Politics
EXCLUSIVE: Pelosi reflects on long career, LGBTQ advocacy
Former Speaker credits activists who fought for AIDS funding, marriage equality
Rep. Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) sat down with the Washington Blade in her office Tuesday evening for an exclusive interview just weeks after formally stepping down from leadership, having led her party in the House for 20 years, including as Speaker.
Pelosi reflected on the role she has played in landmark legislative achievements, including milestones in the fight for LGBTQ rights. She also addressed some current events that have earned significant attention from political observers and the beltway press.
So much of the historic progress over the past few decades in advancements toward the legal, social, and political equality of LGBTQ Americans, including those living with HIV/AIDS, was facilitated directly or otherwise supported by Pelosi’s leadership in Congress, but she was quick to credit the tireless work of individual activists and LGBTQ, civil rights, and HIV/AIDS advocacy groups.
“I attribute the success with [fighting] HIV/AIDS and everything that came after,” from legislation on hate crimes to marriage equality, “to the outside mobilization” of these activists and organizations, she told the Blade.
Despite positioning herself as an advocate for LGBTQ rights well before that position was popular, Pelosi said she is unaware of any instances where she may have suffered political consequences as a result. Regardless, she said, “I don’t care.”
The more she has been criticized for championing LGBTQ rights in Congress, “the more proud I am” of that work, Pelosi added.
Pelosi has always been a strident LGBTQ ally, guided by her commitment to justice, love, and fairness as ordained by the teachings of her Catholic faith. These ideals are in perfect alignment, she said, as opposed to the position held by many opponents of LGBTQ rights who nevertheless claim to believe we are all created in God’s image.
During an interview with Larry King, when serving as the San Francisco Democratic National Convention host committee chairwoman in 1984, Pelosi said the late television host remarked: “I just don’t understand how a Catholic girl who grew up in Baltimore, Maryland is such a champion for gay rights.”
“You’ve answered your own question,” Pelosi told him, referring to his mention of her Catholicism. “It is our faith that tells us that we’re all God’s children, and we must respect the dignity and worth of every person.”
Pelosi’s time in Congress began with the AIDS crisis, and she has kept up the fight ever since
After committing herself and the Congress to the fight against HIV/AIDS during her first speech from the floor of the House in 1987, Pelosi said some of her colleagues asked whether she thought it wise for her feelings on the subject to be “the first thing that people know about you” as a newly elected member.
They questioned her decision not because they harbored any stigma, but rather for concern over how “others might view my service here,” Pelosi said. The battle against HIV/AIDS, she told them, “is why I came here.”
“It was every single day,” she said.
Alongside the “big money for research, treatment, and prevention” were other significant legislative accomplishments, such as “when we] were able to get Medicaid to treat HIV [patients] as Medicaid-eligible” rather than requiring them to wait until their disease had progressed to full-blown AIDS to qualify for coverage, said Pelosi, who authored the legislation.
“That was a very big deal for two reasons,” she said. First, because it saved lives by allowing low-income Americans living with HIV to begin treatment before the condition becomes life-threatening, and second, because “it was the recognition that we had this responsibility to intervene early.”
Other milestones in which Pelosi had a hand include the Housing Opportunities for People with AIDS program, President Bush’s PEPFAR (President’s Emergency Plan For AIDS Relief) initiative, the Affordable Care Act (which contains significant benefits for Americans living with HIV/AIDS), and funding for the Ending the Epidemic initiative.
The last appropriations bill passed under Pelosi’s tenure as Democratic leader in December contained an additional $100 million boost to HIV/AIDS programs.
These and other hard-won victories over the years – from the biomedical progress made possible by investment in research to foreign aid packages that have saved countless lives overseas – have often come despite staunch opposition from lawmakers, particularly congressional Republicans.
For instance, the late former Sen. Jesse Helms of North Carolina opposed federal funding for HIV/AIDS research because he considered it tantamount to the government’s endorsement of “the homosexual lifestyle” responsible for the spread of the disease in the U.S.
Asked how she might compare anti-LGBTQ members like Helms with whom she worked in the past to those serving today, Pelosi said the most salient difference is the homophobic and transphobic attitudes among lawmakers in previous decades were in many cases borne out of ignorance.
