(CNN) — State Rep. Angie Nixon’s win in the Florida Senate primary on Tuesday was the latest in a growing list of victories by democratic socialists who are a prominent part of the Democratic Party’s left-wing insurgency.
But within the democratic socialist movement, and the broader progressive movement, there are disagreements over what the group’s priorities should be — and some candidates have been hesitant to fully embrace the label.
Nixon hasn’t sought to highlight her membership in the Democratic Socialists of America, but when pressed ahead of the election, she told CNN’s Laura Coates that the group aligns with “my beliefs that people — hardworking, everyday people — should get to shape what their communities look like and what their economies look like.”
“We can talk about labels all day long, people’s labels,” she said. “I am concerned about the needs of people.”
DSA’s platform covers a range of issues with varying levels of acceptability within the Democratic mainstream.
Some policy priorities are widely embraced by virtually all candidates who associate themselves with democratic socialism and many members of the broader progressive movement.
Among those positions are support for government-funded Medicare for All, opposition to military aid for Israel over its actions in Gaza, and support for higher taxes — particularly on the wealthy — to pay for an expansion of government-funded social safety net programs in areas like health care, housing and child care.
In New York City, for example, Mayor Zohran Mamdani has launched a free child care pilot program, enacted rent freezes across some rent-stabilized apartments, and launched an effort to open five city-backed grocery stores intended to offer 30% discounts on staple food items.
Nixon ran on several of those issues, including universal healthcare, affordable housing, and an annual wealth tax on billionaires. Her win Tuesday over a much better-funded moderate candidate, retired Army Lt. Col. Alex Vindman, was also a reminder that one position widely embraced by democratic socialists, including Nixon — furor over Israel’s war in Gaza after Hamas’ October 7, 2023, attack — is also held by many Democratic voters, as well.
But some more controversial parts of DSA’s platform, entitled “Workers Deserve More!”, would require significant overhaul.
“The Democratic Socialists of America is building a party whose goal is a democratic society of the working class. Our enemies are not just individual bosses, but the entire global system of capital; not just this or that cop, judge, or president, but the entire anti-democratic structure of our society. We are workers fighting to transform society: to win the battle for democracy, draft a new constitution, and create a democratic socialist republic,” the platform says.
The platform includes calls to abolish the US Senate and expand the House — a view that reflects some progressives’ belief that proportional representation is more favorable than a system designed to protect the interests of less populated states — nationalize large corporations, publicly finance elections, end the two-party system, and stop immigrant detentions and deportations. It also seeks to “demilitarize police departments, disempower police unions, and redirect funding to public services as steps towards fully abolishing the police and prison system which protects the rich and jails the poor.”
Some candidates have leaned into some of the further left ideas. Darializa Avila-Chevalier, the democratic socialist who ousted Rep. Adriano Espaillat in a New York City primary in June, told Vox she believes that “all deportations are wrong” while Francesca Hong, who lost the Democratic primary in Wisconsin last week, has previously called for defunding and abolishing police departments.
Republicans seize on democratic socialism
But not all DSA members, or DSA-aligned progressives, are on the same page about these platform planks. Republicans, however, are eager to paint the entire Democratic Party with the same broad brush, highlighting the most controversial of those positions in television ads targeting not just democratic socialist candidates but all of those running under the Democratic banner.
“Abdul El-Sayed and the socialists have taken over Michigan’s Democratic Party,” the Republican Governors Association said in an ad last week targeting the Democratic nominee in the state’s governor’s race, Jocelyn Benson, as it linked her to groups that supported defunding police.
“This is not Gretchen Whitmer’s Democratic Party,” the ad said, referring to the popular two-term Democratic governor. “It’s far more liberal and extreme, and Jocelyn Benson is marching to their radical drumbeat.
President Donald Trump has made his own attacks as well as the midterm field solidifies.
In recent months, he’s claimed Democrats have been overtaken by “godless communists.”
“This is the most serious threat to our country since its existence, in my opinion, 250 years ago,” he said at a Faith and Freedom Coalition conference in June. “This is a major threat to our country.”
Some progressives seek distance
Notable democratic socialists, including New York Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Mamdani, have sought to distance themselves from some more controversial stances, walking back their previous support for defunding the police.
Ocasio-Cortez has more broadly suggested some of the left’s pandemic-era rhetoric went too far.
“I have a local city councilman that has this saying: ‘Woke 1 was crazy,’” the New York congresswoman said recently on ABC’s “This Week.”
“I think that we all share in the goals of having as low a crime rate as possible. I think that, you know, during lockdown, of course, rhetoric in that time is not rhetoric that we would use today,” she said.
The nation’s most prominent democratic socialist, Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders, has never supported defunding the police.
Another democratic socialist, Melat Kiros, who defeated long-time Rep. Diana DeGette in Colorado, told PBS she agrees with the DSA’s calls for Medicare for All, universal child care, ranked-choice voting and a 32-hour work week, but does not support abolishing the Senate, withdrawing from the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, defunding the police or establishing public ownership of major corporations aside from utilities.
“We really put the ‘democracy’ into democratic socialism,” Kiros said, explaining that the DSA’s platform is voted on by its members and that it’s “almost certain that not every single member agrees with the entirety of the platform.”
Progressives who do not consider themselves democratic socialists, like Abdul El-Sayed, the former public health official who won the Democratic nomination in Michigan’s Senate race, say a key difference is that they believe in capitalism.
“I am not somebody who is a socialist. I believe in capitalism. I just believe that capitalism has to be regulated,” El-Sayed said in an interview with CNN last month.
Some candidates have also left the DSA as they seek elected office.
In Michigan’s 7th District, William Lawrence, a co-founder of the progressive Sunrise Movement, is trying to flip one of the most competitive House districts in the country as he takes on first-term Republican Rep. Tom Barrett.
He was a democratic socialist, but said he recently allowed his Democratic Socialists of America membership to lapse.
“I’ve got a lot of respect for DSA and the work that they’re doing around the country, but I felt a need to make it very clear that the platform we’re running on here is the one that has come up based on the conversations we’re having across the 7th District,” Lawrence told CNN earlier this month. “It’s just because I want to make clear to my constituents that I’m here to represent them.”
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