The Election in Los Angeles: in short, we organize

There was an odd sense arriving at the bar in Downtown LA where we hosted the DSA-LA election night party that somehow we had lived this moment before—like watching a rerun of a bad movie with a surprise ending that you know is coming, so it’s not really a surprise at all anymore, just the anticipation of reaching the end of it, as if to prove it’s still the same. NBC was playing, projected onto a large screen serving as the backdrop to the party. Just as we were starting to get early results from LA County races, polls on the East Coast were rolling in, all indicating that Harris was losing the swing states. It was 2016 all over again, but less shocking and more bitter this time. This time no one asked, “How can this be happening?”

Nationally, the end we expected

On one hand, we saw fascism take a decisive victory on the national level. It was the end many of us had come to expect: Why wouldn’t our country elect a fascist after the Democratic party undemocratically pushed forward an uninspiring centrist who offered no vision, just more of the same? While the right wing spent the past year appealing to the worst of this country’s racist, nativist impulses, and attacking with vitriol trans people, women, and any groups that do not conform to a rigid patriarchal system, the Democratic Party did little to combat these narratives. Rather, they found themselves cozying up to the Republican party, and seemingly endorsing a unity coalition with a slightly different flavor of conservative war hawk. 

Meanwhile, the Democratic Party struggles to mobilize their voting base for arguably their largest elections on the ballot. Taking 2020 vs. 2024 for example: Trump’s results in LA County are nearly identical at 1.1 million votes, but Harris lost 700,000 votes compared to Biden in 2020. Are these voters moving to Trump as some suggest, or should we simply ask why didn’t they feel compelled to vote for Democrats? Both of these lines of questioning have some degree of accuracy, but in the realm of our local victories, DSA-LA continues to buck the trends.

DSA-LA’s list of elected officials added two more members this year! From left to right: Karla Griego (LAUSD Board, D5), Hugo Soto-Martínez (LA City Council, D13), Dr. Rocío Rivas (LAUSD Board, D2), and Ysabel Jurado (LA City Council, D14)

Things are better in LA

At the local level, we proved that socialism isn’t just popular in Los Angeles, it’s an unstoppable force. As it became clear that Harris had lost, the polls closed on the West Coast and we saw the first numbers in Los Angeles. Never was the divide so apparent than when we announced the landslide victories of DSA-LA endorsed Karla Griego for LAUSD School Board (BD5) and Ysabel Jurado for LA City Council (CD14), while on the NBC screen behind us Harris supporters abandoned the campaign HQ. 

This puts us in a unique position electorally in Los Angeles, with an exciting path opening up for DSA-LA. We’ve now won more than a quarter of the seats in both LA City Council and LAUSD School Board—4 out of 15 and 2 out of 7 respectively—the strongest hold of any DSA chapter in the country percentage wise. At the same time, our candidates remain a growing yet minority block that cannot pass transformative policy without appealing to the broader progressive and centrist members of their legislative body. But still, our candidates finish first in their primaries and then go on to double digit victories in the general, if they don’t win outright in the first round like Eunisses Hernandez or Nithya Raman. Or they get the most votes in their city’s history like Konstantine Anthony in Burbank. 

This also means that the political establishment has begun to recognize DSA-LA’s political strength and now runs right wing and centrist opposition candidates on platforms that explicitly attack us. This year was especially hostile with persistent redbaiting throughout the general election in CD14 and in Nithya Raman’s primary re-election. Both Kevin de Leon and Ethan Weaver, and his Caruso-backed cronies at Thrive LA, whose stated goal is to “reverse the tide of DSA extremists”, made clear numerous times that their elections were a mandate against our organization. Their tired strategy always revolved around blasting the district with mailers with lines about defunding the police and letting homeless encampments grow out of control, from which we infer that somehow DSA candidates are a threat to public safety. 

DSA-LA members attend a canvass for Jillian Burgos, who ran for LA City Council, District 2

The legacy of 2016 and Bernie

In a big way, we can trace our current victories to 2016, when it seemed there was a real chance for a DSA-endorsed President through the Bernie Sanders campaign. If his campaign was anything, it was proof that the language of class struggle, the have-nots vs. the have-yachts, was a powerful message that resonated enthusiastically with the people and engaged them in a movement beyond a campaign. It was a signal that despite our many demographic differences, Americans resonated with a call to ‘fight for someone you don’t know’.  Sanders was unbought by corporate elites or Democratic establishment politics, and he showed that grassroots campaigns can compete with the rest of them on any level. 

Locally, where we lack campaign consultants, glossy mailers, and fundraising (though our candidates consistently get more individual small dollar donors), we make up by running candidates with strong messaging that appeals to a plurality of workers, and utilize a cohesive field plan with strategic member mobilization. When DSA-LA endorses a candidate, it’s because our members see an alignment of shared values and have a belief that a victory will materially move our city closer to socialism, and we commit to working closely with the candidates to shape their campaigns. 

This past year, our comrades who chaired the working group for Griego’s school board campaign took a leading role in organizing the field and volunteer programs, which consisted almost entirely of teachers. Likewise on Jurado’s campaign, DSA-LA stepped up our capacity and knocked on a record fifteen thousand doors as well as ensuring they reached their initial signature gathering goals early in January. But most importantly, our campaigns aren’t about saying the right thing at the door, but asking the right questions that connect people’s material concerns back to our message. In short, we organize.

Our candidates run on platforms that center real solutions and are shaped by the community’s involvement in the campaign. If we can do it in Los Angeles, where a centrist establishment has grasped onto power for decades, socialists can win and lead anywhere.