Socialist candidates captured the mayor’s offices in Los Angeles and Washington, D.C., in Tuesday’s elections, expanding their foothold in some of America’s largest cities. Nithya Raman and Janeese Lewis George won their respective races, adding two members of the Democratic Socialists of America to the incoming ranks of big-city mayors. Their victories mean socialist mayors have now been elected to lead four major American cities.
Raman, a Los Angeles councilwoman, defeated incumbent Mayor Karen Bass and will take office in December. She will lead a city with roughly 4 million residents. Across the country, Lewis George won the mayoral election in Washington, a city of approximately 700,000 people, securing another municipal victory for the DSA.
The two newly elected mayors will join Seattle Mayor Katie Wilson and New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani. Together, the four cities have approximately 14 million residents. Their governments oversee communities where decisions about public safety, housing and business conditions can also affect people who travel into the city for work or own property nearby.
As Fox News reported, the combined population reaches roughly 44 million when the surrounding metropolitan areas are included. The outlet identified crime, real estate values and the business climate as areas where municipal policies could have consequences beyond city boundaries. Suburban commuters may also encounter those policies during their workdays, extending the potential impact beyond the residents who vote in municipal elections.
Heritage Foundation fellow Mike Gonzalez responded to the Los Angeles result in a Thursday post on X quoted in the report. “This makes LA the fourth large city that will now have a socialist mayor, joining New York, Washington DC and Seattle,” Gonzalez wrote. He also singled out Chicago’s mayor while criticizing the broader spread of socialist politics: “Chicago’s mayor is a buffoon, but he doesn’t identify as DSA. America used to be an impregnable fortress against Marxism, then Marxists took over universities.”
In Washington, Lewis George has called for ending cooperation between the Metropolitan Police Department and U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, according to FOX 5 DC’s reporting. Her agenda also includes expanding affordable housing, addressing utility rates and establishing universal child care. She has proposed an early financial review across District agencies to examine spending, savings, fraud and mishandling of public funds.
Watch Janeese Lewis George’s election-night victory speech here:
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The electoral gains extended to Congress, where Fox News reported that seven DSA-backed or affiliated candidates won House races. Those winners included Claire Valdez and Darializa Avila Chevalier in New York, Chris Rabb in Pennsylvania and Melat Kiros in Colorado. Donavan McKinney in Michigan and Angela Gonzales-Torres in California were also among the candidates identified in the report.
National polling cited by Fox News showed that 32% of voters viewed socialism favorably, while 64% viewed it unfavorably. The favorable share matched the highest level recorded since Fox began asking the question in 2019, first reached five years ago. In the same poll, capitalism received a favorable rating from 51% of voters and an unfavorable rating from 46%. A separate Gallup poll, conducted in August and released in September, found that 43% of Americans had a positive image of socialism, its highest reading since that organization began tracking the question in 2010.
Featured image credit: screengrab from the embedded video.