The progressive election wins you haven't heard about
There may be *two* socialists running major cities soon
Welcome to a Thursday edition of Progress Report.
Yesterday was the first time in five years that reading political news invoked something other than frustration or dread: the election results were almost uniformly exciting, and perhaps aware of the shift in public opinion that precipitated the conservative thumping, even the Supreme Court teased a willingness to check some of Donald Trump’s most autocratic impulses.
You’ve no doubt read reams of political analysis and poetic meditations on the success of New York City Mayor-elect Zohran Mamdani (including mine), looked into the surprisingly strong performance of New Jersey’s next governor, Rep. Mikie Sherrill, and smiled at Donald Trump’s attempts to avoid blame for a Republican thumping.
You also probably felt relief at hearing the news that Democratic leaders are moving aside for the next generation: former Speaker Nancy Pelosi is retiring, while her longtime deputy, Rep. Steny Hoyer, is reportedly looking at wrapping up his distinguished career. Oh, and I hope reveled in the confirmed innocence of the sandwich avenger in DC.
So today, I want to review some of the big results from the races we covered, some under-the-radar triumphs (and near misses) from Tuesday.
Note: The far-right’s fascist takeover of this country is being aided by the media’s total capitulation to Trump’s extortion. It’s never been more critical to have a bold independent media willing to speak up against the powerful. That’s what I’m trying to do here at Progress Report.
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City Hall Slugfests
While Zohran Mamdani earned the global headlines on Tuesday night, there were insurgent candidates up for the top job in several other major cities as well.
Whether there will be socialists governing two major American cities remains an open question, as Seattle continues to count mail-in ballots in city’s tightly contested mayoral race. Moderate incumbent Bruce Harrell currently leads leftist community organizer Katie Wilson by less than two points, with 55K votes still be counted. Late-counted votes, from Election Day drop boxes, traditionally break to the left, and today’s batch broke for Wilson by ten points, dramatically reducing Harrell’s lead.
Wilson upset Harrell in August’s first round of voting by waging a grassroots campaign that centered on the cost of living. Sound familiar? As the head of the nonprofit Transit Riders Union, she wasn’t as unknown to voters as Mamdani, and is credited with leading a slew of progressive issue campaigns in recent years.
Some of the left’s wins in Seattle have included increases to the minimum wage, tax increases on giant tech corporations in the city, and several housing laws, including the nation’s largest social housing program. When Seattleites voted to fund the social housing program in February, Wilson began thinking about making a late run for city hall.
“Our current mayor, if he’s in office for another four years, he can easily undermine this new social housing developer,” Wilson told me in a live interview in August. “And if it fails, people are going to lose faith in it. That’s really bad, not just for Seattle, but for other places around the country that are looking to us here. So I began thinking about running because I’m like we really need to get this right.”
Wilson thumped Harrell in the first round of voting by more than ten points, but Seattle’s top-two jungle primary system set them up for a rematch. Progressives also won big in the first round of city council voting, and three left-leaning primary challengers currently lead Harrell-aligned incumbents, including the current council president. The mayor and his allies took office riding a wave of backlash to pandemic-era crime spikes and protests in 2021 and 2023, much like disgraced outgoing NYC Mayor Eric Adams.
Both of Minnesota’s Twin Cities hosted competitive mayoral elections that featured incumbents looking for a third term.
In Minneapolis, incumbent Mayor Jacob Frey bested state Sen. Omar Fateh, who ran to his left on an agenda of economic justice, strong criticism of the police, and robust housing rights. Frey ultimately took 53% of the vote in the city’s ranked choice election, compared to 47% for Fateh.
Fateh, the first Somali and Muslim person to serve in the Minnesota state Senate, boasted an impressive record as a legislator, with a resume that included passing bills for free public college and minimum wage for ride share drivers. He initially recieved a momentum boost in July when the Minneapolis Democratic Farmer-Laborer Party voted to endorse Fateh, but Frey appealed the nod on minor technical objections.
The Minnesota state DFL (the MN equivalent of the Democratic Party) pulled the endorsement, causing an uproar that is likely to continue to be a sore spot on the left — especially because Frey was backed by Gov. Tim Walz and Sen. Amy Klobuchar.
Fateh aimed to be the final piece of a total left-wing takeover of Minneapolis’s municipal government. Instead, the left actually lost ground on Tuesday, ceding the supermajority that had frequently clashed with Frey and overridden his veto. Progressives retained their majority, but with a more “swing” Democrat as the fulcrum council member, will no longer have automatic veto override power.
