Results will continue to come in as mail ballots get counted over the next several weeks, but after election night, we are so excited about Los Angeles’ early election results.

In Council District 13, hundreds of long-time and brand new DSA-LA members knocked 35,000+ doors to elect DSA member Hugo Soto-Martinez, and he is well on his way to the general election. At the end of election night, the gap between Hugo and the incumbent was fewer than 400 votes, and that gap has closed more and more with each new ballot release. The incumbent spent nearly $2.5M in this primary, raised from big-dollar donations outside of the district, but even that’s not enough to beat a movement. This coalition of socialists and LA’s progressive labor movement is going to be unstoppable.

Though some media are eager to interpret California’s election results as evidence that voters are “moving to the right”, Hugo’s victory shows that voters respond to socialists when we organize thoughtfully and root ourselves in the lived material conditions of working-class voters. When reactionaries have money and lies they can get ahead like Caruso, and even overwhelm progressive incumbents like Chesa Boudin. But you can’t fool all the people all the time.

Taking on well-established incumbents, LA Council District 1 candidate Eunisses Hernandez and Assembly District 65 candidate Fatima Iqbal-Zubair mobilized DSA members across our chapter to knock doors and build broad coalitions. In CD1, Eunisses faced an avalanche of smear mailers, with nearly $2 million spent supporting the incumbent or attacking her directly, while Fatima’s opponent is one of the most heavily-funded-by-fossil-fuel money legislators in the state.

It’s too early to call for Eunisses as each vote bulletin narrows the gap between her and the incumbent, but voters in CD1 showed that many support ideals like restorative justice and housing for all, and are not cowed by tough-on-crime fearmongering.

Fatima’s campaign against a heavily fossil-fuel-funded incumbent progresses to a runoff, and we’ll have an opportunity to unseat him with a champion for working people in November.

All three of our endorsed member-candidates faced massive spending against them from landlord lobbies, police unions, and fossil fuel interests, at times with cartoonish smears and redbaiting, but we’re demonstrating that organized people can and will defeat them. Capitalist interests are scared of us.

Congratulations to all 3 of our endorsed candidates Hugo Soto-Martinez, Eunisses Hernandez, and Fatima Iqbal-Zubair, and congrats to our membership – we are demonstrating to the people of Los Angeles what the working class is capable of when we organize.