Member Statements on PCR02: Make the Electoral Organizing Chapter Priority Campaign for 2026
IN FAVOR by Tim S
his year, we’ll be endorsing an unprecedented number of candidates in a wide array of races – across geography, office type, win number, and even vote counting method. We’ll be endorsing across the spectrum of candidates, from undeniably cadre, to consistent non-cadre allies, to friendly progressives. We’ll be running citywide in DC for the first time, by far the highest win number we’ve ever endorsed for, and by far the highest profile race we’ve ever been associated with. These races, especially Janeese’ race, will activate large numbers of volunteers, and bring in new members interested in getting involved specifically because of our electoral work. Making electoral a priority is necessary in order to do this well: we’ll need the money to handle expenses for events, outreach, canvasser support, etc., but as importantly, we’ll need the pride of place in chapter scheduling and communications that priority status provides. If we’re going to commit ourselves to the kind of difficult electoral project that our likely number of endorsements commits us to, we need to commit to taking it seriously as a priority too – please join me in voting yes on electoral organizing as a priority campaign for 2026.
The PEC has recommended five candidates, the most we have endorsed in my time in the chapter, and we are likely to endorse our incumbent in PGC, Shayla Adams-Stafford, as well as Janeese Lewis George in DC, and Yes on All 3 ballot initiatives in NoVa. In combination, this is as many as we’ve ever endorsed in the chapter’s history, which is incredibly exciting because all are both high impact and winnable! At the same time, however, it means that our capacity will be stretched to its limit, and that we will need to use these campaigns to build capacity to as great an extent as possible. To be blunt, each region will need to run its own electoral campaigns: we can’t rely on shuffling canvassers from place to place depending on need, since need will be high in all of our regions. Priority status will help build up the capacity we’re going to need by authorizing the chapter to emphasize our electoral work in its comms, privileging electoral work’s access to resources like zoom and mass texting/dialing, and by funding food, hand warmers, fundraising events, etc. to lower the barrier to entry to canvassing or to bring people in directly.
Elections are consistently the best way that we’ve found to recruit members and develop organizers and leaders. This is because electoral politics is how most non-politicized people see politics as pretty much only about elections and voting, and because canvassing has a very straightforward engagement ladder, through which canvassers can quickly and easily take on more responsibility over time. Electoral is also somewhat unique in that the baseline ask for newly-involved members is the main thing we’re doing: regular canvassers are the lifeblood of our electoral efforts, and a totally new canvasser is able to do essentially the same valuable work as experienced cadre. People respond to the fact that this work is important and want to get more involved, which is precisely what we want from our ladders of engagement. Non electoral work is important and has a large impact, which is why electoral is not a priority campaign in years with limited numbers of electoral races, and why we will have 4 priority campaigns that are primarily not focused on electoral politics this year, but it’s rare that our strong non-electoral campaigns have engagement ladders as straightforward as the one we’ve built for electoral work. Priority status reinforces this engagement ladder by affirming that this is one of the core foci of our chapter this year, helping to draw comrades onto the ladder, where they can then get more engaged.
I’m very excited about this year of electoral work, but it won’t be easy. We’ll be taking on our hardest races, and we’ll be dividing our resources much more finely than we have in the past. This is a huge opportunity, but also a huge challenge, and we need to commit to the endorsements we’re passing by making electoral a priority. Making electoral campaigns one of our priorities will provide this work with resources, including chapter tech and comms as well as the money from the priority budget, and will meaningfully help to recruit volunteers, who are particularly valuable in this kind of work. Please join me in voting yes, especially if you, like me, are excited to vote for many of the excellent candidates we have the opportunity to endorse this cycle!
IN FAVOR by Avram R
In a major election year, with multiple DSA members running for office, it seems obvious that Electoral Organizing should be a chapter priority. No matter who you support for DSA endorsement, it is necessary that the chapter show up and organize for the endorsed candidates. That will take funds and that means making Electoral Organizing a chapter priority.