Across the river in St. Paul, incumbent Mayor Melvin Carter was denied in his bid for a third term by a former aide and ally, state Rep. Kaohly Her. Born in Laos, Her came to the United States with her family as a refugee from the Vietnam War, and she makes history as the cuty’s first woman and Hmong mayor. St. Paul has a large Hmong community, which helped lift Her to a surprise victory despite only jumping into the race in August.
It be a stretch to say that Her was some kind of progressive insurgent; if anything, she ran on reviving the city’s business and housing development, the latter of which has been throttled after a rent stabilization regulation passed in 2021 (and then partially repealed several years later). Still, Her is no reactionary, and her election represents a landmark moment for St. Paul’s large Hmong community.
Big flips in hot contests vs MAGA nuts
Colorado: It was a big night in Aurora as progressives look set to flip the city council in Colorado’s third largest city. The two at-large seat winners include Alexandra Jackson, a social worker who is responsible for unseating Danielle Jurinsky, a right-wing provocateur who was responsible for spreading lies about gangs in an apartment complex during the 2024 election.
Jurinsky’s claims that the run-down apartments were overtaken by the Venezuelan gang Tren de Aragua earned her national publicity and a spot on the stage when Donald Trump visited Aurora and delivered perhaps his most racist speech of the entire campaign.
“I think those narratives from Danielle Jurinsky helped Donald Trump get elected,” Jackson told me in an interview late this summer. They used Aurora as a political pawn for that win, and it’s sad because we are a disenfranchised city and immigrants are very vulnerable right now. They don’t want to speak out because they’re being snatched off the streets. Their families are being torn apart.”
Jackson ran on more than opposition to Jurinsky, including a very nuanced understanding of the housing crisis in the city and a determination to reform a police department under a consent decree.
Texas: Progressives ousted the entire far-right school board in Cypress Fairbanks, a suburb of Houston that earned national attention for book bans and anti-trans policies.
The progressive slate turned out a new, diverse coalition of voters who were angered by the conservative policies foisted on children, which included removing chapters of textbooks that explored climate change and spoke positively about vaccines. Such was the backlash that even endorsements from the state GOP and a rally with Gov. Greg Abbott failed to convince parents that their children should be subjected to the unhinged obsessions of radicalized lunatics and true perverts.
Democrats also have a chance of flipping a conservative north Texas state Senate seat thanks to a spectacular over-performance by a working class, union-backed candidate. Taylor Rehmet, a union leader, machinist, and Air Force veteran, scored nearly 48% of the vote in the SD-9 special election, good for the top spot in a Tarrant County district that voted for Donald Trump by 17% in 2024.
Because no candidate cleared 50%, there will be a runoff in January, pitting Rehmet against a conservative activist named Leigh Wambsganss (no relation to Tom from Succession). Rehmet finished nearly 12 points about Wambsganss despite a campaign budget of just $68,000, exponentially lower than the $1.4 million that the Republican candidate burned on the race.
New York: Progressives celebrated wins upstate, too, as Democrats flipped the legislatures in both Onondaga and Dutchess Counties for the first time in decades.
Onondaga is in Central New York and is built around Syracuse (where I went to college too many years ago). The legislature has been controlled by Republicans for the past 50 years. A Democratic sweep of the contested races will give the party a 10-7 majority. It’s a working and middle-class area, both post-industrial and rural, that has sent both Democrats and Republicans to Congress in recent years.
Dutchess County is about 88 miles north of NYC and boasts the idyllic Poughkeepsie as its county seat. Outside of a brief two-year period of control in the late aughts, Democrats have been out of power there since the mid-1970s, much like in Onondaga. They will now have a 15-10 advantage come January.
In both counties, Republicans blamed the national political atmosphere and backlash against Donald Trump for their losses. Sucks for them.
Pennsylvania: Erie County is a true electoral bellwether, a working class city that has chosen the winning presidential candidate every year since 1992. Last year, voters there chose Trump by just 2,000 votes, so it’s almost shocking that Democrat Christina Vogel crushed the incumbent Republican county executive there by 24 points.
Trump won with 59% of the vote last year in Luzerne County, but even that margin could not withstand the blue wave. The open county council seats were swept by Democrats on Tuesday, who now have a majority for the first time in years.
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Looks like Wilson is going to pull it off! Another Socialist win!
https://bsky.app/profile/taniel.bsky.social/post/3m5fe2nelrk2f
So important to cover the stories that aren't getting talked about as much. Thank you for your coverage!