Pelosi said that while the prejudice was “horrible [back] then” and she was “impatient” with lawmakers in the House who exhibited attitudes similar to those expressed by Helms, at that time people who held those views were often “just not up to date on what was happening in the world.”
(Pelosi noted that, for his part, Helms seemed to soften his stance on matters concerning HIV/AIDS. She suspects U2 frontman Bono may have successfully appealed to Helms as a parent, but “I don’t know exactly.”)
By contrast, today’s lawmakers, like the overwhelming majority of Americans, “must have a growing awareness of [LGBTQ] people in their own communities, maybe in their own families,” Pelosi said. “They’re really in a different world,” which means, they “have made a decision that they’re going to be anti-LGBTQ,” she said, adding that hate and prejudice today is most often directed at the trans community. “It’s completely unacceptable.”
Asked to share her thoughts on the many scandals that have unfolded over the past couple of months concerning gay freshman GOP Rep. George Santos of New York, Pelosi pointed out that while the congressman has dominated headlines recently, other members of the House Republican caucus who have weaponized homophobia and transphobia to a far greater extent than he are much more dangerous.
But first, Pelosi said that House Democrats would never do what the Republican leadership has done by tolerating the embattled freshman congressman to protect their slim majority control of the chamber.
Santos is “almost a joke; he’s become a punch line,” Pelosi said. “He’s outrageous, and there’s no way he should be allowed to serve” given the extent to which the congressman has failed to exhibit the “dignity” required of members who are privileged to serve in the House of Representatives.
At the same time, “there are people over there who are more seriously dangerous to the freedoms in our country than him” Pelosi said. She pointed to the hate mongering and fear mongering in which many of Santos’s Republican colleagues have engaged, including “the things that that they say about trans families and, just, the injustice of it all.”
The aim of these far-right lawmakers extends far beyond undermining the rights of LGBTQ people, of course. Pelosi noted that, “you have to remember, with all of these things, whether we’re talking about women’s right to choose – we’ve always expanded freedoms. And now with this Supreme Court, they’re narrowing freedoms with women’s right to choose” by the revocation of constitutional protections for abortion via last year’s ruling in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization.
Breaking the ‘marble ceiling’
During a lecture last year hosted at the University of California, Berkeley, Barbara Boxer, who formerly represented California in the House and then in the Senate, commented on the historic significance of Pelosi’s election to become the first woman Speaker of the House of Representatives in 2006. “The fact that a woman could get into the leadership like this, to win the trust of all these men, it’s more extraordinary than you can imagine,” Boxer said.
Boxer has also been a trailblazer for women in politics. She was the first woman to chair the Marin County Board of Supervisors, and after her election to serve in the upper chamber alongside California’s senior Sen. Dianne Feinstein, the two became the first pair of women to represent any state in the U.S. Senate.
Asked how she managed to secure the votes from, particularly, the older men in her caucus without compromising her values, Pelosi told the Blade, “I just did what I believed” rather than coming to Congress to “change other people’s behavior.”
She said that many of her male colleagues “had to get over their own negative attitudes” concerning the prospect of electing a woman to lead their party in the House, but “I wasn’t going to wait until then.”
At the same time, Pelosi acknowledged that “it took courage to vote for a woman as speaker,” noting that when she was sworn in back in 2007, she took the opportunity to thank the men who had supported her speakership. (She was elected unanimously on the first ballot.)
Pelosi said that prior to her speakership, she had always believed that the prospect of Americans electing a woman president was likelier to happen in her lifetime than members of Congress – who tend to be older men – voting for a woman speaker.
“I thought the American people were more ready than the Congress” to break the “marble ceiling,” she said.
Considering the parallel special counsel investigations into alleged mishandling of classified documents by President Joe Biden and former President Donald Trump, Pelosi has perhaps unwittingly strengthened the case for America to elect a woman president by virtue of her unblemished record as a steward of sensitive, top-secret information.
“I have 30 years of experience in intelligence. I have been on the [House Intelligence] Committee, the top Democrat on the Committee, ex officio on the Committee, a speaker and [Democratic] leader [in the House],” Pelosi said.
