Primary Preview: New York (Senate and Congress), 2022

Update: Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez is endorsed this year, and this has been updated slightly to reflect this.

Welcome again to Socialism on the Ballot, folks. This week’s primary preview—a look into the members of the Democratic Socialists of America (DSA) running for elected office, and who DSA chapters have thrown their weight behind in the coming elections—is for New York, the most public demonstration of socialist electoral inroads. Despite a mildly disappointing result in the June 28th primaries (for State Assembly), NYC DSA and their eastern neighbor Nassau DSA are looking to bounce back with their slate of five State Senators, two of which are incumbent and three of which are newcomers. Additionally, federal elections are taking place, and very visible member Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez is running for re-election without endorsement, alongside a number of other non-endorsed members seeking to topple incumbents.

Let’s get started.

Endorsed candidates

Jeremy Joseph (New York State Senate District 7)

Jeremy Joseph (he/him), a Nassau County DSA member, leads off our preview today in an unusually-close district for any DSA member to contest. The new Senate District 7 covers the northern shores of Nassau County and is geographically split roughly down the middle in how it votes. The more populous western section (which covers almost all of the 235,000 residents of North Hempstead) is more diverse and more Democratic-leaning, unsurprising given that Queens is immediately westward. A note of dissent does exist however: Kings Point, with its heavily Iranian Jewish population, trends strongly Republican in most elections. The eastern section—less populated—is more Republican, and consists of the city of Glen Cove and the north half of the town of Oyster Bay. This area is also whiter and more swingy: Clinton came within four points of losing the section in 2016, but Biden restored a roughly-10-point margin of victory in 2020. The sum of these parts create an approximately 55-45 Democratic district—and to say the least, there are very few DSA members holding seats like this in America.

That does not deter Jeremy Joseph, however. Nor does the prospect of unseating an incumbent—Anna Kaplan, who is also WFP endorsed—who flipped this district from Republican to Democrat in 2018 to begin with after a decade of electing Republicans. Nor still does the lack of progressive success in this area: Bernie Sanders was handily defeated 65-35 in 2016 here and even discarding blank votes protest support for him in 2020 (13%) comes in three full points below his statewide support (16%). Cynthia Nixon and Jumaane Williams registered nowhere close in 2018. This is an uphill battle which is effectively Joseph’s alone, and one he seems fully committed to in spite of that.

Joseph’s campaign policies, reflecting New York’s status as the capital of a revitalized electoral socialist movement, rest heavily on the 2022 platform of the New York Socialists in Office—the de facto socialist grouping in the state legislature, comprised of six of the seven DSA members in the legislature.¹ On climate policy, Joseph supports three straightforwardly-named bills: the Build Public Renewables Act, the Teachers Fossil Fuel Divestment Act, and the Clean Futures Act. These bills would cumulatively make New York a climate policy leader in the U.S. and likely allow it to meet its climate goals, and the BPRA in particular has been the subject of a strong push by NYC-DSA and its legislators. Joseph also backs the New York Health Act (which would establish a public healthcare system in the state); Julia Salazar’s Good Cause Eviction bill; the Tenant Opportunity to Purchase Act (allowing tenants the opportunity to purchase their building if it comes up for sale); and virtually all of the criminal justice reforms, democracy, and economic reforms proposed by the Socialists in Office.

Unfortunately, it’s difficult to see him prevailing in the primary here. While this is a sleepy primary and Kaplan has certainly tacked to the right, leaving room for Joseph’s primary challenge, Joseph remains quite anonymous as a candidate and Nassau DSA is likely the biggest backer he has. Kaplan also boasts the aforementioned WFP endorsement and presumably has incumbency advantage. There’s simply not much to go off of, however: Kaplan was not primaried in 2020 and was the sole nominee in 2018. I wouldn’t expect a victory here, but maybe keep a tab open for this race on election day. Despite the relative closeness of the district, Joseph should also be able to hold it if he wins the primary.

Julia Salazar (New York State Senate District 18)

DSA member Julia Salazar (she/her) was, alongside Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, the first political success for the now-enormously-influential chapter. Although overshadowed by AOC’s stunning victory, Salazar herself was elected in a landslide and upset victory over eight-term incumbent Martin Malave Dilan in 2018, marking the beginning of what appears to be an ongoing revolution in the East River-adjacent neighborhoods of Brooklyn and Queens.