IN FAVOR by Ken B
2026 is on track to be a tremendously important year for our chapter’s electoral project. We are considering ten endorsements on this ballot (including two very serious cadre candidates who unequivocally deserve our endorsement) and have received questionnaires from incumbent Shayla Adams Stafford for her reelection, and endorsed Ward 1 councilmember Janeese Lewis George for her run for Mayor. If DSA is to take full advantage of this moment, we must invest in electoral work as a priority campaign in 2026. Even if we take a conservative strategy to endorsements (which I believe to be the responsible course of action), we will likely endorse Aparna Raj, Imara Crooms, Shayla Adams Stafford, Janeese Lewis George, and at least one race in Montgomery County. There is also a possibility of engaging in the “Yes on All Three” ballot measure campaign in Northern Virginia to ensure reproductive freedom, protect abortion rights, and restore voting rights to felons in the Commonwealth of Virginia. We have not engaged in this many races since 2018, where we only won four out of seven seats we endorsed for. Our organization and political muscle has matured substantially since then, but we cannot undertake a year like this lightly and must invest adequate resources in our electoral project if it is to succeed.
Electoral work is a cornerstone on which all of our other priorities rest. In order to better organize workers, we need better labor laws such as local PRO-act legislation. In order to better organize tenants, we need stronger tenant protections such as universal rent control, good cause eviction, and the restoration and expansion of TOPA rights. In order to better protect queer people and immigrants from fascist assaults on their rights we need elected leaders to stand up to Trump. In order to win a Green New Deal, we need executives and legislators who will help us implement it. In order to abolish the police, we need total control of the state’s monopoly on violence. While we must continue to apply pressure on all of these demands through strikes and street action, we cannot neglect electoral work as a necessary tool to achieve our aims.
So no matter what sphere of organizing you focus on, I urge you to vote to make electoral work a priority campaign for 2026 so we can organize thousands of canvassers to contact hundreds of thousands of voters about Democratic Socialism and create the conditions for us to demand more than we’ve ever imagined possible.
IN FAVOR by Joe R
I’m writing a member statement IN FAVOR of making our electoral work a priority campaign in 2026.
Next year is going to be the biggest electoral effort this chapter has ever embarked on. Since Zohran Mamdani’s historic victory in New York City, we’ve received more requests for endorsement than we ever have, for races at every level of government and from every part of the chapter. At the local convention, we debated whether to endorse in 10 of those races, and we still have two more to consider.
Over the course of 2026, we have the opportunity to endorse and elect some of our very own comrades, longtime members and leaders of our chapter; campaign and win in DC, Montgomery County, Prince George’s County, and Northern Virginia; potentially elect blocs of socialists on bodies across the region; and to say Yes On All 3 to enshrine felon voting rights, marriage equality, and reproductive freedom in the Virginia state constitution. To make this brighter future possible come January 2027, we’ll need to mobilize more volunteers, knock on more doors, make more calls, send more texts, and raise more money than we ever have next year.
Funnily enough, volunteering costs a lot of money! We will have frequent need for printing literature, space and supplies for canvass launches and trainings, and the necessary tech tools for all the phone calls and texts you’re gonna get from me and other comrades next year. These are crucial ingredients of the “DSA Difference” that made Zohran’s victory possible, and we’re going to need them here to make more of our own Zohrans possible.
Whether we win these races is a huge deal, to say the least. They will make or break our other campaigns and their effects will be deeply felt by many thousands of working class people in our region, and millions more watching from afar to see whether we succeed.
IN FAVOR by Catherine R
I ask comrades to join me in voting to make Electoral a priority campaign. The “Zohmentum”, the public perception of the midterms as opportunity to rebuke Trump and complacent Democrats, and the excitement for local socialist candidates like Janeese Lewis George means interest in our electoral program will run especially high this year. The 2026 election cycle is a ripe opportunity to turn sympathetic community members into new members, paper members into active ones, and rank-and-file activists into chapter leaders. We should prioritize doing so.
IN FAVOR by Max H
I am asking my comrades to vote YES on Electoral getting priority status this year.
We have multiple cadres running in races across the DMV this year, and might be involved in some citywide races as well. Cadre candidates, to me, are essential to building socialism, as they can be the most trusted to spread our ideas to the masses and hold institutional power responsibly. I want to see us win across the board here.
