Extreme messaging

Francesca Hong, a Wisconsin state ­representative now running for governor, frequently talks about her background in the restaurant industry. She announced her campaign in a video filmed in the kitchen of the restaurant where she first started working 15 years ago. In the video, she wore an apron and a red bandanna reminiscent of Rosie the Riveter.

On June 29, Hong sat down for an interview with Hasan Piker, host of a popular streaming show on Twitch. “What does a governor who has stood in a dish pit at 1 a.m. understand about working people in the state that a career politician fundamentally does not?” Piker asked her.

That softball question gave Hong an opening to lean into the main message of her campaign. “We understand their pain,” she replied. “I think that a lot of people are in pain right now, and politicians are not honestly acknowledging that.”

Many political candidates tout their humble roots and promise to take on the status quo. But Hong is a self-professed democratic socialist and has been endorsed by Democratic Socialists of America (DSA). She’s part of a wave of DSA-backed candidates running for office on this year’s Democratic ticket. Several have already successfully unseated incumbent Democrats in primary elections.

The DSA’s leaders are politically savvy and highly motivated. Their candidates are speaking to Americans’ economic struggles, and in this election cycle, they’ve gained significant momentum. But beyond their message of compassion for American workers, some members of the DSA harbor extreme political views at odds with democracy—positions many ordinary voters haven’t heard.

The DSA was founded in 1982 and today has over 100,000 members. It got a massive boost from Bernie Sanders’ two attempts to win the Democratic presidential nomination and then rose even further after the election of Zohran Mamdani as mayor of New York.

Candidates endorsed either by the national or local chapters of the DSA include Melat Kiros, who defeated 30-year incumbent Rep. Diana DeGette in a Democratic primary in Colorado. In New York, Darializa Avila Chevalier defeated another longtime congressman, Rep. Adriano Espaillat, in a Democratic primary. Claire Valdez won reelection to the New York State Assembly. Chris Rabb won the Democratic primary for Pennsylvania’s 3rd Congressional District, defeating a crowded field of opponents. And in Washington, D.C., Janeese Lewis George won the primary for mayor.

Some Democratic primaries are still to be held: In Michigan, Abdul El-Sayed is running for the U.S. Senate seat vacated by Democrat Gary Peters, who is retiring. That primary is scheduled for Aug. 4. In Wisconsin, Hong’s primary is scheduled for Aug. 11. She is running against several other candidates to replace Gov. Tony Evers, a Democrat who declined to seek a third term.

Stu Smith, an investigative analyst for the Manhattan Institute who follows the DSA, is keeping an eye on Hong’s campaign because he thinks it will be “the real bellwether” of how far DSA candidates can go. Wisconsin is one of America’s premier swing states. In interviews, Hong praises “sewer socialism,” a period when socialists governed Milwaukee for about 50 years until 1960. But Wisconsin has undergone many changes since then. In 2011, the state’s then governor, Republican Scott Walker, became a conservative hero for taking on public-sector unions.

Smith says the DSA punches above its weight thanks to its excellent political organizing. “They get people to go out and vote,” he said. “They have a lot of youthful energy, and they devote a lot of time to canvassing and talking with people.” He also said DSA leaders carefully analyze voter data to identify places where their message will resonate and then run candidates there.

The DSA is not an official political party. Its candidates generally run as Democrats. Smith thinks that’s one of its strengths. When they win an election, “it’s a big deal,” he said. But when they lose, the DSA reminds supporters that “the most powerful people in the world are against us.” In some ways, attacks on the DSA only make it stronger “because their entire framing is ‘we’re the underdogs,’” Smith said.

That dynamic played out in Maine, where Graham Platner dropped out of the race for U.S. Senate on July 8 after being accused of sexual assault. While his platform overlapped substantially with democratic socialist priorities, none of the DSA’s chapters had endorsed him. Smith followed DSA discussions about Platner and thinks they regard his failure “as a sign of the strength of their model that he did not get any major endorsements.” But Henry Olsen, a senior fellow at the Ethics and Public Policy Center, thinks that’s a technicality because Platner isn’t distinguishable in any important way from the DSA.

Olsen believes it’s important to place the success of DSA candidates within the context of the Democratic Party’s drift toward the far left. “If you’re focusing only on the DSA, you’re actually minimizing what’s going on in the Democratic Party,” he said. “Close to half of their party nationwide … want a DSA progressive-style party. They don’t want moderation.”

Hasan Piker is one the DSA’s biggest boosters. His stream on Twitch has 3 million followers. DSA candidates ranging from Kiros to El-Sayed have been guests on his show. During Hong’s appearance, Piker encouraged his audience to donate to her campaign, and she ultimately raised about $57,000.

The things she said during the interview were fairly unremarkable. She focused on standard DSA policy proposals like free universal childcare and public grocery stores. But the fact that she appeared with Piker at all attracted criticism. In 2019 Piker said, “America deserved 9/11.” He also claims “Hamas is a thousand times better” than Israel.

During a July 8 appearance on MS NOW, Hong condemned “discrimination, anti-Semitism, and Islamophobia, any sort of dehumanizing of communities,” but she added that appearing on streams like Piker’s is an important way to reach voters: “Just because I am on a platform certainly does not mean that I endorse everything that has been said by either the hosts or other people who have gone on.”

Olsen, however, believes appearing on Piker’s stream was an important moment in Hong’s campaign. “It’s a badge of honor with her voting base,” he said. That’s because “it demonstrates credibility to the sort of person who wants a radical change.”

Smith describes the DSA as a “big tent,” but warns that some of its members have extreme and even dangerous beliefs that voters may not be aware of. “I think a lot of people who get involved with the DSA may not even understand, ‘Hey, there are people in this organization who are Maoist, who are tankies, who are pretty much Marxist-Leninist authoritarians,” he said.

Republicans are starting to respond to the rise of DSA candidates. President Donald Trump has taken the lead in calling them “communist.”

“Communism is the exact opposite of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness,” he said in a July 3 speech at Mount Rushmore.

Olsen believes that’s “a good line of attack.”

“The fact is, on a host of issues, these people are way out of the mainstream,” he said. “I don’t think it’s at all improper or bad politics to point that out.”