The RNC keeps attacking the popular ideas of a democratic socialist who is running for Congress in New York City.
New York State Assemblywoman Claire Valdez speaks at the “New York Is Not For Sale” rally at Forest Hills Stadium in Queens.
(Ron Adar / SOPA Images / Sipa USA via AP)
Claire Valdez must be doing something right. The veteran union organizer and New York State Assembly member is a leading contender in the Democratic primary for the open House seat in New York’s Seventh Congressional District—a multiracial, multiethnic New York City constituency that regularly gives Democratic nominees 65 percent of the vote or more. It’s not the kind of race where Republicans are particularly competitive, or where they show much interest in what Democratic candidates have to say. And yet, the Republican National Committee’s research department has made attacking Valdez a priority.
On Monday, the RNC took to Elon Musk’s X platform to post a video of Valdez declaring, “I’m a union organizer and a proud democratic socialist”—and then rip into her for celebrating the fact that members of Democratic Socialists of America, including her top political ally, New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani, are winning major races in New York and across the country. Later, Republicans posted another video of Valdez speaking to a New York City Democratic Socialists event and announced: “New York Democrat Socialist Congressional candidate Claire Valdez lays out her radical agenda: ‘So, are we ready to free Palestine, are we ready to Abolish ICE[,] are we ready to win Medicare for all, housing for all, and unions for all?”
Presumably, that message from the party of Donald Trump was supposed to scare voters away from backing Valdez in her June 23 primary contest with Brooklyn Borough President Antonio Reynoso—or, if she’s nominated, in November, But it is hard to see the logic of the GOP strategy.
Look at the polls. People in New York and nationwide actually like human rights. They don’t want immigrants to be targeted by ICE. They know that major steps must be taken to deliver quality healthcare and housing. And they love strong unions.
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Perhaps those are radical ideas.
But they are also radically popular—so much so that Justice Democrats, the group that helped elect Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Rashida Tlaib, and Summer Lee to the US House and that now hopes to elect Valdez, reposted the RNC’s fearmongering with a reminder that the candidate’s platform is “just that good.” Valdez also boosted the RNC message, gleefully adding, “I’m ready!”
The bizarre thing about this and other conservative attacks on democratic socialists who are mounting serious campaigns this year—including Wisconsin State Representative Francesca Hong, who is a top contender for the Democratic nomination for governor in her state; Pennsylvania State Representative Chris Rabb, who has already secured the Democratic nomination for an open Philadelphia congressional seat; and Valdez—is that they keep making democratic socialism look better. Especially to Democratic primary voters, as the latest New York Times/Siena Poll finds that 49 percent of Democratic voters have a favorable view of socialism, while just 22 percent have an unfavorable view.
The RNC is unironically criticizing candidates who are talking about winning elections on programs that emphasize economic, social, and racial justice, saving the planet, promoting international human rights, and reordering budget priorities to cut military spending and meet the needs of the American people.
This is not new. Republicans have a long history of attacking Democrats—no matter what their ideology—for embracing “socialistic” ideas. Seventy-four years ago, President Harry Truman explained, “Socialism is a scare word they have hurled at every advance the people have made in the last 20 years. Socialism is what they called public power. Socialism is what they called social security. Socialism is what they called farm price supports. Socialism is what they called bank deposit insurance. Socialism is what they called the growth of free and independent labor organizations. Socialism is their name for almost anything that helps all the people. When the Republican candidate inscribes the slogan ‘Down With Socialism’ on the banner of his ‘great crusade,’ that is really not what he means at all. What he really means is ‘Down with Progress—down with Franklin Roosevelt’s New Deal,’ and ‘down with Harry Truman’s Fair Deal.’ That’s all he means.”
Socialism has had plenty of electoral ups and downs across its long history in the United States. Socialists have been elected to the US Senate, the US House, and the mayoralties of this country’s largest cities, including Milwaukee, where members of the Socialist Party governed with notable success from 1910 to 1960, and, of course, New York, where Zohran Mamdani currently presides. They have also mounted and supported campaigns for the presidency that have profoundly influenced the politics and the policies of the United States.
Like Mamdani, Claire Valdez knows that history and proudly seeks to build on it in a year when democratic socialists—many of them affiliated with and backed by DSA—are running and winning with a frequency that unsettles the Republicans. That discomfort certainly has something to do with ideology. But it could also have something to with the way in which democratic socialists in New York and other communities are bringing energy and ideas to a Democratic Party that has struggled to identify itself as a bold force for economic policies—taxing the rich, treating healthcare as a right, building affordable housing, making college affordable, and making unions strong—that Americans want.
Valdez tells interviewers, “Democratic socialism…is about expanding our democracy so it’s not just voting once every two or four years. It’s about how we’ve organized together for ourselves and for our families and our neighbors.”
That expansive and empowering vision of democratic socialism is not new. Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders, the nation’s most prominent democratic socialist, who will be rallying in New York on Thursday night with Valdez and Mamdani (as well as progressive congressional candidates Brad Lander and Darializa Avila Chevalier), has long argued, “We must recognize that in the 21st century, in the wealthiest country in the history of the world, economic rights are human rights. That is what I mean by democratic socialism.”
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Just as President Franklin Roosevelt once proposed an “economic bill of rights” for the United States, so Sanders and Mamdani and Valdez speak of economic rights today. And, no matter how much the Republican National Committee rages about the candidacy of a democratic socialist in New York City, voters are listening with interest and enthusiasm. “I think [Mamdani’s 2025 mayoral race] demonstrated that there is a broad constituency that is maybe open, more than we previously thought, to a democratic socialist vision for an affordable New York, for a just and equitable society, in which people’s real material needs are foregrounded against corporate interests,” explains Valdez. “And that is very obviously inspiring to me.”
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