Three candidates endorsed by New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani, all aligned with the Democratic Socialists of America, won Democratic congressional primaries in New York on June 23, and the party's most prominent figures have nothing to say about it. Rep. Nancy Pelosi walked away from a reporter's question. Rep. Ilhan Omar ignored the topic entirely. Only Rep. Hank Johnson stepped up to the microphone, and what he said should concern anyone who still thinks the Democratic mainstream is holding the line against the party's hard-left flank.
Johnson didn't hedge. He didn't distance himself. He welcomed the winners with open arms.
Fox News Digital reported that the Georgia Democrat, when asked about the primary results, said he was "looking forward" to the new members joining the House Democratic caucus. Pelosi, the 20-term former Speaker, refused to respond. Omar, a member of the progressive Squad who has herself been backed by the DSA, simply walked past.
The silence is telling. It is also a pattern. And the candidates these Democrats are refusing to discuss are not garden-variety progressives. They are avowed anti-Israel activists, DSA members, and advocates for abolishing ICE, the very positions that Democratic leaders once tried to keep at arm's length.
The three primary winners are Darializa Avila Chevalier, Brad Lander, and Claire Valdez. Each ran with Mamdani's endorsement and defeated more moderate Democrats, including two sitting incumbents.
Avila Chevalier toppled five-term Rep. Adriano Espaillat, the leader of the Congressional Hispanic Caucus, in northern Manhattan's 13th District. Fox News reported that she is a DSA member and former pro-Palestinian protest organizer at Columbia University. She was also endorsed by Justice Democrats, the far-left group that helped launch Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez's political career. In a since-deleted social media post, Avila Chevalier called the United States "a f---ing disgrace."
Lander, the former New York City comptroller, defeated incumbent Rep. Dan Goldman in the 10th District. He is Jewish and ran hard against Israel's military campaign in Gaza. In his victory speech, Lander declared: "You can criticize Israel and not be antisemitic. You can be an anti-Zionist and not be antisemitic." The Associated Press reported that Lander vowed to abolish ICE and referred to "Trump's fascism" in that same speech.
Valdez won the Brooklyn seat being vacated by retiring Rep. Nydia Velazquez in the 7th District. She, too, is a DSA member and was endorsed by Justice Democrats. She has accused Israeli leaders of carrying out "a genocide in Gaza."
All three candidates support policies including abolishing ICE, abolishing borders and prisons, and Medicare-for-all. These are not fringe figures running protest campaigns in safe districts. They won.
The sweep was no accident. Mamdani, himself a democratic socialist who won the New York City mayor's race in 2025, has built a political operation that now extends well beyond City Hall. His endorsement carried all three races, and he framed the results in sweeping terms.
"A year ago, it was not the end of a political movement. It was the beginning," Mamdani said, as reported by the AP. "We are showing there is a new path for politics in our city and in our country."
The Washington Free Beacon reported that Mamdani described AIPAC by saying, "Now is the time of monsters." His anti-Israel stance has become a litmus test for his endorsed candidates. The results suggest that litmus test is working, at least in deep-blue New York City.
Gustavo Gordillo, co-chair of the DSA's New York City chapter, told National Review that "the stakes couldn't be higher for us." If all three candidates win their general elections in these safely Democratic districts, DSA representation in Congress could double.
House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries actively campaigned against Mamdani's slate. He lost. The AP reported that Jeffries downplayed the results' significance afterward, but the numbers speak for themselves: two of his incumbents were ousted, and a third seat went to a DSA-aligned candidate in an open race.
At Espaillat's election night gathering, the mood was grim. The Free Beacon quoted one supporter saying simply: "I am crushed."
The defeats mark a direct challenge to the Democratic establishment from within. These were not close calls or flukes. Mamdani's candidates ran on explicit platforms, abolish ICE, abolish borders, end military support for Israel, and won convincingly enough to send the party's old guard scrambling.
Against that backdrop, Johnson's on-the-record comments stand out. While Pelosi and Omar ducked, the Georgia congressman not only embraced the incoming candidates but waded into the foreign policy debate that defined their campaigns.
Johnson told Fox News Digital that the three winners "were not anti-Israel. They were anti-Israeli government." He then went further, saying, "The government of Benjamin Netanyahu has done a grave disservice to the nation of Israel and to its people."
He also took aim at President Trump, calling his election "this mistake that we made" and claiming Trump "unfortunately got manipulated into war by Benjamin Netanyahu." Johnson added: "People don't like this war, and they don't like Israeli government policy that put us into this war."
Those are remarkable statements from a sitting member of Congress, characterizing the American president as having been "manipulated" into a war by a foreign leader, while simultaneously welcoming self-described socialists into the Democratic caucus. Johnson offered no evidence for the manipulation claim. He simply stated it as fact.
Pelosi's silence is harder to dismiss than it might appear. In a 2019 interview on CBS's 60 Minutes, the then-Speaker declared that she would "reject socialism as an economic system." She added: "If people have that view, that's their view. That is not the view of the Democratic Party."
Seven years later, three socialist-aligned candidates have just swept Democratic primaries in the nation's largest city, backed by a socialist mayor, endorsed by the DSA, and running on platforms that include abolishing federal immigration enforcement. Pelosi had nothing to say.
It is worth noting that Pelosi herself endorsed Dean Preston, described as a socialist candidate, in a 2024 California supervisor race. The line between "not the view of the Democratic Party" and active endorsement appears to have blurred considerably, and Pelosi seems uninterested in explaining when or why.
Omar's silence carries its own irony. She has never formally identified as a socialist but has supported many policies associated with the movement and has been backed by the DSA. Fox News Digital asked her whether the three incoming candidates could complicate Minority Leader Jeffries' agenda if elected to Congress. She walked away without responding.
The Democratic Party's leaders face a choice they clearly do not want to make in public. Condemn the socialist surge and risk alienating an energized base. Embrace it and confirm what Republicans have long argued: that the party's center of gravity has shifted sharply leftward on economics, immigration, and Israel.
So they choose silence. Pelosi walks away. Omar ignores the question. Jeffries downplays the losses. And Johnson, perhaps more candid than his colleagues would prefer, rolls out the welcome mat and starts talking about how Netanyahu manipulated the president of the United States.
The candidates themselves are not shy about their views. Avila Chevalier organized pro-Palestinian protests at Columbia. Valdez accused Israel of genocide. Lander promised to abolish ICE. These positions are now mainstream enough within the Democratic primary electorate to defeat sitting incumbents backed by the party's own leadership.
That is not a fringe movement. That is a takeover in progress. And the people best positioned to stop it, or at least to argue against it, have chosen to say nothing at all.
When the leaders of a party refuse to defend its stated principles, the principles are already gone. What remains is just the branding.
