The Democrat Party just got a wake-up call it has been desperately trying to ignore.
Three self-described socialists swept congressional primaries in New York, and the party’s old guard couldn’t get away from reporters fast enough.
And when cameras caught up with Nancy Pelosi, she refused to say a single word about what just happened to her party.
Former Speaker of the House Representative Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) and Representative Ilhan Omar (D-MN) dodged answering questions on the growing influence of the socialist movement after three candidates backed by New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani dominated in primary elections.
Mamdani’s political clout was on full display after all three House candidates he endorsed — Darializa Avila Chevalier, Brad Lander, and Claire Valdez — won their Democrat primaries in New York, beating out more moderate Democrats.
Two of those wins came at the direct expense of incumbents backed by House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries. The biggest upset of the night came in New York’s 13th District, where Mamdani-backed candidate Darializa Avila Chevalier, a 32-year-old community organizer and democratic socialist, narrowly defeated five-term incumbent Adriano Espaillat to represent Upper Manhattan and part of the Bronx. Former New York City Comptroller Brad Lander won two-thirds of the vote in the Democrat primary for New York’s 10th District, defeating two-term Democratic Representative Dan Goldman.
These districts heavily favor Democrats, meaning Valdez, Lander, and Avila Chevalier are expected to win their general election matchups in the fall. Put simply, barring something extraordinary, all three are headed to Congress.
And what did Pelosi have to say about it? Nothing. She walked away.
Pelosi refused to answer Fox News Digital’s question on her reaction to these socialist candidates coming out victorious. The 20-term California congresswoman never formally endorsed Mamdani, but she did endorse a socialist candidate in 2024 — Dean Preston for California’s District 5 supervisor.
She also said she will “reject socialism as an economic system” and as a full picture of the Democrat Party in an interview with CBS’ 60 Minutes back in 2019. “If people have that view, that’s their view,” Pelosi said. “That is not the view of the Democratic Party.”
But those were just words.
As Speaker of the House, Nancy Pelosi rammed through the Obamacare scheme, Joe Biden’s Green New Deal, and Biden’s trillion-dollar socialist spending spree.
Apparently, the voters of New York City didn’t get that memo.
Omar, a member of the progressive Squad, also ignored questions about the New York primary results, including whether the three socialist candidates could complicate House Democrats and Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries’ agendas if they’re elected to Congress. While Omar has never formally identified as a socialist, she has supported many policies associated with socialism and has also been backed by the Democratic Socialists of America.
But at least one Democrat was happy to talk. While Pelosi and Omar walked away without responding, Representative Hank Johnson (D-GA) welcomed the incoming lawmakers. “I think Democrats in New York elected three new Democrats that will join our caucus, and I’m looking forward for them participating,” Johnson told Fox News Digital.
Asked about criticism that the three candidates have leveled against Israel, Johnson argued they oppose the Israeli government rather than Israel itself. “They were not anti-Israel. They were anti-Israeli government,” Johnson said. “The government of Benjamin Netanyahu has done a grave disservice to the nation of Israel and to its people.”
Johnson then went further. He said, “The same way that the people of America have the opportunity to correct this mistake that we made in electing Donald Trump, who unfortunately got manipulated into war by Benjamin Netanyahu.”
So there you have it. One wing of the Democrat Party is running away from cameras. Another is rolling out the welcome mat for socialists and taking shots at the sitting President of the United States in the same breath.
Now take a look at who exactly is being welcomed.
Democratic Socialists of America members Darializa Avila Chevalier and State Assemblywoman Claire Valdez, along with progressive Democrat and former DSA member Brad Lander, all have a clear path to Congress after winning in heavily blue districts.
Avila Chevalier attended Columbia University and is currently pursuing a PhD at the City University of New York. She spent much of her time in college organizing against the political right and is a hardline anti-Israel actor. At the Ivy League school, she helped found a group called Columbia University Apartheid Divest, which later caused a firestorm when it posted “Death to America” in Farsi on X.
After an American airstrike killed Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, the group posted “Marg bar Amrika,” which translates to “Death to America” in Persian. While the group later removed the post from X, the group stated that “the sentiment still stands.”
And this is the person Hank Johnson is “looking forward” to welcoming into the House Democrat caucus.
Lander was a card-carrying DSA member until 2023, when he was turned off by the group’s response to the October 7, 2023, Hamas terror attack on Israeli concertgoers that killed 1,200 people. He defeated incumbent Representative Dan Goldman in a landslide in New York’s 10th Congressional District. Lander says his first priority in Congress will be to “vanquish Trump’s fascism” and abolish ICE, and accused billionaires of “rigging our economy.”
Claire Valdez, a Mamdani-backed democratic socialist member of the New York State Assembly, won her primary race for Democratic incumbent Representative Nydia Velazquez’s seat. Valdez campaigned on abolishing U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, “demilitarizing the border,” making it easier for illegal aliens to gain lawful permanent residence, defunding Israel, and super-charging the “Green New Deal.”
Every one of these candidates ran on a platform that would gut American energy independence, hand the federal government control over your healthcare, and erase the border entirely. The historical record on what happens when governments embrace these ideas isn’t a mystery. Venezuela, Cuba, the Soviet Union — the pattern doesn’t change just because the packaging gets a fresh coat of Brooklyn-progressive paint.
Avila Chevalier’s campaign website calls for “Medicare for All,” the slogan for single-payer health care. Senator Bernie Sanders (I-VT) has driven support for the policy and endorsed Chevalier. A Heritage Foundation analysis found that a government-run health care system would leave most households financially worse off, as such a system would cost more in taxes than it would offset in health insurance costs for most working families.
But the bigger story here isn’t just three primary wins in deep-blue New York City districts. It’s what those wins reveal about where the Democrat Party is heading and who is now calling the shots inside it.
The DSA was founded in 1982 through the merger of two older left-wing organizations and spent its first 30 years as a marginal advocacy outfit. Its membership hovered around 6,000. Its influence on national politics was negligible. Its place in Democrat Party councils was nonexistent. The group now claims 100,000 members, holds 250 local elected offices across the country, and controls the mayoralty of America’s largest city.
A Fox News survey in March found a record 38% of Americans believed it would be a good thing for the United States to move away from capitalism and in the direction of socialism — up from 32% in 2022 and 18% in 2010. Very liberal voters and Democrats under age 45 were most likely to favor shifting toward socialism.
That number should alarm every working American who has ever signed the front of a paycheck. Socialism doesn’t raise the floor — it collapses the ceiling. Every country that has tried it in earnest has ended up with rationing, shortages, and a political class that exempts itself from the misery it imposes on everyone else.
House Democrat leaders are carefully tiptoeing around the shift in their party, knowing it is fueled by dissatisfaction within their own base. Pelosi’s silence wasn’t confusion. It was calculation. She knows exactly what just happened. She just doesn’t want to be on record saying it out loud.
But the voters who sent these three candidates to the doorstep of Congress weren’t confused either. They knew what they were voting for. And if Republicans treat these wins as a New York City curiosity that won’t travel, they’re making a mistake. Just recently, Democrat primary voters in Washington, D.C., elected Janeese Lewis George, a democratic socialist, to be their next mayor, and earlier this month a Los Angeles DSA candidate advanced to the general election for mayor there.
The Democrat establishment can keep walking away from cameras. But the socialist wing of their party isn’t walking away from anything. It’s walking straight toward a House floor vote.
Sources: Fox News Digital, Washington Times, Fox News, Daily Signal, Washington Examiner