New York City finalized the tally of votes in last Tuesday’s primary election for mayor. The count confirmed what had been clear since election night: Democratic Socialist Zohran Mamdani decisively defeated former New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo by 12 points, garnering over half a million votes.
Mamdani will now be the Democratic nominee for mayor of the country’s largest city, and the wave of attention and scrutiny over his policy positions has garnered wall-to-wall coverage on cable news for the last week. His victory has brought renewed attention to Democratic Socialism as a political philosophy.
Dillon Wild, an organizer for Phoenix’s chapter of the Democratic Socialists of America, joined The Show to discuss how Mamdani’s victory is resonating here in the Valley.
Full conversation
DILLON WILD: Our chapter has doubled in size since the election of Donald Trump, and has experienced another huge surge in membership. With all the news about Zohran’s incredible victory. You know, we engage in a wide variety of activities in the Valley. We feed the unhoused, we put on social events so people can come together. We engage in electoral work where we've supported candidates like Anna Hernandez, who now sit on Phoenix City Council.
We're excited and eager to jump back into the electoral ring, seeing especially that there is a clear appetite for this in the United States. And we're going to be making plans here soon.
SAM DINGMAN: What are people saying with this recent surge of interest, not just, I mean, even pre Mamdani too, as you were saying. What sorts of things just anecdotally are you hearing from people who are starting to come to meetings?
WILD: Yeah, I mean, people are just especially fed up with the Democratic Party. Like more and more new members are coming. And we always ask them, like, what brought you to Phoenix DSA? And they're saying that they don't feel represented as working class people in today's Democratic Party, and that they're looking for ways to organize around issues that will tangibly impact our lives and address things like the cost of living crisis.
DINGMAN: Do you feel like I mean, obviously, you know, if we look at the chyrons on cable news, we are being told that Zohran Mamdani and democratic socialism in general represents the new vanguard of the Democratic Party. I hear you saying that a lot of the conversation happening within Phoenix DSA is about dissatisfaction with the Democratic Party and a desire to push things in a more democratic socialist direction.
WILD: Yeah, absolutely. So you know, DSA is not a political party, but historically, DSA members have run on the Democratic Party ballot line. So, as to the question of whether or not DSA is the future of the Democratic Party, I certainly hope so. But when you sit down and you examine the reactions to Zohran Mamdani, it's not just establishment Republicans that are pushing back against his victory. It's establishment corporatist Democrats as well.
DINGMAN: So, when you say DSA is not a political party, I think some people listening to this are going to go, "I didn't realize that." So it sounds a little bit more like a values driven activist group rather than a group with an explicit politics.
WILD: Well, we absolutely have an explicit politics, right? We believe that our economy and our democracy should work for everybody, and not just ruling elites and the wdealthy. Things like "Medicare for all," universal child health care are bedrock positions for Democratic socialists. But, there's absolutely a lot of room and a lot of range from one DSA chapter to the next about what we fight for, especially because our fights are so local.
DINGMAN: What are some of the main priorities for DSA in Phoenix?
WILD: Locally, the thing that we care the most about right now is meeting the needs of the unhoused population, right? Because it's not enough to just provide services to provide food, to provide water to unhoused people in public parks, etc. We need to actually fight to keep people in their homes who are on the brink of becoming homeless or unhoused. So, to that end, our electoral work, the candidates that we support, the people that we want to run in the next cycle all care very deeply about housing justice.
We've called for things like a moratorium on evictions in the summertime, because we know that the intense heat in Arizona can be a death sentence. We've called for increased rental assistance so that people who are on the brink have an opportunity to stay in their homes before they do become unhoused. And we've called for public defenders being allocated to anybody facing eviction who might be in a battle with their landlord in the city of Tempe.
DINGMAN: How long have you been involved with DSA?
WILD: I've been involved in DSA since 2020, around the Bernie movement.
DINGMAN: OK, OK. Can you say, just for yourself, what about Senator Sanders' campaign prompted you to get involved?
WILD: Yeah. So at that time, I was working as an educator. I taught for seven years before I moved on to other things. I always taught in underprivileged title one schools, sometimes in rough neighborhoods. I tried to show up to work every day and be an excellent teacher, but at the end of the day, I realized that being excellent at teaching physics or literature or English wasn't going to be enough to transform the communities in which I was teaching. We need real political solutions that transform the possibilities that are presented to working class people so that we can climb out of poverty.
DINGMAN: So, how would you compare the energy that you felt in 2020 with the energy that you're seeing now related to Zohran Mamdani?
WILD: Great question. So around the Sanders campaign, right in 2020, national DSA goes from being an organization of about 20,000 people to 70,000 people. We're experiencing similar energy again, with the rise of Zohran Mamdani. People are reaching out to us every day saying, where's a campaign like that that I can participate in right here in Phoenix, Arizona?
DINGMAN: What do you think, just in your own opinion, makes for an effective leader of a campaign that is driven by values that DSA would align with? Because one of the things that, to me, seems to be a commonality when we look at campaigns that have generated a lot of national interest and are affiliated with Democratic socialism.
We're thinking about Senator Sanders, obviously thinking of Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Zohran Mamdani. These are all people who obviously share the values of the movement, but are also extremely charismatic, really effective speakers and communicators.
How do you square that with the fact that DSA, if I'm hearing you correctly, is a movement largely driven by collective action, but does seem to need a leader who has an ability to kind of take up the mantle, even if it's not necessarily about them as an individual?
WILD: Great question. So, the national figures that you just talked about, like Rashida Tlaib, AOC, Bernie Sanders, Zohran Mamdani, the thing that is clear to me is that these are all working class people and a lot of diversity. I think DSA members can see ourselves and all of these people to varying degrees. What it takes to be a powerful DSA candidate is to stand strongly on working class values, to demonstrate to people that you're not some corporate elite, you're not some rich individual who's bought their way into politics.
But, just like most of us, you're a person who's concerned about what's happening in their community and wanting to make a difference.
DINGMAN There's a lot of people, as I know you know, who are a little scared when they hear the phrase Democratic socialism. What is your reply, when somebody expresses anxiety, uncertainty, uneasiness, particularly if you're dealing with somebody who is notionally a progressive person but is unwilling to affiliate themselves with those specific words or labels?
WILD: Yeah, I would say, "Look at the issues," right? National DSA and local chapters all across the country are in lockstep with majorities of the American people on what we're fighting for. Take Medicare for all, for example.
Poll after poll has demonstrated that 60% plus of Americans want to see universal health care implemented in the United States. But our politicians, time and time again, have failed to take it seriously. We believe that most Americans actually are strongly supportive of DSA’s mission,
DINGMAN: But it does seem to be that the words Democratic socialism are where people get nervous. How do you navigate that? Is that something you have to talk to people about directly?
WILD: What I would say is that when Donald Trump is talking about socialism, he's not talking about socialism as we understand it. He's talking about authoritarianism. DSA is not an authoritarian organization. And if we want to see our policies reflected in government, then we need to persuade majorities of Americans that these policies are worth having and then win those victories at the ballot box.