She distinguished the rules by which she and other members of Congress are governed, which prohibit the removal or relocation of classified documents, from the policies that the Commander in Chief must follow, which are comparably more permissive.
Regardless, Pelosi said, “the documents are to be respected,” along with the rules and procedures for how they should be handled.
There are also important distinctions to note between the allegations against Trump and Biden, Pelosi said. “When you see the former president obstructing access to the documents, and you see this president saying, ‘I’ve instructed my lawyers to look for whatever is there and make them available to the Justice Department,’ that’s two different things,” she said.
Additionally, Pelosi said, from the information that has been made available so far, it seems that Trump was in possession of a greater volume of documents whose contents were more sensitive than those at issue in Biden’s case.
Pelosi’s LGBTQ fans celebrate her accomplishments
In November, the Human Rights Campaign, America’s largest LGBTQ advocacy organization, issued a statement following Pelosi’s announcement of her plans to step down from Democratic leadership but continue to represent her constituents in California’s 11th Congressional District in the House.
“Speaker Pelosi has been the tip of the spear on watershed advancements for the LGBTQ+ community,” HRC President Kelley Robinson said in a statement, pointing to her 1987 speech on the AIDS crisis and “forceful advocacy for marriage equality long before its mainstream popularity,” both before she was elected as speaker.
The Clinton-era Defense of Marriage Act, which banned federal recognition of same-sex marriages, was signed into law in 1996 with overwhelming support from both parties in both chambers of Congress; 342 members of the House voted for the proposal, with Pelosi joining only 64 other House Democrats, one independent, and one Republican in her opposition.
“During [Pelosi’s] tenure as Speaker,” HRC noted, “the House of Representatives passed an historic hate crimes law [the Matthew Shepard and James Byrd Jr. Hate Crimes Prevention Act], repealed the discriminatory ‘Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell’ law, led the fight to enact the Affordable Care Act, and vocally opposed bans on transgender members serving in our nation’s military.”
Pelosi’s leadership was bookended with Congress’s passage late last year of the Respect for Marriage Act, which is credited as the greatest legislative victory for LGBTQ Americans since the 2010 repeal of “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell.”
Outside the U.S. Capitol building, Pelosi has also been celebrated by the LGBTQ community for signaling her support through, for example, her participation in some of the earliest meetings of the NAMES Project AIDS Memorial Quilt, her meeting with the survivors of the 2016 Pulse nightclub massacre, and her appearance at a host of LGBTQ events over the years.
Of course, at the same time, Pelosi has been a constant target of attacks from the right, which in the past few years have become increasingly violent. During the siege of the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, her office was ransacked by insurrectionists who shouted violent threats against her. A couple of weeks later, unearthed social media posts by far-right Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (Ga.) revealed she had signaled support for executing Pelosi along with other prominent House Democrats. And last October, the speaker’s husband Paul Pelosi suffered critical injuries after he was attacked by a man wielding a hammer who had broken into the couple’s San Francisco home.
Pelosi told CNN last week that her husband is “doing OK,” but expects it will “take a little while for him to be back to normal.”
Among her fans in progressive circles, Pelosi – who has been a towering figure in American politics since the Bush administration – has become something of a cultural icon, as well. For instance, the image of her clapping after Trump’s State of the Union speech in 2019 has been emblazoned on coffee mugs.
“What is so funny about it,” Pelosi said, is rather than “that work [over] all these years as a legislator,” on matters including the “Affordable Care Act, millions of people getting health care, what we did over the years with HIV/AIDS in terms of legislation, this or that,” people instead have made much ado over her manner of clapping after Trump’s speech. And while the move was widely seen as antagonistic, Pelosi insisted, “it was not intended to be a negative thing.”
Regardless, she said, “it’s nice to have some fun about it, because you’re putting up with the criticism all the time – on issues, whether it’s about LGBTQ, or being a woman, or being from San Francisco, or whatever it is.”
Congress
Political drama in Angie Craig’s Minn. Senate race heats up
Lesbian lawmaker running to succeed retiring U.S. Sen. Tina Smith
After an historic and expensive July 4th fireworks display capped Donald Trump’s self-indulgent commemoration of America’s 250th birthday, voters are now watching state races explode into political pyrotechnics as Democrats fight to win majorities in Congress and Republicans plan to keep buying power.
