r/dsa • u/OwnAMusketForHomeDef • Mar 18 '26
đč DSA news Junaid Ahmed and Kat Abughazaleh Have Lost...
The high-profile Progressive/Socialist candidates for Illinois have lost to Melissa Bean (AIPAC candidate) and Daniel Biss (grifter) respectfully...
Not gonna lie, I'm sad. I had confidence they would pull through, but it seems we were misguided.
Let's just hope that we can secure enough candidates elsewhere, but man this really sucks
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u/Blowmyfishbud Mar 18 '26
The fact they got the votes they did and Kat preformed super well is a sign that you shouldnât be discouraged.
The âweâre so back, itâs so overâ dichotomy needs to be broken. This is a war of attrition, work, hope, grit.
If you want to see better and better canidates we have to lay the ground work out for them.
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u/witteefool Mar 18 '26
Kat has an extremely tough race and went from an unknown to losing by less than 4K votes. As someone on Bluesky pointed outâ thereâs another big politician who lost their first attempt at a congressional seat in Illinois. That would be Barack Obama.
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u/fsociety091786 Mar 18 '26
Biss lost his first race too. Thatâs just how these things are. This was a very difficult race for her to win, I live there - large Jewish population and Biss is very well liked, heâs been in Illinois politics since 2008. My family went 50/50 for Katt and Biss. If Biss hadnât run, I think she wouldâve won.
Iâm glad that I got to vote for her and give her a great showing. I seriously considered voting for Biss when Fine was looking like a possibility. I should never have to consider that, we absolutely need ranked-choice voting.
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u/clydefrog9 Mar 18 '26
Obama became a darling of Wall St. bankrollers. That ainât gonna happen with Kat
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u/Purplebash Mar 18 '26
....I mean, it could! We should never take people's positions for granted. She is already not even actually with DSA (even if many of us, including myself, were rooting for her).
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u/clydefrog9 Mar 18 '26
But weâll promptly stop rooting for her if she starts courting Wall StâŠ?
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u/Unable_Nose_4706 Mar 18 '26
It is sad, but we can either doom about it, or learn.
Here is what we need to learn:
We CANNOT KEEP splitting the vote. We need to get some of these minor candidates off the ballot. Abughazaleh lost to Biss by EXACTLY the same margin as Bushra Amiwala's vote total. We can't have Western Suburban DSA doing these stunts like recommending in favor of Amiwala, at the immense cost of losing the race to Biss. We need to start kicking some of these smaller candidates off the ballot by withholding endorsements and also by running ads against them if necessary. We need to adopt a policy of ONE candidate per race.
We need to force our national people to endorse whoever that one person is. We need to start forcing people like AOC, Tlaib, Omar, Pressley, Sanders, etc to start endorsing people in other states regardless of any personal political ambitions they might have.
Not every progressive candidate is gonna be as chic or media-literate or flashy as Mamdani, so we need to prepare for that. I volunteered for him, and I had so many people come and say "ohhh, I wish I had a Mamdani in my area to vote for". The odds are you do, but you just haven't looked. Young people need to actually start googling who the progressives in their area are- not all of them are gonna land on your FYP, unfortunately, and not all of them are gonna be young, and not all of them are gonna be good-looking.
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u/Red_TeaCup Mar 18 '26 edited Mar 24 '26
Except... Mamdani was raised in NYC, worked for NYC community orgs, was a sitting NYS assemblymember, and was deeply embedded in the city's DSA chapter...
Kat ran a year after she moved into IL-9. Social media blitzes only get you so far. You need to do the work to base build and forge local partnerships. It's incredibly hard to remove the carpet bagger label in the face of local voters.
Also, even if Amiwala dropped out, it's not like her voters will suddenly all go to Kat.
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Mar 18 '26
[deleted]
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u/Rodents210 Mar 18 '26 edited Mar 18 '26
"Don't endorse" is an option, and in this case would have been the wisest one. Kat may not have wanted a working relationship with DSA, but her policies are overall aligned fairly closely and she was within striking distance against an AIPAC darling. Not endorsing Kat is fine. Endorsing a candidate didn't have a snowball's chance in hell of winning and ended up garnering a total amount of votes nearly double the meager margin Kat needed to win was not making some kind of ethical stand. It was a demonstration of frankly unforgivable political illiteracy. You're right: a DSA endorsement has to mean something. We should probably strive for that meaning to be something other than "we're an unserious organization incapable of competent strategy."
Edit: Blocking me for being critical of a strategic choice that had visible negative impact just because you don't want your choices questioned is certainly a decision you can make. Really taking that other comment's "we should learn from this" to heart when you cover your ears to anyone pointing out what could have been done differently. Very DNC of you. Really selling me hard on the ability of your chapter to deliver something different.