Since Salazar’s victory, District 18 and the neighborhoods it encompasses have become an increasingly reliable socialist stronghold. In a tell of how quickly influence had grown for the DSA here, in 2019 activist Sandy Nurse sought the chapter’s endorsement for the overlapping Assembly District 54. (Nurse—who may or may not also be a member—has since gone on to win the also-overlapping City Council District 37.) Then in 2020, DSA member Emily Gallagher won Assembly District 50, which intersects with the furthest north part of Salazar’s district. In 2021, City Council District 36 (which briefly shares streets with Salazar’s district in its west) elected DSA member Chi Ossé to the New York City Council; and later that year, Salazar’s district was one of mayoral candidate and Party for Socialism and Liberation candidate Cathy Rojas’s best areas in the city. This year, in just her second term, Salazar is unopposed.

This session, Salazar has been instrumental in advocating for a number of bills mentioned on the Socialists in Office agenda. She is the Senate sponsor for their Voting Rights for Incarcerated People (S3073/A6646) and Good Cause Eviction (S3082/A5573) bills, and the latter bill in particular actually made progress this cycle. While it didn’t pass, it did receive a January hearing which suggests it remains in serious consideration; reasons for its failure have mostly been attributed to the hectic schedule for the Legislature this year (including redistricting) and fear of taking a “controversial” stance in an election year. Look for Salazar to be a fierce advocate of it next year with this stuff no longer looming. Salazar was also instrumental in the passage of a Public Housing Preservation Trust for the NYCHA (New York City Housing Authority) this year.

David Alexis (New York State Senate District 21)

In this south-central Brooklyn district anchored by the neighborhoods of Bergen Beach, Flatlands, Flatbush, East Flatbush, and Little Haiti, DSA member and Haitian-American David Alexis (he/him) is looking to scalp general asshole and noted bane of New York’s climate goals Kevin Parker, first elected in 2002.

Parker, the current chair of the Senate Energy Committee, has much to be criticized over. Just with respect to climate policy, he is one of the biggest recipients of fossil fuel money in the legislature despite presiding over the Energy Committee and acknowledging a need to get off fossil fuels; he has on occasion expressed support for cryptocurrency, despite its disastrous impact on the climate; and despite ostensibly supporting the Build Public Renewables Act was not present to debate it in the Senate chamber. It would also be an understatement to call Parker an abusive person: he pled guilty to assaulting a traffic agent in 2005 and guilty to misdemeanor criminal mischief in 2010 after another assault in which he broke a reporter’s camera and finger. At least three previous assaults by him are also alleged, and no shortage of stories about his rage toward Republicans and Democrats alike exist. By all accounts, he is not a good person, perhaps best exemplified by his telling a constituent on Twitter to kill themselves for calling out a vehicle carrying one of his campaign placards parking illegally.

This stands in stark contrast to Alexis, 33 currently, who comes from humble and struggle-filled roots, and has firsthand knowledge of many of the failings in New York today. Alexis has dealt with not only the cut-throat housing market in New York City—Alexis applied for an apartment which he only heard from seven years later and now no longer large enough to house his family—but also gig economy and the excesses of ridesharing, the industry he worked for years in a struggle to put food on the table. His activist work began with healthcare organizing and advocating for his wife’s sickle cell condition, and expanded later to involvement with NYC DSA in 2018. That year, he also helped lead protests that won better wages and protections for rideshare drivers. Conditions mostly did not improve, however; so, in 2020, Alexis was a cofounder of the Drivers Cooperative, a worker co-operative that now employs 7,000 rideshare drivers and which he believes to be the largest worker co-operative in the United States.

On policy, Alexis takes similarly to Jeremy Joseph in adopting the Socialists in Office legislative platform as his. He supports Julia Salazar’s Good Cause Eviction bill; the New York Health Act; every proposed Socialists in Office criminal justice and public safety reform; and a Green New Deal for New York. Alexis also names a few unique policies, including giving public-sector workers the right to strike. It will be interesting to see if this is a winning platform for Alexis in this district, which is historically pretty unreceptive to even progressive candidates. The only progressive (much less socialist) candidate who seems to have won this area recently is Jumaane Williams in both the 2018 Lieutenant Governor and 2019 Public Advocate races—and even this was most likely due to racial voting, not ideological voting. Besides this, success is scant. Parker hasn’t faced a primary since 2010; Clinton won this area heavily in 2016; Cynthia Nixon got obliterated for Governor even as Williams won the area; and Bernie protest vote in 2020 was below statewide average. I don’t expect Alexis to win, but even a somewhat close loss in this district would be major progress.