With the midterm elections just over three months away and several primary races still undecided, most pundits predict the decline in Trump’s approval ratings will result in Democrats winning the House, if infighting doesn’t turn off voters.
Democrats’ dream of taking the U.S. Senate, however, turned into a nightmare with the scandalous Graham Platner debacle in must-win Maine. Energized party leaders hope to put on a master class in democracy as they pick a new candidate before July 27.
The hike to Senate victory is still steep. Republicans have a 53-47 advantage — meaning Democrats must win eight of 11 competitive races, including defending seats currently held in Minnesota, Michigan, New Hampshire, and Georgia, for a net gain of four seats.
LGBTQ people intent on reversing Project 2025’s prolific erasure might focus on lesbian U.S. Rep. Angie Craig’s race in Minnesota.
With the retirement of Democratic U.S. Sen. Tina Smith, The Cook Political Report’s out guru Amy Walter labeled the open seat “likely” Democrat but with only a +3-point advantage.
New York Times Polling data reporter Alex Lemonides notes that “Trump lost Minnesota by four percentage points in 2024, and Minnesotans have not sent a Republican to the Senate since the 2002 midterms, so a Republican win in the general election would buck the trend.”
But this whole election cycle is about bucking trends. With so many Democratic Socialists defeating establishment candidates, “socialist” is no longer a slur, forcing Trump to switch to the old Cold War charge of Communist!
In Minnesota, U.S. Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.)-backed candidate Lt. Gov. Peggy Flanagan is out-polling Craig, a more centrist Democrat who flipped a battleground House seat in 2018. Their primary is on Aug. 11.
Republicans are salivating over challenging Flanagan for her administrative role in the scandal that forced Gov. Tim Walz to forgo a third term and deal with widespread fraud in social programs.
Former NBC’s Sunday Night Football sideline reporter and current political podcaster Michele Tafoya has a built-in “bro” audience. The announcement of her Republican candidacy was featured on ESPN.com.
“As Minnesota’s senator, I will clean up the system, fighting corruption, ending the fraud, and protecting your tax dollars,” Tafoya said. “I will protect what’s fair and safe, standing with our law enforcement officers, deporting dangerous criminals, and keeping female sports for female athletes.”
Craig responded quickly. “Trump’s hand-picked candidate just jumped in the race for U.S. Senate,” she said on social media. “Minnesota needs a Senator who will stand up and fight for our state – and we know it won’t be MAGA Michele.”
Craig tells LGBTQ+ Freedom Fighters that she has been happy to represent Minnesota’s Second Congressional District in the U.S. House of Representatives since 2019. Now she wants to represent the entire state as a U.S. senator.
“The state of Minnesota has been so good to me and my family,” says Craig, who chose to move to the state because it would accept her family.
Craig grew up in a mobile home park in Arkansas, one of three children of a single mother. She worked her way through the University of Memphis, earning a degree in journalism, and became a reporter with the Memphis Commercial Appeal.
She has a long history of fighting for LGBTQ rights, including her own. In the late 1990s, while living in Tennessee, Craig and her then-partner, Debra Langston, adopted their first son, Joshua. Under Tennessee law at the time, only one of them could be recognized as an adoptive parent; Craig was listed as Langston’s roommate.
The birth mother wanted the couple to have Joshua, but her parents intervened, seeking to adopt him. The courts had to decide if Langston and Craig were “fit” parents. One appellate court judge objected to the boy being raised by “open, practicing lesbians,” but his two colleagues disagreed, and Langston and Craig won the precedent-setting case in 2000, albeit with lots of caveats.
“The issue in this case is not whether the members of this court approve the homosexual lifestyle or the adoption of children by homosexuals, but rather whether the adoption of this child by this prospective parent is in the child’s best interest. As in any adoption case, the determinative issue was and remains what is in the child’s best interest,” wrote Judge Alan E. Highers in his opinion concurring with the majority in ruling In re: ADOPTION OF M.J.S. in the Tennessee Court of Appeals.