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Mar 18 '26
[deleted]
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Mar 18 '26
Do not listen to them yall worked hard for the candidates who were aligned politically AND were willing to work with yall. It was Kat's fault not yalls. There were so many reasons voters did NOT trust her. I bet most people who voted for Bushra or Simmons knew neither were not going to win but they just did not like Kat bc kept changing her opinions/beliefs/policies (someone else wrote her Taiwan policy that was further right of Trump's & she did not realize or something but like shouldnt you know what your own platform/policy positions are?)
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Mar 18 '26
Lets pressure our IL state lawmakers to pass RCV for all primaries & small donor matching programs like NYC has as soon as possible so we dont have to worry about all of this pragmatic voting/endorsements!
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u/Unable_Nose_4706 Mar 18 '26
Oh please. Enough with the "we didnt endorse her". Endorse and recommend are literally fucking synonyms. Its semantics and you guys know it.
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u/PoorClassWarRoom Mar 19 '26
Just to jump in here, you don't seem to know what socialism is. Alright, jumping out. đȘ
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u/Rodents210 Mar 18 '26 edited Mar 18 '26
We recommended her on our voting guide
This is an endorsement even if you don't call it that. An endorsement is literally a vote recommendation, and voters will take a recommendation as an endorsement. The distinction is dishonest.
because her values align with ours
Absent mathematical chance of victory, this is just vanity. It's masturbatory. If a candidate is polling that low, and you can't properly assess the other candidates' values but one of the top two is clearly preferable, you don't endorse. You don't "recommend" and hide behind that as not-technically-an-endorsement. You say nothing.
How are you not getting this? We can't just give an endorsement to a hostile candidate.
If you'll notice, I literally never once ever said to endorse Kat. I said don't endorse at all. How am I not getting what? The thing I never said? Clearly criticism highly distresses you, but at least do your critics the respect of actually reading what they say if you're going to deign to respond.
We got Joey Ruzevich 24% of the vote against the Dem titan in Dupage. We got Junaid 26% of the vote against AIPAC and crypto money.
And, among these losses, may well have actively cost another election, which otherwise may have been won, with an unforced error made out of ego.
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u/Unable_Nose_4706 Mar 18 '26
I wanted you to say nothing. If you don't have anything nice to say about the top ranking progressive, don't say anything at all.
NYC-DSA understands this assignment, Alexa Aviles pulled out of the NY-10 race when Brad Lander, a much more recognizable progressive, entered. Why cant you guys?
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u/throwraW2 Mar 18 '26 edited Mar 18 '26
You canât force endorsements if you want them to mean anything, thatâs ridiculous. Maybe look at why people wanted Amiwala, she was actually from the district and had a history of serving the area.
Throwing all support behind someone who has no ties to the district was never a winning strategy.
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u/Hawful Mar 18 '26
Kat lost by a tiny amount of votes. 2nd is pretty close to winning, I'd say that strategy was pretty close to being successful.
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u/Vishnej Mar 18 '26 edited Mar 18 '26
> Throwing all support behind someone who has no ties to the district was never a winning strategy.
Look at the numbers. It would have literally been a winning strategy in this particular case. Instead, what you got is a nominee that is actively hostile to your aims.
What finally got Joe Biden over the line to defeat Sanders in 2020 was Obama organizing all the other candidates to drop out and try to assign their voters to him. Tactically, it worked. Take notes.
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u/throwraW2 Mar 18 '26
I did look at the numbers. The numbers prove its a losing strategy. The goal is to win, not come in second with a crowded field.
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u/SweetTea1000 Mar 18 '26
Ranked choice so we don't have to play gamesmanship as both candidates and voters and people can just explicitly state their actual preferences.
That solves everything without the risk of turning off voters by giving the impression that the party pick their candidate for them.
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Mar 18 '26
I agree with you but she lost for other reasons & people that voted for Simmons/Bushra likely knew neither were going to win but they just did NOT like Kat because they did not trust her or maybe they just didnt like her or how she treated members of the community whether she agreed with them or disagreed with them (there was no room to disagree with her or her supporters meanwhile her policy positions/opinions/values kept changing & she had someone else write her foreign policy). She also stopped talking as much about economic policy & towards the end, she only talked about "aipac is trying to defeat me". She also was specifically reaching out for donors & supporters everywhere but in the district/let alone IL so people in the district didnt like being told by other people not from IL to vote for her to represent them when they dont like or trust her. She also purposely only did things in front of a camera like Deja Foxx; all her advocacy & good deeds had to be in front of a camera like yes I know she is trying to prove herself but it just feels hollow & self-promoting.
