Three congressional districts. Three Mamdani-backed socialist candidates. Three wins. On June 24, New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani's hand-picked slate of Democratic Socialists of America candidates swept every single Democratic primary they entered — NY-7, NY-10, and NY-13 — and left the Democratic establishment staring at the wreckage of their own party.
The old guard didn't just lose. They got evicted.
As journalist Bill Melugin put it on election night, "Mamdani-backed socialists have officially gone 3/3 and won all of their respective Democratic primaries for U.S. House in New York tonight." In NY-13, Darializa Avila Chevalier took the nomination. In NY-7, Claire Valdez claimed her seat. In NY-10, Brad Lander — already a known quantity in New York's progressive machine — completed the sweep. And in a state senate race, Mamdani-endorsed Aber Kawas added a fourth notch to the socialist belt.
Rep. Adriano Espaillat, the incumbent in one of these races, conceded. A sitting congressman, ousted by his own party's left flank. Not by Republicans. Not by independents. By people who think he wasn't radical enough.
Commentator Robby Starbuck summed it up plainly: "The communists are taking over the Democrat Party." That's not hyperbole when the candidates in question are running under the banner of the Democratic Socialists of America and winning by comfortable margins. This isn't a fringe faction knocking on the door anymore. They own the door.
The Democratic establishment built this. They spent years telling voters that Sen. Bernie Sanders and Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez were the future of the party. They championed $2 trillion in student loan forgiveness schemes. They treated the DSA as a cute ideological cousin rather than the hostile takeover it always was. Now the takeover is complete — at least in New York — and the old-line Democrats are the ones clearing out their offices.
The RNC, to their credit, is paying attention. Republican leadership has already announced they're going all-in on New York for the midterms, and why wouldn't they? When your opponent replaces tested incumbents with candidates who openly align with socialist organizations, the general election map changes. Districts that were safe blue suddenly have a question mark over them.
There's a historical pattern here that the Democratic Party keeps refusing to learn from. Hugo Chávez didn't seize Venezuela overnight. Nicolás Maduro didn't build a dictatorship from scratch. They moved through existing political structures, pushed moderates out, and consolidated. Nobody's saying New York is Caracas. But the playbook — primary the moderates, install the true believers, dare anyone to object — is familiar to anyone who's watched a party eat itself from the inside.
Bernie Sanders, with his estimated $2.5 million net worth, has spent decades preaching socialism from the comfort of his lake house. AOC turned a bartending gig into a congressional seat by running to the left of everyone in the room. They were the proof of concept. Mamdani is the rollout.
The Democratic Party used to argue about tax rates and healthcare policy. Now they're arguing about whether capitalism itself should survive. That's not a debate moderate suburban voters signed up for, and it's not one that plays well outside deep-blue enclaves.
Three districts flipped to socialists in a single night. The incumbents are gone. The RNC is circling. And the Democratic establishment is learning what every party eventually learns when it feeds the radicals long enough — the radicals get hungry for the hand that feeds them.
