The post-primary drama between New York’s old school Democrats and largely younger democratic socialists has many wondering where does Black political power coalesce in a transitioning landscape.
Black voters and elected officials that The Amsterdam News spoke to said they’re admittedly a little tired of the traditional Democratic machine but do not want to erase decades of hard-won political capital. At the same time, they’re somewhat wary of “insurgent” socialist candidates of color recruited to run for elections by a national organization that they believe “leapfrogs” established candidates in the community, although many are open to change that delivers results. The drama isn’t because socialism or Black socialists are bad; it’s because the city’s assumed politics and voting blocs are shifting underneath everyone’s feet too quickly to grasp.
That was evident in last week’s June 23 primary, which saw a new slate of elected officials swept in at the congressional and state levels. As many as 15 candidates backed by the Democratic Socialists of America (DSA) claimed victory at the close of the polls on Election Night.
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 “revert” Muslim and Afro-Latina, who ousted five-term incumbent Rep. Adriano Espaillat in the 13th Congressional District.
“Democrats eat their young. … They say wait your turn, wait your turn. Case and point, Charlie Rangel,” said Christina Greer, a professor of Political Science at Fordham University and AmNews columnist, at a Citizens Union post-primary analysis event on June 25. She has advised Mamdani’s team on matters of race and politics. “There were people in the queue for 30 years waiting their turn and then there was a whole generation of Harlem competition who thought they’d be somebody. Then along came Espaillat and it’s a Latino district now.”
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 in the primary over Espaillat in the race. Espaillat had 56% of “lower-income area” voters and majority-Hispanic precincts. For contrast, Brooklyn Borough President Antonio Reynoso had lower-income earners and 72% of the majority Black vote in his race against Claire Valdez in the 7th congressional district, but still lost to the DSA candidate.
“We need protection against ICE. We need housing for people. We need equal rights for people. That message is starting to really land with voters,” said Heba Khalil, state director for Emgage Action New York Metro Chapter, which is not a socialist organization but did support Chevalier. “And thinking about what a historic moment this really is…so I think it says a lot for Muslims, for Muslims of color.”
Greer added that, “Espaillat ignored Darializa to his own peril. He hasn’t had serious challenges and is used to just cruising into reelection like so many elected officials.”
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’s reelection win in Assembly District 70 in Harlem, one of the few to survive this year’s DSA sweep in the state primaries.
His opponent was DSA-backed challenger Conrad Blackburn, who moved to the city in 2018 and became an outspoken criminal justice reform advocate. Wright won because he was a trusted “brand” in the community, a native to the district with strong family and political ties, and at 31 years old, he is already a young “rising star” with opportunity to grow, said Ishmael. He also advised the Mayor’s team to largely stay out of the race in terms of official endorsements.
“By and large, what we saw in the election in the Democratic primary. … 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,” said Ishmael.
He’s not an “alarmist” when it comes to the DSA organization as a whole, since there’re always factions in a political party. But he takes issue with the recruitment process of a diverse candidate to appeal to Black voters. “Throughout the course of the campaign, it was incredibly frustrating. … And I’ll be frank, Conrad is with a bunch of white people and talking a good game about the history of Black socialists. It comes off ‘holier than thou,’ but you don’t have the trust of the community,” said Ishmael.
The Black vote historically hasn’t always been homogeneous. In fact, the city has been home to people like Hubert “Father of Harlem Radicalism” Harrison, who became the leader of the socialist party in 1911. He inspired historical Black figure and devout capitalist Marcus Garvey, 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.
NYC’s Black and Brown socialists
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.
“I don’t think the color of my skin makes me a different type of socialist. I don’t 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,” said New York Communities for Change’s (NYCC) James Inniss, a Bronxite, rising star in the DSA, and a friend to Blackburn and Mamdani. “Now, I am a Black American man who grew up in a Black community, so my focus is going to be my community. … [But] We all want our rent freeze, we all want to tax the rich.”
Inniss believes it is “silly” 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’t want to become “the mainstream” or like a “MAGA Republican bad guy.” The point isn’t “tribalism” to attain power, or make Mamdani a celebrity “kingmaker,” or just “flexing” on social media, he said, and he’s 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.
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.
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’t have a DSA endorsement, and because his organization is a smaller operation, expects to lose to Torres in the general election.
“I’m a socialist in the shape of a Kwame Ture 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,” said Easton. “The 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.”