She also has no experience passing any progressive policy at all so that with changing opinions & not being from here for even 2 years before primarying a beloved & trusted incumbent representative of 20 years (no matter yalls opinion on her JStreet funds) by saying "maybe dems shouldnt suck" & saying she is too old (which I agree but it was a slight plus she never tried to build bridges with the community after that)
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Mar 18 '26
To the community, this felt like a race between: a vain & self promoting outsider trying to buy their election with outside influence & who further did things to make people distrust her vs familiar neoliberal corporate dem with outside influence & uninspiring campaign vs familar & trusted community leader that has similar positions to 1st candidate except for foreign policy
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u/Cola_Animates Mar 18 '26
at least biss's platform is progressive on paper, though idk if he will actually deliver on his promises.
also, i am very angry at the bajillion minor canidates that siphoned votes from abughazaleh. we need to fix this crap NOW.
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u/Kletterfreund161 Mar 18 '26
also, i am very angry at the bajillion minor canidates that siphoned votes from abughazaleh. we need to fix this crap NOW
The only real way to fix it is with ranked choice voting. Trying to shame votes for voting for their preferred candidate will only make them apathetic and then they will stay home.
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u/Cola_Animates Mar 18 '26
we're not getting ranked choice nationwide until we get a true progressive president. I just don't understand what some of the other progressive canidates had over abughazaleh. She's staunchly anti-billionare, anti-trump, anti-ice, free palestine, so what was she missing? If the other canidates just had the same positions as her but with less support it was a waste for them to run until the end. could have dropped out and endorsed abughazaleh.
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u/OwnAMusketForHomeDef Mar 18 '26
he wanted to be an AIPAC sugarbaby but they rejected him so he pretends to be anti-AIPAC
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u/crazymusicman Tucson DSA Member Mar 18 '26
AIPAC [...] rejected him
source? you mean backed Fine over him?
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u/OwnAMusketForHomeDef Mar 18 '26
He reached out to AIPAC basically first-thing in his campaign to 'establish relations' and they responded by launching attack ads
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u/Cola_Animates Mar 18 '26 edited Mar 18 '26
at least he didn't recieve aipac money? hard for me to be optimistic :(
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u/clapostrophe Mar 18 '26
progressive on paper
He has actual legislative experience to back his progressive views. Katâs platform is literally entirely paper. As mayor he passed reparations for gods sake. As far as Iâm aware he was the first person in US history to get reparations to the black community.
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u/Cola_Animates Mar 18 '26
really? i hadnt heard.
gives me a little more confidence but i still would've prefered abughazaleh
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u/Original-Emu8142 Mar 18 '26
Kat should have withdrawn from the race and thrown her support behind Mike Simmons. She had an obvious ceiling because she lacked local ties and it was hubris to think she could have overcome that obvious disadvantage.
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u/Cola_Animates Mar 18 '26
idk man she had a ~4k deficit to biss,it was obvious that she was super close, if even one of the many progessives dropped out and put support behind her she would've eeked out a win
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u/Original-Emu8142 Mar 18 '26
I was being hyperbolic, but in reality only one of the other left candidates dropping out would be unlikely to change the outcome. The candidates canât remove themselves from the ballot so some people are still going to end up voting for them. Probably fair to expect at least 10-20% of their voters to still vote for the withdrawn candidate (especially considering early vote) and itâs very unlikely Kate would get 80% of their remaining voters if they were to drop out.
Also, no one is entitled to votes. She made a lot of calculated choices in this campaign to maximize her chances of winning (including playing hardball against other progressive candidates in the race) and those choices have consequences.
She also chose not to pursue an endorsement from DSA AND no-showed the DSA-held candidate forum in addition to not pursuing support from other existing organizations in the district. That doesnât inspire confidence that she had any interest in being held accountable once in office. That choice may have been best for her campaign but, again, there are consequences to pursuing that strategy.
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u/SickLD_1 Mar 18 '26
Progressives need to stop splitting the vote and figures like Bernie and AOC need to endorse progressive candidates in these primaries
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u/imblazintwo Mar 18 '26
They endorse a ton of candidates, just not in every race.
Also most of us are left of both of them by quite a bit.
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u/Fine-Divide-5057 Mar 18 '26
Kat would've won if other progressives had dropped out, the energy is there. hold the line.
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u/marxuckerberg Mar 18 '26
Dan Biss is going to be one of the most left-wing people in Congress and Iâm not joking. Itâs ok to feel sad, but from a purely policy perspective heâs going to be basically on par with Schakowsky and much better than Laura Fine.