By then, Craig was working in corporate communications for Smith & Nephew, a multinational maker of medical equipment, and the couple had another son, Jacob, born to Craig through alternative insemination. She and her family moved to London, where the company was based, in the early 2000s. They returned to the U.S. in 2005; Craig went to work for another medical equipment company, St. Jude Medical, in the suburbs of Minneapolis. She later said it was the least lucrative job offer she had, but she took it because she knew the area was welcoming to LGBTQ people.
Craig and Langston separated in 2006, and Craig married Cheryl Greene in California in 2008. They have four sons and three grandsons, with a fourth on the way. Greene is a former middle school teacher still involved with youth programming.
Craig worked for LGBTQ equality within her company and for statewide marriage equality in Minnesota. She also fought against an anti-marriage equality constitutional amendment in 2012, which voters rejected. The state legislature passed a marriage equality bill the following year that Gov. Mark Dayton signed into law.
In 2016, when she ran for Congress in Minnesota’s 2nd District, a Republican stronghold for more than a decade, she told the Twin Cities Pioneer Press that the fight for custody of Joshua gave her strength.
“Whether I win or lose on Election Day, I know that that won’t be the hardest thing or the biggest challenge that I’ve ever faced,” said Craig, then 44. “When you get up every day and wonder, ‘Am I going to (still) have my child the next day?’ you get pretty good at being focused on the big picture.”
“I’ve always talked about my family openly” on the campaign trail and in office, Craig, co-chair of the Congressional Equality Caucus, tells LGBTQ+ Freedom Fighters. Often at events in her district and around the state, she’ll meet someone who mentions they have an LGBTQ family member, she notes. She finds that if she listens to constituents and addresses what’s important to them, her identity isn’t an issue.
What Craig has addressed for constituents includes health care costs, such as capping the out-of-pocket cost of insulin and limiting overall out-of-pocket drug costs for people on Medicare. These came from a bill introduced by Craig and became provisions of the Inflation Reduction Act, signed into law by President Joe Biden in 2022. She also wants a public option for health insurance, an increased child tax credit, and she introduced a bill to eliminate federal taxes on Social Security benefits.
In a June 19 SurveyUSA poll, Minnesotans say their single most important issue is inflation (39%) and cost of living, followed by health care, immigration, gas prices, and the war in Iran.
But immigration may soon jump to the front as more information leaks out about U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents shooting and killing Lorenzo Salgado Araujo during a traffic stop in Houston on Tuesday morning, July 9. Homeland Security says the father, with no criminal record, driving to work, ignored verbal instructions and tried to ram their vehicle. ICE shot him in self-defense — the same excuse ICE used on Jan. 7, 2026, when an ICE agent killed nonviolent protester Renee Good. In both instances, video footage proved ICE lied.
Also caught on tape was Craig’s angry confrontation with Republican Majority Whip Tom Emmer (R-Minn.) on the House floor the day Good was killed after Emmer supported ICE on social media. The story and her response went viral.
But Craig continues to be criticized for voting for the Laken Riley Act, named for a woman who was killed by an undocumented immigrant. It allows for undocumented immigrants to be detained or deported if they are simply accused of crimes, even nonviolent ones. Critics say she has never apologized — but she has.
In a commentary for The Minnesota Star Tribune in May, Craig wrote, in part:
“The text of the bill did not include the word deportation. I made the difficult decision to vote for it. Democrats like Sens. Mark Kelly and Ruben Gallego, Raphael Warnock and Jon Ossoff — leaders I deeply respect — all came to the same conclusion.
But as I stood side by side with protesters on the streets of Minneapolis and opposite dozens of armed Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents at the Whipple Federal Building after Renee Good’s killing — and again after the killing of Alex Pretti — I couldn’t help but question whether I made the right call last year … It’s also become clear that supporting any bill that gives ICE new authority in this administration was the wrong decision. And I regret my vote.”
“What happened under Operation Metro Surge was horrific,” Craig tells LGBTQ+ Freedom Fighters. The U.S. can secure its borders in a humane fashion while providing a path to citizenship for undocumented people, those brought here as children, and others, she adds.