I would look for Alexis to do well in the extreme north and west of the district, where Rita Joseph did well in City Council District 40. Another area to watch is the core of the district between Flatbush Avenue and Kings Highway; while this is generally believed to be Kevin Parker’s turf, it’s also where poorly-supported and poorly-funded DSA member Anthony Beckford put up some of his best results in a quixotic bid for City Council District 45 against Farah Louis last year.

Jabari Brisport (New York State Senate District 25)

DSA member Jabari Brisport (he/him), one of the five legislative members elected in 2020, should be sitting pretty comfortable in his new 25th this year despite several primary challengers, most “credibly” the hilariously anti-socialist and borderline-Republican Conrad Tillard. Although District 25 has shifted eastward in redistricting—toward Bedford-Stuyvesant, a neighborhood Brisport broke even in during his 2020 primary—it remains mostly rooted in Clinton Hill, where Brisport dominated. In a tell of how not-competitive the organization thinks this race is, NYC DSA is not focusing any canvassing for Brisport and is instead all-hands-on-deck for their two major races in District 21 and District 59.

Brisport’s 2020 run was not his first. In 2017, he unsuccessfully ran as a Green Party candidate for New York City Council District 35, garnering about 29% of the vote in a bid that foreshadowed his later success. But it was Brisport’s impressive 58-35 victory in 2020 that, like Julia Salazar’s 2018 election, served as the unambiguous indicator of socialist growth in the East River-adjacent neighborhoods of Red Hook, Dumbo, Gowanus, Clinton Hill, and Bedford-Stuyvesant (even though Brisport will no longer represent most of the former three). From there the floodgates have seemingly opened: Chi Ossé won the mostly-Bedford-Stuyvesant City Council District 36 just a year later, and Brisport’s district was a center of Cathy Rojas’s 2021 performance in the mayoral race—she outpolled Republican Curtis Sliwa here by one point, 6% to 5%. Despite going against Brisport in 2020, the safe bet given this sudden change is that Brisport will handily carry Bedford-Stuyvesant this year.

Brisport’s work this year has occurred both inside and outside of the legislature. He is the Senate sponsor for the Socialists in Office Universal Childcare bill (S7595) and has also introduced a number of left-wing priorities of his own, including the right to strike as an employee right (S9191) and a prohibition on the use of robots by police agencies (S6418). Brisport also voted against the revenue section of the New York budget this year to register his disapproval with Governor Kathy Hochul’s spending priorities—including in his words “$600 million for the [Buffalo] Bills stadium and a $350 million pot of money to be spent on Long Island” despite there purportedly not being money for other services. Outside of legislature, he has been probably the most vocal cheerleader for the recent and ongoing unionization effort of staffers in the New York State Senate.

Kristen Gonzalez (New York State Senate District 59)

Rounding out the endorsed members column is NYC-DSA Tech Working Group member Kristen Gonzalez (she/her), who is running to represent this East River-adjacent district spanning the neighborhoods of Astoria, Long Island City, Greenpoint, parts of Williamsburg, and the Manhattan neighborhood of Kips Bay. She hopes to beat out Elizabeth Crowley, cousin of once-Congressman Joe Crowley, and a number of other minor candidates (most infamously Nomiki Konst, who has almost made it a policy to annoy every left-of-center voter in the district) for the seat here. This is a functionally open seat carved from much of the old 12th, small parts of the 26th, and the Greenpoint and Williamsburg parts of Julia Salazar’s old 18th—and to say the least it is high on the Democratic Socialist list of targets. Over half of the district is already represented by one or more DSA electeds, and the remainder of the district has a similar (although less overwhelming) ideological bent, being a strong relative area for Bernie 2020, Kathryn Garcia 2021 mayoral primary vote, and Cathy Rojas 2021 mayoral general vote.

Gonzalez, a 26-year-old Nuyorican and tech worker, became politically active at an early age after seeing the wealth inequality between her home neighborhood of Elmhurst and the Upper East Side of Manhattan. She was an intern for the Obama administration and later for Senator Chuck Schumer, and joined the Democratic Socialists of America in 2018. She was recruited to run after redistricting, when it became clear that District 59 was a pickup opportunity. Unique campaign policies for Gonzalez, who as a cadre DSA member otherwise supports the Socialists in Office agenda, include a fare-free bus and subway system; banning traffic from major roads; banning medically unnecessary surgeries on intersex children; and funding the creation of community land trusts.