I trust my comrades involved in electoral organizing here when they raise concerns over capacity with all we might be involved in, and so I think we as a chapter need to support them maximally.
So please vote YES.
IN FAVOR by Julia P
Electoral Working Group is going to have a lot of work to do this year and if we want to show the world the DSA difference in real time we need priority resources. We run a professional-tier volunteer canvassing operation, and the labor and materials that make that possible require chapter investment. As you may have heard, democratic socialism is having a pretty hot electoral moment this season, and it would be a real shame to squander the many opportunities our chapter has to contest state power. Vote YES to make Electoral a priority campaign and let’s get ready to knock some doors!
IN FAVOR by Carl R
Comrades, I urge you to vote FOR electoral’s priority campaign status. Our electoral work in 2026 is taking the next step in party building. Multiple candidates, with clear paths to victory powered by DSA, are former chapter leaders: namely former chair Aparna Raj and former steering member Imara Crooms. We have Zohran at home in the form of Janeese Lewis George’s campaign. And we are very likely to endorse incumbent Shayla Adams-Stafford, as well as ideally one other race in Montgomery County.
This is massive work, and it represents our opportunity to step into the role as the leading opposition party - or perhaps simply leading party - in the dmv. We can cohere a strong left labor pole around these races - and in some cases, it already is cohered and is awaiting our assumption of the leading role. Doing that will require resources and a commitment from the chapter - that means you, dear reader - to knock many packets in support of our candidates, to set up engagement ladders that move people from volunteers to organizers, and to identify and support new organic leaders across the organization.
Luckily, it’s a proven strategy, and the people leading our electoral work - and the people advising them - have all done it successfully before. The electoral priority campaign this year is fully capable of doubling our chapter’s size, just like Zohran’s run did for NYC-DSA: let’s bring that energy here in the DMV and grow larger than we’ve ever been before.
Comrades, vote FOR Electoral as a priority campaign.
IN FAVOR by Bakari W
Hello all, I’m Bakari. I’ve been a member of the Steering Committee since 2023 and chair of the Political Engagement Committee, which leads our electoral work, since 2024. 2026 is poised to be by far the most important year in the history of Metro DC DSA’s electoral program. On this ballot are endorsement decisions for a record number of candidates, for whom we will likely knock a record number of doors, in a record number of regions at once, to form a record number of socialist legislative blocs. This requires many things. Most of those things money can’t buy, but some very important things cost a LOT, and uniquely require the flexibility of a dedicated line item in the priority budget.
This year we held 2 weekend-long electoral trainings. The second of those trainings cost $500 in meeting space, and even then we still had to tell people to join online because we risked going over capacity in the room. I hope for us to have at least 4 such trainings in 2026 across DC, MD, and VA, with food provided for accessibility. Priority funding would help significantly with this.
In 2024 when Electoral was last a priority, we used the money to print literature for Uncommitted Maryland and Maryland Reproductive Freedom Constitutional amendment canvasses, both of which were chapter-led campaigns that directly led to the development of the Prince George’s County Branch electoral program ahead of the 2025 elections of Shayla Adams-Stafford to County Council District 5 and Frankie Fritz to Greenbelt City Council. Because there is a high potential of running slates of candidates in multiple jurisdictions, there is a possibility of printing DSA slate literature that includes all of our candidates in overlapping districts and features our chapter. Literature costs in particular can be difficult to anticipate ahead of time, leading to erratic orders that are difficult to request reimbursement for beforehand. And the amount we may end up helping to print (depending on strategic need and campaign finance law in different jurisdictions) may be in quantities that stretch the budget line currently allocated for printing. So the flexibility and amount of spending that a dedicated Electoral budget line would provide is very important to our work.
Priority access to administrative tools like Scale2Win phonebanking and textbanking might also be important, as we plan to use those tools in mobilizing members, but potentially for phonebanking voters in areas that are difficult to reach with canvasses.
As we print a record amount of lit, hold a record number of trainings, and reach a record number of people, Electoral Working Group will need priority status to meet the challenges ahead and win governing power for working people. Vote YES to make Electoral work a chapter priority in 2026.