On LGBTQ rights, Craig says the Equality Act has been a huge priority of hers in the House and would remain so in the Senate.
Since 2019, Craig has introduced the John Lewis Every Child Deserves a Family Act that “would ban discrimination based on sexual orientation, gender identity, religion or marital status in those programs, prohibit the use of federal funds for so-called ‘conversion therapy’ and create a resource center for LGBTQ+ foster and adoptive youth within the Department of Health and Human Services’ Administration for Children and Families,” according to a press release.
Another priority is passage of the John R. Lewis Voting Rights Advancement Act, named for the late civil rights activist and longtime congressman. “I was lucky enough to serve with John Lewis,” she says.
Additionally, Craig supports campaign finance reform. The recent U.S. Supreme Court ruling that further loosened restrictions was “just another blow to our democracy,” she says. She supports limits on Supreme Court terms.
On foreign policy, she condemns Trump’s war of choice in Iran. “The administration has had zero strategic objectives,” she says, adding that the war has caused “tremendous economic damage,” such as the spike in gas prices.
And though Craig supports a two-state solution to the ongoing Israel-Palestinian conflict, with Palestinians having their own state, her campaign does not accept direct donations from AIPAC’s political action committee — the pro-Israel group held fundraisers for her before her Senate announcement — another point exploited by primary opponent Flanagan.
On gender-affirming care for transgender youth, Craig says politicians should not interfere with decisions made by young people and their parents. Regarding trans girls and women in sports, she says the matter is best handled locally — and that local conversations can foster understanding.
But Craig has had a strong public reaction to federal transphobia. After that, then-U.S. Reps. Tulsi Gabbard (D-Hawaii) and Markwayne Mullin (R-Okla.) introduced the Protect Women’s Sports Act in December 2020. Craig released the following statement:
“As a lesbian woman, I am no stranger to prejudice and intolerance — but this legislation is beyond the pale. Plain and simple, the Protect Women’s Sports Act is transphobic — and this type of discrimination has no place in the halls of Congress. Especially at a time when the transgender community is suffering from a tragic rise in suicide rates and experiencing a surge of transphobic violence, such a bigoted and appalling effort is simply unacceptable. Queer and transgender women must stand together in the face of intolerance — and I am proud to do so today by emphatically denouncing this narrow-minded and hateful legislation, which is harmful not only to transgender women but to the LGBTQ community at-large.”
Craig has been endorsed by prominent LGBTQ groups, including the LGBTQ+ Victory Fund, the Human Rights Campaign PAC, Equality PAC, and LPAC. She has also been endorsed by Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey and St. Paul Mayor Kaohly Her, plus many nationally known political figures, such as former Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg, U.S. Sen. Tammy Baldwin (D-Wis.), House Speaker Emerita Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.), and House Democratic Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-N.Y.).
Flanagan has the endorsement of Smith and her predecessor, Al Franken, Minnesota Attorney General Keith Ellison, and, from outside the state, U.S. Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) and Sanders, among others. U.S. Sen. Amy Klobuchar of Minnesota and the state’s governor, Tim Walz, so far haven’t made endorsements.
“I’m ready on day one” to serve in the Senate, says Craig, noting her four terms in the House, her substantial career before going into politics, and her two votes to impeach Trump. “If we can take the House and Senate, we can put a cap on this administration.”
This is a cross-post from Karen Ocamb’s LGBTQ+ Freedom Fighters Substack.
Congress
Lindsey Graham dies at 71
Republican SC senator passed away ‘from a brief and sudden illness’ on Saturday
U.S. Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) died suddenly on Saturday.
The South Carolina Republican’s office in a statement said Graham, 71, “passed away from a brief and sudden illness.” The Washington Post reported first responders responded to Graham’s Washington home on Saturday and transported him to a local hospital.
Graham had been in the U.S. Senate since 2002.
The close Trump ally was running for re-election. Graham died a day after he returned to the U.S. from Ukraine.
Speculation over Graham’s sexual orientation persisted during his tenure.
The Washington Blade will update this story.
2026 Midterm Elections
As Washington shifts right, Democratic Socialists gain ground
Next major test for movement comes in Midwest
As President Donald Trump’s second administration has pushed the federal government further to the right on issues ranging from immigration to LGBTQ rights, a different political movement has been gaining momentum inside the Democratic Party.
