in 2021 and the Build Public Renewables Act in 2023. Both efforts paired inside organizing and information-sharing with a robust outside pressure model, including canvassing in key legislators’ districts and holding citizen lobbying meetings.

The principle that guides our campaigns — that anyone can and should be empowered to control their political reality — is present in our SIO project. The NYC-DSA representation on the SIO committee is made up of elected, unpaid NYC-DSA members. DSA representatives on the committees are determined through internal elections, and any member could run for those spots. We do not treat working with elected officials as a sacred job, available only to political elites; it is a job for any serious organizer who wants to put the time and energy into our co-governance work.

Because of this, NYC-DSA’s SIO project is perhaps the most successful leftist governing project in the country. Though only a few years old and far from perfect, it has kept socialist elected officials connected to an organized base of activists and has helped insulate them from legislative leadership’s pressure tactics. A lone progressive may have all the right ideas, but when the speaker of the assembly threatens to cut money from their district and staff? Without an organized group to strategize with and rely on for support, it becomes all too appealing to make questionable compromises. This pattern helped solidify the Left’s long disillusionment with electoral politics, an orientation we are just beginning to move away from.

Through the later part of the twentieth century into the 2010s, the Left embraced a protest model. We were outsiders only, and our job was to apply pressure on the decision-makers. This model can result in some success but rarely has it resulted in sustained power. In some ways, being an outsider is more comfortable — you can focus solely on the demand and leave the messiness of implementation to those with power. But we all know remaining outsiders to policymaking power is insufficient to achieving any socialist goal within our lifetimes. The SIO projects make significant headway toward breaking the Left’s outsider orientation. NYC-DSA takes collective responsibility for both the success and failures of our socialist elected officials.