The Democratic Socialists of America have adopted a strategy to exploit the Democratic Party’s ballot access to boost their own candidates at the expense of incumbents, a plan which achieved remarkable success in New York City this week. 

The victory of two DSA-backed candidates and one former member delivered a shock to the Democratic Party establishment, which has begun to call for better policing of the party’s primaries against candidates who are only seeking to exploit it, not join it. 

“I say this with no ill will or animosity: if you hate the Democratic Party, then please don’t run for our nomination,” said Jaime Harrison, who served as the Democratic National Committee Chairman from 2021 to 2025. 

“Don’t use our resources. Don’t rely on our volunteers. Don’t use our infrastructure. Don’t ask Democrats to invest their time, money, and energy in your campaign,” he added. “Focus on building the party you actually support.”

The DSA – which calls for abandoning capitalism, defunding the police, and nationalizing key industrial sectors – has long publicly stated its intent to do just that. 

Ahead of the New York City primary elections on Tuesday, NYC DSA Co-Chair Gustavo Gordillo explained that his party is using the Democrats to access the ballot, but aims to achieve a fundamentally different agenda. 

Merely a "ballot access vehicle"

“We’re on the Democratic Party ballot line. We contest the primaries, and when they’re in the legislature, they’re part of the Democratic Party caucus, but we don’t agree with the way the Democratic Party establishment organizes or runs its party apparatus,” he told Spectrum News in an interview. 

Gordillo was rather open about taking advantage of Trump-hating Democrats. In a clip on X, he said:"We’re using the Democratic Party as a ballot-access vehicle, not because we share its goals [...] We build our own organization, get elected under the Democratic label, caucus with Democrats when it’s useful, and push our own agenda from the inside."

“I think in terms of the agenda, there’s a problem in the Democratic Party where they are funded by billionaire donors, and at the same time, they’re trying to represent the working class, and in our opinion, you have to choose between the billionaire class and the working class,” Gordillo said. “It’s just impossible to satisfy all of them.” 

The DSA is currently running a strategy known as the “dirty break”– “where DSA continues to run candidates on the Democratic Party’s ballot line, while building the infrastructure and base of supporters necessary to one day run our candidates independently,” as described by the party’s youth wing. 

The "dirty break" approach

Various forms of the strategy have been referenced in party resolutions since 2019, when the party first defined it as a key goal: “to form an independent working-class party, but for now, this does not rule out DSA-endorsed candidates running tactically on the Democratic Party ballot line.”  

The party’s youth wing, the Young Democratic Socialists of America, identified the strategy by name in 2022, adopting a resolution at its convention that year. “Therefore, be it also resolved that YDSA is committed to, within DSA and on the left in general, a bold and transformative ‘dirty break’ approach to elections and electoralism,” according to convention documents.   

The youth wing argues that the success of Rep. Rashida Tlaib, who was elected as a Democrat in Michigan’s 13th Congressional District in 2018 (she now represents the 12th after redistricting), has proven that the “dirty break” strategy is a viable one. “Tlaib often acts as a tribune of the people, using her role in Congress to agitate around working-class issues rather than pass legislation,” reads one article on the YDSA’s website. 

Since Tlaib’s victory in 2018, the DSA’s power in Democratic strongholds appears to be growing. Last year, DSA member Zohran Mamdani upset the Democratic political establishment and won election to the mayor’s office in New York City on a socialist platform. Earlier this week, he flexed his newfound political influence in the city to catapult three other socialist candidates to victory in Democratic primaries for the U.S. House of Representatives. 

The platform: Abolishing ICE, ending deportations, opposing the state of Israel, Medicare for all, and creating federal job guarantees

The candidates centered their campaigns on radical changes that have become the calling card of a new brand of socialist Democrats. Their platform includes abolishing ICE, ending deportations, opposing the state of Israel, implementing Medicare for all, and creating federal job guarantees.

In Washington, D.C., Janeese Lewis George, another DSA member, is poised to become the next mayor of the nation’s capital city. In Los Angeles, DSA-backed Nithya Raman has advanced to a runoff election against incumbent Mayor Karen Bass. 

The rapid success of these socialist candidates within the Democratic Party primary system has alarmed many establishment and traditional Democrats. 

“All of us are a little frustrated with the Democratic Party. But you don’t blow it up. That’s what MAGA has done,” said Letitia James, the Democratic Attorney General of New York. 

New York Rep. Tom Suozzi suggested the DSA’s threat lies in its organizing capabilities. “People who do not support the DSA wring their hands at cocktail parties, while the DSA is organizing,” Suozzi said after the New York primaries.  

Some of the Democrats suggest that the threat of DSA is not ideological. “​​Y’all keep thinking this is ideological for me. It isn’t,” Jaime Harrison later said. “Our party has socialists, progressives, New Dems, Blue Dogs, moderates, and everything in between. I’ve worked with all of them.”

He added, “My question is simple: Are you working constructively to make the party better, or are you just there to piss all over it?”

A new centrist initiative

However, other Democrats are launching an effort to push back to prevent the party’s drift towards socialism. Thirteen Democrats announced on Thursday a new centrist initiative set to do just that. 

All thirteen signed the “Promise to America,” which includes positions like “we are capitalist, not socialist,” “we want safety, not lawlessness,” and “we are proud, not ashamed of America.”   

Suozzi is one of them. “We’re seeing a lot of results from the country from the far left and the far right, and they’re organized. I mean, you have to give them credit,” Suozzi told The Washington Post. But “that kind of campaign and that type of ideology is not going to play with the people in our districts.”