Midterm primary elections rarely receive much attention. But in a year when control of the congress hangs in the balance, California’s primaries have raised a lot of eyebrows. As one of the few states with open run-off primaries — where only the top two winners, regardless of party, are allowed to advance to the general election — its elections have become a barometer for national politics.

And if Tuesday’s results are any indication of the sentiment of the rest of the electorate, the Democrats could be in trouble come November.

Though the party establishment seems to have fended off several challenges from both the Right and the Left, including a progressive challenge for Nancy Pelosi’s house seat in District 11, the results reveal that when given a choice, many voters are opting for candidates to the Left of the Democrats. In Los Angeles, in particular, progressive challengers performed well and candidates associated with the Democratic Socialists of America (DSA) won several elections and will advance in many others.

The Establishment Underdog and the Billionaire Progressive

The most closely watched race in Tuesday’s primaries was by far the shambolic election for governor, in which so-called “progressive” billionaire Democrat Tom Steyer spent more than $130 million to challenge the establishment Democrat and former United States Secretary of Health and Human Services, Xavier Becerra.

From the very beginning, the race to replace California Governor Gavin Newsom was a disaster for the Democrats. After the clear Democratic Party frontrunner Eric Swalwell was forced to drop out due to sexual assault allegations, the party had to scramble to find a replacement, even as several other challengers stepped in to fill the gap. While Steyer was talking about Medicare for All and abolishing ICE, establishment democrats seized on Becerra as a safer bet. This seems to have paid off on election day —currently Becerra has 25 percent of the vote compared to Steyer’s 20 percent — but Steyer remains a very close third, and there are still a lot of ballots left to count.

It is likely that Becerra will advance to challenge the Trump-endorsed Republican candidate Steve Hilton, who is currently leading with 27 percent of the vote, but the results are hardly a ringing endorsement for establishment politics. In fact, this is the only time a Republican candidate has finished first in the primary for governor since California adopted open primaries in 2012.

While Steyer is certainly no friend of the working class, his stated policy positions were nonetheless far to the left of Becerra and the vast majority of the Democratic Party. So much so, in fact, that the California DSA wrote favorably about his candidacy in their voter guide, calling him “the most progressive of the current viable candidates” — a rather passive non-endorsement, which many on the Left saw as a betrayal of socialist values. In the end, more than a million people voted for the candidate who called ICE a “violent extremist group” and promised to significantly raise taxes on billionaires and corporations. Clearly there is an appetite for those ideas among huge portions of the population, even if they were put forward by a billionaire trying to buy his way into the governor’s mansion.

All of this points to an acceleration of the crisis facing the Democratic Party, which is as unpopular as ever and struggling to win back sectors of its traditional working-class base or to find a way to channel working-class anger against Trump into the party. To see the difference a few years makes, one need only look at the results of the 2022 California gubernatorial primaries, during the middle of Biden’s presidency, where former governor Gavin Newsom easily finished first with almost 40 percent more of the total vote than his closest competitor, who finished with less than 18 percent.

DSA Does Well in LA

Meanwhile, in Los Angeles, Mayor Karen Bass, who has earned strong criticism from the Left for increasing the LAPD budget and the police crackdown on anti-ICE protesters last year, faced a strong challenge from progressive City Council member Nithya Raman. A late addition to the race, Raman, who is a DSA member, failed to win the official endorsement of her own organization largely due to internal divisions about process. Once again, as with the DSA’s non-endorsement of Steyer, this resulted in a kind of passive support for Bass.

Nonetheless, despite receiving no assistance from the DSA, the city council member performed surprisingly well, taking a large portion of the vote against the incumbent mayor, who is now facing the first run-off election for LA Mayor since 2005. Currently Raman is in third place behind the Republican candidate and reality TV star Spencer Pratt by about five percentage points. However, like the governor’s race, there are still a lot of ballots left, and Raman seems to be outperforming Pratt in late vote counts. Though a long shot, some are speculating that she could still win.

Though Raman ran on a platform that was only slightly to the left of Bass, her strong performance, considering she entered the race so late, shows the discontent with the mayor and is yet another example of the general desire for alternatives to the Democratic Party establishment.

This rising distrust of the Democrats was also on full display in the Los Angeles city elections, where several DSA candidates placed first and others did well enough to advance to the general election against more establishment Democrats. DSA incumbents Eunisses Hernandez and Hugo Soto-Martínez both won their districts by more than 50 percent. Votes are still coming in, but it is likely that both will retain their seats and neither will have to face a challenge in November. DSA members also qualified for the general election for Attorney General and City Council district 9.

While establishment Democrats managed to eke out several wins leading into November, the results show clearly that discontent with the party remains high and that there is a strong desire for alternatives. The poor performance of Democratic Party candidates shows that the party’s toxic brand may be a problem in the midterms, despite widespread hatred of Trump and the Republicans.

Meanwhile, the DSA’s success in the Los Angeles City Council elections and Ramen’s strong showing in the Mayoral race, are evidence of the growing interest in socialist politics as an alternative.

Of course working class power cannot rely on elections alone; but all of this indicates that there is room for a mass working class party for socialism that is entirely independent of the Democrats. The sooner we build that party the better.

The post California Primaries: Cracks in the Democratic Coalition and Promising Results for Socialists appeared first on Left Voice.

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