IN FAVOR by Guido V
Comrades, I urge you to vote yes to making Electoral Organizing a priority campaign. We have a tremendous opportunity before us to seize some of the levers of government. In multiple races we are running cadre candidates that have a real shot of winning. Our support will make the difference and while endorsement is one way to support, making Electoral Organizing a chapter priority. Let’s invest our money, time, and sweat and get these races won. Vote yes.
IN FAVOR by Dieter LM
My name is Dieter Lehmann Morales and I am the outgoing treasurer of MDC DSA. I have been in the chapter since 2017, and in that time I have volunteered and worked for many of our electoral campaigns. The high watermark of my electoral organizing came In 2022 when I worked intimately with the Zachary Parker campaign, knocking thousands of doors single-handedly in a sweeping Ward 5 victory. But each campaign, large and small, has informed my theory of change vis-a-vis socialism in the DMV, and I am convinced that it is the most consequential work our chapter can be involved in this coming year. We have a once in a generation to elect a democratic socialist as mayor of the District of Columbia, elect another to the DC Council, and many more in the region. Let’s seize the moment and put as much muscle behind our endorsed campaigns this year — because ultimately, our electoral successes will make our other work far more achievable.
IN FAVOR by Brandon W
I am writing in favor of making Electoral Organizing a Chapter Priority Campaign. Electorally, we are at a critical turning point in DC, Prince George’s County, and Montgomery County. Through our endorsement process, we have the possibility to help build socialist power and make a meaningful difference for working people by electing Democratic socialist elected officials on three Councils, a potential mayor’s race, and the Maryland state legislature. Electoral organizing will not only help deliver meaningful results for tenants, workers, immigrants, and other communities long marginalized by our politicians, but will also be a key pathway to help build our chapter & expand our chapter’s long term strength. We’ve seen already in New York City and other chapters how DSA electoral organizing has helped build Chapter membership and the next generations of organizers across all working groups — this is something we can make a reality in 2026 by making electoral organizing a priority campaign.
IN FAVOR by Alex Y
With many campaigns seeking our endorsement and the likelihood of the chapter endorsing at least one candidate in each DC, Montgomery County, and Prince George’s County, it will be crucial for the Electoral Working Group to be a priority campaign in what will be a big year for many elections in both the primaries as well as the general election.
IN FAVOR by Marli K
I’m writing in support of Electoral becoming a priority campaign for Metro DC DSA for 2026. As a current member of our chapter’s Political Engagement Committee (PEC), I have seen firsthand the difference our chapter’s electoral program and ground game can make to a campaign when we endorse in competitive races. Just this year, we sent a socialist to Greenbelt City Council through the election of Frankie Fritz, our first cadre candidate elected to office from our chapter. I think the chapter’s electoral work has huge potential to grow in 2026, and in order to do this, it’s vital that electoral becomes a priority campaign so we have access to resources to grow our electoral work in this critical midterm election year.
2026 is going to be huge for our electoral work no matter what–for the first time in our chapter’s history we have 12 candidates seeking our endorsement in one election cycle. This is unprecedented. Moreover, at this past convention, we passed bylaw amendments to reform and expand the PEC structure, create a Socialists in Office Committee for 2027, and refine our endorsement process to be better fit-for-purpose. The number of candidates seeking our endorsement, and these bylaw amendments (which passed with overwhelming support during convention) show how our chapter’s electoral program is growing.
In order for our electoral program to meet this growth and high energy moment, we need funding as a priority campaign for a range of activities, including: printing canvassing literature for endorsed campaigns, providing food/water to volunteer canvassers, and holding 4 or more electoral organizing trainings in the coming year (our last electoral training held in July 2025 cost $500 in space rental alone and reached over the capacity of the room). In 2026, it is highly likely that we will have more endorsed candidates than we have ever had before, the highest number of volunteer canvassers to knock doors for these candidates, and the need for increasingly large training spaces to train our electoral volunteers and leaders. I urge you to join me in voting to approve electoral as a priority campaign for 2026 so that we have resources and the chapter’s support to fully implement our electoral program in 2026. This will give us the best chance possible of electing our endorsed candidates to office and winning socialism here in the DMV.