This should be a close race, despite Crowley (unsurprisingly) outraising Gonzalez by several times. While Crowley has significant labor support and the backing of Congressman Gregory Meeks, Gonzalez has the support of almost every progressive and socialist organization in the city and the backing of Congresswoman Nydia Velázquez. Look for Gonzalez to do well in Astoria, Greenpoint, and Williamsburg, and Crowley to do well in Kips Bay. Long Island City is an interesting one which may serve as the swing area for this district in a close race; one tell of how it could vote comes from the 37th Assembly District race in 2020, where unendorsed DSA member Mary Jobaida came within 10 points of Catherine Nolan, but lost in no small part due to her poor numbers in the mostly Black and Hispanic Queensbridge North public housing complex. Jobaida also did poorly in the Astoria Houses and Ravenswood housing projects, which are similar demographically. Gonzalez, who lives in Long Island City, will no doubt be looking to limit any Crowley inroads with these groups or to win them outright.

Endorsed-but-not-really members

Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (New York’s 14th congressional district)

I don’t think I need to spend much time on Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (she/her), perhaps the most prominent DSA member in the entire country. There’s also not much to say here, as AOC has no primary challenger and an astonishing $10.2 million raised—more than sufficient to beat back any challenger anyways. Presumably reflecting this fact, she is the first ever candidate to be profiled here with an endorsement that hasn’t actually been meaningfully publicized and which probably will not be until later this year. (I literally cannot link you to where she was endorsed, because that’s how little it’s been made public.)

Endorsement intrigue aside, AOC has been just about everything you could ask of a federally elected socialist in spite of the critiques thrown at her (primarily from the more online segment of the left). She has led the federal messaging fight for a number of core issues—most prominently abortion rights in the aftermath of the overturn of Roe v. Wade, but also a Green New Deal—publicized and supported multiple NYC-DSA led and organized protests this year, endorsed the entire NYC-DSA legislative slate, fundraised for fellow DSA member Rashida Tlaib’s re-election, supported the New York DSA push to pass the Build Public Renewables Act, and directly supported the Amazon and Starbucks unionization efforts taking place around the country. Whether you think she can do more with the office or not, it is pretty clearly a good thing to have her in office as a member of the organization, and it will likely remain that way through 2024.

Non-endorsed members

Queen Johnson (New York’s 8th congressional district)

DSA member Queen Johnson (she/her) is an obscure primary challenger to 8th congressional district incumbent Hakeem Jeffries in this South Brooklyn district. Obviously, this is not a winnable race—even if Johnson had NYC-DSA’s endorsement, which she does not, Jeffries is a high-ranking Democrat with impressive fundraising abilities—but it will be interesting to see how well she can do. Jeffries had not been primaried a single time in his Congressional tenure prior to Johnson’s run, and part of his district covers Bedford-Stuyvesant which has thrown its weight behind most of the progressives and socialists who have run in the past few years. Some of it also overlaps with the David Alexis versus Kevin Parker race, and this may swing a few votes Johnson’s way (or vice versa). An optimistic guess here for Johnson’s share of vote is probably about 15%.

Brittany Ramos DeBarros (New York’s 11th congressional district)

The last of the non-endorsed members is Brittany Ramos DeBarros (she/her), running in the swingy 11th congressional district. An Afro-Latina and Army veteran from Staten Island, Ramos DeBarros represents the often-overlooked Staten Island NYC-DSA branch; she was also the first person to jump into this race to oust Republican Nicole Malliotakis, although she has unsurprisingly been displaced from media coverage in this district thanks to former Representative Max Rose attempting a comeback bid. Because of how this district was redrawn, Ramos DeBarros would probably not be as big of an underdog as you might think in the general election—but that depends on getting through the primary, which now seems unlikely here. I think it could still be a competitive primary, but I see Max Rose ultimately prevailing here (and, most likely, losing in the general). Regardless, Ramos DeBarros is bringing a progressive and socialist message to areas which don’t normally see such efforts, and that could be a serious foundation for future DSA candidates in the electoral arena to build off of in this part of the city.

Footnotes

1. The seventh member, who does not caucus with the other six (but as far as I know is still a fairly reliable vote with them) is Jessica Gonzalez-Rojas of Assembly District 34. Gonzalez-Rojas was elected without DSA support in 2020.

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