When asked directly whether DSA wants Ocasio-Cortez to run, Romer was careful not to get ahead of rank-and-file members for or against.

“If it reveals that every chapter is like, ‘We want AOC, we want AOC’ — that’s something that could come out of this process,” she said. “And if that seems to be the overwhelming case, then that may be what we decide to do. We want to get in on the ground floor. It would be really great to be a day-one part of a campaign.”

And then there is Mamdani.

The New York City mayor went from a complete unknown to one of the most popular and influential progressives in the country, boosting democratic socialism’s political profile in a way not seen since Ocasio-Cortez’s rise and perhaps since Sanders’ first presidential run. But Mamdani wasn’t born in the United States, making him constitutionally ineligible for the presidency.

“Some people are like, let’s just run him — let’s just cause a constitutional crisis,” Romer said, describing it as a running joke, though she was “not sure everybody’s fully joking.”

Tuesday’s wins in New York were the latest in a string of DSA victories accumulating across the country, including Chris Rabb’s primary win in Pennsylvania’s 3rd District in Philadelphia, and mayoral races in Washington, D.C., last week and Seattle last fall.

The group is backing Melat Kiros — a first-time candidate taking on a 30-year incumbent Rep. Diana DeGette in Colorado next week — as well as Oliver Larkin in Florida and former Rep. Cori Bush in her bid to reclaim the Missouri congressional seat she lost last cycle. It’s a packed primary calendar that reflects just how aggressively DSA is looking to expand its footprint heading into 2028.

“The sheer scale of what just happened in New York is historic,” said Bhaskar Sunkara, former DSA vice-chair and president of The Nation. “Nationally, this is a massive boon for the democratic socialist movement. The old institutional left is hollowed out — DSA has proven to be the only real mobilizational force left on the ground. “

But Sunkara noted the movement still had a lot to figure out ahead of 2028, especially if it is to translate its momentum beyond DSA’s urban, heavily lefty strongholds. Moderate Democrats have long argued that democratic socialist candidates are a liability in competitive battleground seats, too far left to win over the voters the party needs in purple districts and red-leaning states.

“A national map includes deep-red and rural districts where the left still has to figure out how to speak to working-class voters and compete,” Sunkara said. “Having national platforms through multiple members of Congress is a start there too.”

DSA’s leaders say the moment the group is having has been years in the making — and comes after some recent turbulent times that followed 2018’s emergence of the Squad as a high-water mark and then saw years of grinding setbacks: a pandemic that gutted in-person organizing, a Biden era that Romer described as a “wet blanket,” and a 2024 Kamala Harris campaign that didn’t listen when DSA tried to push the candidate left.

“The squad dropped off a bit,” Romer said. “2022 was a really, really tough year for left politics.”

The 2024 cycle also brought losses for both Bush and Jamaal Bowman, who was ousted in what was at the time the most expensive House primary in history, powered largely by AIPAC spending.