On a late March afternoon, beneath the vaulted, medieval-revival ceiling of Immanuel Presbyterian Church, more than four hundred members of the Los Angeles chapter of the Democratic Socialists of America (DSA) gathered in the lingering heat of a citywide heat wave. The air inside the sanctuary was thick and stubborn as members fanned themselves with paper copies of the meeting agenda and shifted in their seats.
The proceedings moved briskly at first. Members discussed strike solidarity with the teachers’ union, upcoming labor actions, and campaign work. But as the temperature held and the room settled, the chapter turned to the main act, a more contentious question: whether to reopen its endorsement process for the 2026 Los Angeles mayoral race. What followed was a three-sided debate, carried out with intensity but also with (mostly) practiced comradely discipline.
More than one hundred members had signed petitions backing housing activist Rae Huang. Another one hundred supported City Councilmember Nithya Raman. Others argued that reopening the process would risk overextending the chapter’s resources and undermine a carefully built electoral strategy. In the end, 54 percent voted to reopen endorsements, but the measure failed to reach the required supermajority.
It was the kind of debate that would have once remained obscure and relevant only to a relatively small organization. As DSA’s LA chapter has grown to five thousand members, and the national organization has become an increasingly prominent force, DSA-LA’s decisions have begun to register as reportable events in the political life of the city. What was once “inside baseball” now carries implications for multimillion-dollar races and the direction of governance in the second-largest city in the United States — part of a broader maturation of socialist politics.
For years, DSA-LA has pursued a disciplined electoral strategy focused primarily on city council races,…
Auteur: Chris Kutalik
