As Janeese Lewis George charts her course toward the mayor’s office in Washington, D.C., she’s been telling voters they don’t have to settle for less. Her boldly left-wing platform includes subsidized or free childcare, expanded down payment help for first-time homebuyers, community-based crime prevention resources, and a firm commitment to push back against President Donald Trump’s efforts to reshape the nation’s capital.
“People are tired of hearing what government can’t do. They want to hear what government can do,” Lewis George said in an interview ahead of the city’s primary election, where she defeated her Democratic rivals and put herself in a strong position to win the November general election in a city where Democrats hold a commanding majority.
Her primary win marks a clear departure from roughly 25 years of centrist leadership in Washington, D.C., and places her among a growing group of democratic socialists making gains in urban politics. Zohran Mamdani defeated Andrew Cuomo — son of a well-known political family — on his way to the New York City mayor’s race. Katie Wilson pulled off an upset win to lead Seattle last fall. And earlier this month, Nithya Raman secured a spot in the November runoff against Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass.
All four candidates are members of the Democratic Socialists of America, known as the DSA. Over the past decade, the organization’s membership has exploded from a few thousand people to more than 100,000 nationally, driven largely by younger Americans who were energized by Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders’ presidential campaigns. Sanders has also described himself as a democratic socialist.
There’s no clear evidence of coordination among these candidates at the national level, and it remains uncertain whether voters are drawn more to their promises of better public services, their willingness to challenge the Trump administration, or their broader critiques of capitalism.
Still, across the country, aggressively progressive candidates are advancing in races for city hall. Mayors tend to be held closely accountable by residents, and democratic socialists will face real pressure to follow through on their pledges for a new style of governance. Whether any of this reshapes national Democratic politics is the next test for the movement.
“They are all channeling a displeasure with a status quo and a serious desire for economic populism that the establishment Democratic Party hasn’t been preaching,” said Eric Stern, a Democratic strategist with Fight Agency, a political consulting firm that helped shape Mamdani’s mayoral campaign.
Stern also noted that Democratic voters seem more open to backing the most progressive option in mayoral contests than in races for U.S. House seats. Candidates like Mamdani and Raman, he said, are “daring voters to dream and fall in love not just with the individual candidates but also the political process as a whole.”
However, the reach of this progressive surge may have limits when it comes to broader Democratic politics. Mayors in cities such as Atlanta, Houston, Miami, and San Francisco have each won in recent years on comparatively moderate platforms.
Progressives have also run into significant headwinds in some places. Chicago’s mayor was endorsed by the city’s DSA chapter during his 2023 campaign but has since drawn criticism from both moderate and liberal local officials over immigration, the city budget, and public safety concerns. Elsewhere, progressive district attorneys in several jurisdictions were removed from office — through recalls or public pressure — over the past five years, as criminal justice reform efforts clashed with growing unease over public disorder in the aftermath of the COVID-19 pandemic.
Trump’s aggressive stances on immigration and law enforcement have also created complications for liberal-leaning cities. The situation is especially acute for Washington, D.C., given its unique status as a federal territory. When asked this month about the possibility of a democratic socialist becoming D.C.’s mayor, Trump told reporters: “Maybe we take back Washington and run it on a federal basis. We won’t put up with it.”
But progressive advocates are counting on widespread anti-Trump sentiment in heavily Democratic cities to lift hard-left candidates in the months ahead.
“It’s not folks looking for the leftmost option so much as looking for a candidate who’s gonna be on their side,” said Ravi Mangla, speaking on behalf of the left-leaning Working Families Party. The party frequently backs the same candidates as the DSA and is preparing to pursue more mayoral offices in the country’s largest cities this fall and in 2028. “It’s less about whether you are on the right or on the left so much as whether you are willing to punch up at the powerful,” Mangla added.
Both Mamdani and Lewis George describe themselves as “sewer socialists” — a term that emphasizes responsive, practical government services over ideological attacks on market economics. The phrase is a callback to socialist mayors of the Gilded Age era who were mocked by critics for being more focused on public works than political theory.
Reviving the term is partly a deliberate strategy to connect left-wing ideas with everyday concerns about affordability and the economy — issues that ranked as top priorities for voters in the midterm elections — and to reframe democratic socialists as pragmatic public servants rather than radical ideologues.
“This is absolutely a change election and I’m excited to bring the change that people want, which is really putting people first in the city and having the moral clarity and courage to stand up to Trump,” Lewis George said.
While conservatives have long used the word “socialist” to paint Democrats as extreme or out of touch, some D.C. voters expressed mixed feelings ahead of Tuesday’s primary. Several longtime residents said they viewed Lewis George as a “fighter” but weren’t convinced she could make a significant difference in the local economy, given the city’s federal district status.
“I go back and forth on my own labels and whether I am supportive of that movement or not, but I am supportive of making D.C. more affordable,” said Owen Fitzgerald, a University of Maryland graduate student, explaining why he backed democratic socialism in general terms.
Fitzgerald voted for Lewis George because of her willingness to stand up to Trump, and said he first heard about her campaign through friends in his neighborhood. He admitted he didn’t know she was a democratic socialist until he read news reports that described her that way.
“It sends a cultural message to this administration that the people who are surrounding them in the capital are opposed to their platform, opposed to their political agenda, and I think that it will send a message, both nationally and internationally,” Fitzgerald said.