From industrial communities in upstate New York to Colorado’s Front Range, candidates aligned with the Democratic Socialists of America (DSA) have won a series of victories in Democratic primaries this year, in several cases defeating longtime incumbents who had represented Democratic strongholds for years. Their success has reignited debate over the Democratic Party’s future, as a growing faction of progressive voters calls for a more confrontational approach to economic inequality, healthcare, housing, labor rights, climate policy, and LGBTQ protections rather than what they view as the party’s increasingly cautious establishment.
These victories also reflect a broader ideological divergence in American politics. While Republicans under Trump have embraced a more conservative governing agenda, many Democratic primary voters in safely blue districts appear to be rewarding candidates running on unapologetically progressive platforms that reject incremental change in favor of more sweeping reforms.
The Democratic Socialists of America (DSA), the nation’s largest socialist organization, says it has more than 100,000 members and chapters in all 50 states. The organization advocates what it describes as democratic socialism — promoting social and economic equality through democratic government while supporting a larger public role in healthcare, housing, labor protections, education, and other social programs alongside a regulated market economy.
On its website, the DSA explains its goals are to utilize “progressive movements for social change while establishing an openly democratic socialist presence in American communities and politics.”
For LGBTQ Americans, the organization has long supported expansive nondiscrimination protections, marriage equality, transgender rights, and broader legal protections through a platform first adopted in 2017. Its LGBTQ policy calls for federal legislation prohibiting discrimination, expanded access to gender-affirming healthcare, reproductive freedom, and opposition to laws targeting LGBTQ people.
The movement’s biggest victories came in New York.
Just months after the election of New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani, a democratic socialist, candidates backed by the DSA and allied progressive organizations swept Democratic primary elections that many political observers viewed as a referendum on the party’s ideological direction.
Among the most notable victories were Brad Lander’s defeat of incumbent Rep. Dan Goldman in New York’s 10th Congressional District, Claire Valdez’s victory over Brooklyn Borough President Antonio Reynoso in the 7th District, and Darializa Avila Chevalier’s upset of five-term incumbent Rep. Adriano Espaillat in New York’s 13th Congressional District.
Overall, nine of the 10 New York City candidates backed by the DSA won their Democratic primaries, further cementing the organization’s growing influence in the nation’s largest city and demonstrating that democratic socialist candidates can compete beyond isolated local races.
Outside New York, the trend continued.
In Colorado, Melat Kiros defeated 15-term incumbent Rep. Diana DeGette in one of the cycle’s biggest primary upsets. Kiros campaigned without accepting corporate PAC contributions and criticized DeGette’s fundraising practices and foreign policy positions, presenting herself as an alternative to the Democratic establishment.
While socialist movements have existed in the United States for more than a century, democratic socialism remained largely on the political margins for decades. That began to change following Sen. Bernie Sanders’ presidential campaigns in 2016 and 2020, which introduced millions of Americans to democratic socialist ideas and energized a younger generation of progressive activists.
Although Sanders never won the Democratic nomination, his campaigns helped reshape the party’s left flank by elevating issues such as universal healthcare, tuition-free public college, stronger labor protections, and economic inequality into the mainstream Democratic conversation.
Today, the movement’s most recognizable elected officials include Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and several members of the congressional “Squad,” who have helped normalize the democratic socialist label among younger Democratic voters and increasingly challenged party leadership from the left.
For LGBTQ voters, democratic socialist candidates have frequently positioned themselves among the Democratic Party’s strongest advocates for transgender rights, particularly as the Trump administration has sought to restrict access to gender-affirming healthcare, military service, and other legal protections for transgender Americans.
The next major test for the movement may come in the Midwest.
In Michigan, progressive candidate Abdul El-Sayed is locked in a closely watched Democratic Senate primary, while in Wisconsin, DSA-backed Francesca Hong is seeking her party’s nomination for governor. The outcomes of those races could offer another measure of whether democratic socialism’s recent gains represent a lasting realignment within the Democratic Party or are concentrated primarily in deep-blue urban districts.
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