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.
“There’s 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,” said Easton. “And that’s exactly how Democratic leadership has engaged us, as mules. That we are useful as voters, but not as political actors that have agency. … So it works in Ritchie’s favor to have a low turnout.”
New York City’s Black Democrats
Many analysts pointed out that there was a low voter turnout in the primaries across the board. 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’s primary. For context, according to the city’s Board of Elections (BOE), there were over 3 million active registered Democratic voters citywide as of February 2026.
“As human beings we’re not turning up to the polls. You would think with the Callais case 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,” said Ny Whitaker, founder and chief strategist of PROJECT NYNE LLC.
Whitaker is not a particular fan of the DSA, but she thinks the struggle to engage voters is “not a Dem problem, it’s an everybody problem. This is about our humanity and our democracy and no one deems it important to show up to the polls. It’s larger than the Democratic Party.”
Still, the response to the primary shake-up from prominent Black Democrats, like New York State Attorney General Letitia James and former Democratic National Committee (DNC) Chair Jaime Harrison, was disappointment with Mamdani’s 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’s a handful of incumbents who fall short. He claims it hasn’t overly impacted his working relationship with Mamdani.
“We really have to move forward together on the governing side in an all-hands-on-deck fashion because we’re dealing with a level of extremism that Donald Trump and the Republicans are unleashing on the American people that is unprecedented,” said Jeffries on June 24 in an interview with MS NOW. “I think we’ve both been clear that we’ve agreed to disagree on some of these endorsements.”
Jeffries’ position has been under the gun since last year when Brooklyn Councilmember Chi Ossé, a 27-year-old DSA member, made his intentions to primary him. He ultimately didn’t receive the backing of his own party and dropped plans to run.
“I was pro-Chi Ossé, 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’t think what NYC DSA ended up being, a few days ago, was what they thought they were at that time. And I don’t think they saw their strength was what it was,” said Inniss about his regret on the situation. “The mayor’s endorsement, we really didn’t know how strong it was back then.”
Inniss said that not just Black socialists or Black DSA members, but as a whole, DSA members after the primary have regretted voting ‘no’ to Ossé’s congressional bid. But at the time in the forum, he said people felt like it couldn’t 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. “We’re kind of used to getting a short end of the stick and that doesn’t seem to be happening anymore,” said Inniss about raising expectations. “We just have to catch up.”
After the primary concluded, many progressives marked Jeffries as their next target with renewed fervor, booing and screaming, ‘you’re next.’ Plenty of Black Democrats were outraged, while others understood why he was being targeted.
Barry Cooper, founder of The BRO Experience Foundation in Brooklyn, believes that Jeffries is in danger “for being naive.” As an organizer and youth advocate in Bedford-Stuyvesant, Brooklyn, he’s 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 on June 23.
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. “They have one message and no one veers from it. We don’t know what a Democratic socialist is. They so left that they’re right. MAGA don’t give a damn, they say the talking points,” said Cooper. “And in the assembly it doesn’t matter. They don’t vote in Palestine or create legislation in Israel.”
Longtime Brooklyn Senator Kevin Parker has represented the 21st Senate District since 2002, when the district was redrawn for a majority Black voting bloc in East New York, East Flatbush, and Flatbush. He said when he initially ran for office he wasn’t a party candidate or a politician, but had worked with the community board and for former Councilmember Una S.T. Clarke. He defeated the same DSA-backed challenger, David Alexis, in the 2022 primary and general election.
“They targeted me and were unsuccessful. Alexis was not seen as someone who organically appeared in the neighborhood. He was a mushroom,” said Parker.
Parker said he understands that the city’s demographics are changing, but he does not appreciate the DSA “gentrifying our politics.” Parker added that other electeds like former Assemblymember and Councilmember Charles Barron or powerhouse Al Vann were “radical” but qualified people from the community. He supports former Congressmember Jamaal Bowman, a socialist from the Bronx, because he was an educator and founding principal of a school in the community before he ran.
“I don’t have an objection from a policy perspective. Universal childcare, most of us are happy [Mamdani] created the political will for that, though it’s not new. It’s the way they comport themselves, how they interact with you when you don’t agree with them,” said Parker. “There’s no compromise and barely no conversation. They bring people to your house to protest, run attack ads, say you suck, and that’s not how we should be as colleagues.”