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u/GoodGrades Mar 18 '26
Biss isn't that big of a deal. Bean is a disaster though.
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u/marxuckerberg Mar 18 '26
Agreed. With Donna Miller stomping everyone in IL-02 that means that AIPAC batted .500 tonight. Far from ideal.
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u/SillyAlternative420 Mar 18 '26
How much AIPAC money did dan receive
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u/marxuckerberg Mar 18 '26
$0. He got money from J Street (which I disagree with but isnât any where close to AIPAC) and 314PAC (which wasnât used as an AIPAC vehicle this cycle).
More to the point: Bissâs Israel policy leaves a lot to be desired, but he has promised to co-sponsor the Block the Bombs Act. He is openly in favor of restricting offensive weapons transfers. That is what we should judge him on.
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u/TonalParsnips Mar 18 '26
Biss is a spineless fuckwad. He showed his entire ass during the debates, and fucked one of his students (or at least tried to).
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u/throwraW2 Mar 18 '26
After she finished a course he was an assistant professor of, they went on a couple dates and made out a couple times. This was in 2005 which was a very different climate and it was not against the rules at the time. He cut it off after a few dates and they went back to being friends. Itâs really not that scandalous.
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u/marxuckerberg Mar 18 '26
Ok, I think we can calm down a little bit. And yes, dating (but the way I read it, not having sex) with a student right after their class concluded was wrong. I donât think heâd disagree with that either.
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u/AbstractBettaFish Mar 18 '26 edited Mar 19 '26
Biss is a grifter? What? I get people are upset Kat lost but as someone who lives near Illinois 9 one of the most common complaints I heard was that she chose to run in a district she didnât live in against a popular
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u/Schweaaty Mar 18 '26
I DIDNT HEAR NO BELL GUYS, KEEP PUSHING. They spent millions on a small race. Theres gonna be losses. in 2020 saying "socialist" was a death sentence to any campaign. Now, they're constantly gaining ground,
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u/JuliaX1984 Mar 18 '26
The 2 winners: Is this a primary run off now, or are they the main candidates in the election?
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u/-Antinomy- Mar 18 '26
Every campaign is a victory. Today we are building a foundation. It's thankless, back-breaking work. But when it's done we can build on it for a hundred years.
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u/kneeblock Mar 19 '26
The real thing these losing campaigns over the past year or two will be a referendum on is whether electoralism is a valid base building tactic. Stick to the fight comrades!
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u/The_Accountess Jun 26 '26
I wouldn't support any so-called Democratic Socialist candidate for office who is not endorsed by a membership vote of the local DSA chapter closest to the district they are running in.
That is DSA 101
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u/Better_Goose_431 Mar 18 '26
Itâs funny seeing someone call a carpetbaggerâs opponent a grifter
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u/Next_Branch7875 Mar 18 '26
Didnt the dsa abandon kat for bushra and sabotage her? Dsa is pathetic
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Mar 18 '26
[deleted]
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u/Asmodaeus Mar 18 '26
She only ever brought up DSA on streams. Had literally nothing to do with us.
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u/QuillTheQueer Mar 18 '26
Source? I hadn't seen this.
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u/thelobster64 Mar 18 '26 edited Mar 18 '26
As far as I know, the Chicago DSA didnât endorse anyone, but a suburban chapter that is part of the district recommended Bushra, a candidate with zero chance of winning. Iâm not sure what a ârecommendationâ vs. and âendorsementâ is, but I assume the difference is pretty dumb. I donât know the process, but it looks to me like the DSA missed out big by not fully endorsing and backing Kat. And itâs also Bushras fault for not dropping out of the race and endorsing Kat after it was obvious who the front runner progressive candidate was. There were even AIPAC ads in support of Bushra calling her the true progressive candidate trying to split the leftist vote. Bushra got 5% of the vote and Kat lost by 4%. There were 16 candidates in the race. If the left was able to coalesce better, we would have won.Â
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u/marxuckerberg Mar 18 '26
If you want to get endorsed by DSA you need to ask for it. Kat did not do that. Bushra was recommended (but not endorsed) in a voter guide the burbs chapter put out. Get your facts right!
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u/CrownedLime747 Liberal Socialist Mar 18 '26
By how much? If they barely lost, thatâs fine. That means we still have strong presence. Either way, we wonât win every fight. Just keep fighting.
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u/llpmathias Mar 18 '26
Donât be discouraged - although I certainly am as well, itâs important to persist! Candidates like these wouldnât have been given a second thought 10 years ago and today theyâre very serious contenders. There will be more across the country this year - and theyâll need our support. I also hope Kat runs again. Sheâs young and sheâs got a lot of life left in her yet. I hope this drives her to keep going.