A year ago, the Democratic Socialists of America had two members in Congress. After Tuesday, they are on track to have at least five — and their leaders are aiming higher still.

The group’s newest triumph came in Denver, where Melat Kiros, a 29-year-old democratic socialist, toppled Democratic Rep. Diana DeGette, who has represented Colorado’s 1st Congressional District since 1997. It is the latest in a run of Democratic primary upsets that has the DSA eyeing further gains this fall — and, its leaders say, a competitive run at the White House in 2028.

Kiros is one of several DSA-backed insurgents to win Democratic primaries in the last several weeks — among them Darializa Avila Chevalier and Claire Valdez, who prevailed in two heavily Democratic seats in New York — enough to more than double the group’s presence in a chamber where Reps. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez of New York and Rashida Tlaib of Michigan are its only current members. The ranks could grow again Aug. 4, when former Rep. Cori Bush, also a democratic socialist, tries to reclaim the St. Louis-area seat she lost in 2024. Public polling in her rematch against Rep. Wesley Bell is scant.

Megan Romer, a national DSA co-chair, predicted the newcomers would change how the chamber operates.

“You’re going to see some real fighters in there who are really ready to go to bat for making sure that things are the best they can be, as opposed to jumping straight to sort of milquetoast compromise that benefits the ultrawealthy,” she told MS NOW.

The democratic socialist candidates on the ballot this year have campaigned on the priorities at the core of the DSA platform: Medicare for All, more affordable housing, higher taxes on wealthy Americans and a forthrightly pro-Palestinian foreign policy.

Establishment Democrats have bristled at the candidates’ combative posture and far-left positions, warning that an all-or-nothing commitment to those goals could produce gridlock in a Democratic-controlled House and weigh the party down in general elections.

“We need centrists to win nationally,” Democratic strategist Al Mottur told MS NOW. “I think that some of these positions are so extreme that they will be rejected when we head to a national climate, which is what 2028 will be.”

But DSA leaders say they don’t expect their members to break with fellow Democrats on every vote on the Hill.

“Probably they will be very safe [Democratic] votes on things that are serving the people,” Romer said.

Avila Chevalier, 32, who unseated Rep. Adriano Espaillat in New York’s 13th District, has drawn criticism from fellow Democrats over her far-left positions and a provocative social media history. She told MS NOW she believes she can work with anyone in the party.

“I think people are surprised when they hear from me and they don’t hear someone who’s ready to chew their head off, because that’s not who I’ve ever been,” Avila Chevalier said.

Since last Tuesday, she said, “old guard” congressional Democrats have reached out to offer their support, though she declined to name them.

The DSA’s reach now extends beyond Congress. In New York, democratic socialist Zohran Mamdani captured the mayoralty, putting the movement in charge of the country’s largest city. But the group is seeking to use its aggressive groundwork apparatus to extend its reach beyond just a few big cities.

Romer described an around-the-clock effort to conduct “millions of one-on-one conversations trying to get people on board with this idea that they deserve more, that if we get folks together and move in a concerted effort in some direction, we’re able to win things for the working class.”

Across the country, the DSA partners with local movements focused on issues such as housing and public transit — and those movements are often where it finds candidates. One Buffalo-area contender for the New York State Assembly, Romer said, spent years with a DSA housing initiative before running.

The group, a frequent critic of corporate super PAC spending, is funded by dues from its more than 100,000 members nationwide; Romer said members are encouraged to contribute 1 percent of their income. The national organization employs only about 30 people, and volunteers do much of the work.

All those behind-the-scenes efforts amount to a platform grounded in affordability. Yet even as Avila Chevalier and Valdez leaned hard on that theme, precinct-level data shows New York’s DSA candidates struggling in many low-income areas while winning in high-income ones.

“That’s a challenge we are trying to overcome,” said Gustavo Gordillo, the co-chair of the New York City DSA. “I think with extremely low-income voters, the challenge is that apathy is kind of so profound in the most depoliticized sectors of society that it’s just a bigger hurdle, I think, to make the case that we can actually transform society and other parts of the working class.”

Mottur, the Democratic strategist, called the paradox “amusing.”

“The voter who’s in the place where they can’t afford something, to be honest, I think they’re more sensible voters,” he said. “If you live in a lower income area, you probably care more about crime than the person who lives on the Upper West Side, and a candidate who says ‘I don’t believe in prisons,’ that is crazy talk.”

DSA leaders are already looking to the next cycle, hoping to expand in Congress — and perhaps to contest the White House.

“We have an internal committee that’s working on that process right now already,” Romer said of the effort to recruit a candidate for president in 2028.

Mounting a socialist challenge to House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries, who may be the next speaker of the House, “has been discussed,” she said.

But the movement’s unity has limits — and the newest DSA winners are already declining to promise they will march in lockstep. Even the biggest names have kept their distance from one another: Ocasio-Cortez, the highest-profile democratic socialist in Congress, did not endorse Valdez or Avila Chevalier. And Avila Chevalier would not commit to backing future DSA-aligned challengers to sitting Democrats, telling MS NOW she would need to consult with allies and community leaders first.

“I think that’s a decision that each individual comes to on their own,” Avila Chevalier said, despite noting the importance of “moving in coordination with our movement.”

Asked directly if she was committed to endorsing future DSA-backed candidates, she said, “These are conversations that you come to your community when the time comes, and you come to decisions together.” 

DSA leaders told MS NOW that the success of Valdez and Avila Chevalier without Ocasio-Cortez’s endorsement shows the movement is strong enough that it doesn’t need that public support.

But, Gordillo said, “I do think that it’s important for our electeds to support democratic socialists running for office, and sometimes it does require many making a hard choice to endorse against your colleagues.”

Another question Romer said DSA leaders routinely discuss is whether to break from the Democratic Party and form their own separate bloc.

“I think we would love to have independence. The logistics of it, to me personally, I don’t think the juice is worth the squeeze,” she said. “But I would like to see us build out the structures, so that the folks that we’re electing have the ability to caucus together, they have some support, they have some sort of connected network by which they can act like a party and we as members can act like that party as well.”

Avila Chevalier declined to engage on the question.

“I ran as a Democrat in the Democratic primary to represent a community that is heavily Democrat,” she said, calling the idea of a new party “a conversation for DSA to have down the line.”

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