The Democratic Socialists of America can't agree on how to pick a presidential candidate, and the fight is getting ugly. A razor-thin vote by DSA's National Political Committee rejected a proposal to let rank-and-file members weigh in on a 2028 endorsement, triggering accusations of suppressed democracy, factional backstabbing, and warnings that the organization has been "set down a dangerous path."
The 14, 13 vote, which took place on a Sunday, killed a resolution that would have allowed a nationwide all-member poll on whom DSA should back for president in 2028. The result means any endorsement decision now defaults to the group's biennial national convention, scheduled for August 2027, a timeline critics say could sideline the roughly 120,000-member organization during the most consequential months of a presidential primary season.
At the center of the dispute sits Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, the four-term New York congresswoman whose campaign-style social media video has fueled months of speculation about a 2028 White House bid. She hasn't confirmed or denied a run. But a powerful internal faction called the "Groundwork" caucus has been pressing DSA to "endorse AOC on day one", and the NPC just slammed the door on their preferred mechanism for doing so.
Within hours of the vote, DSA's online ecosystem lit up with mutual accusations. Gustavo Gordillo, co-chair of DSA's largest chapter in New York City, posted on X that the national leadership had "just voted to overturn our convention & took away rank and file members' right to vote in an all-member poll on presidential endorsement." He added that the committee was "taking away our members' right to vote" even as NYC-DSA was "send(ing) them ~ $2M per year in dues."
NPC member Amy Wilhelm fired back, also on X, accusing Gordillo of dishonesty: "NYC members deserve co-chairs that don't lie." Wilhelm insisted "there was never intention to prevent" DSA members from participating in chapter-level polls and that "with the resolution where we left it today chapters are allowed to carry out the poll per their standard method."
Another X user, posting under the handle "tylerisposting," told Gordillo to "stop lying" and "stop trying to foment a split."
The exchange captures a recurring pattern on the institutional left: organizations built on the rhetoric of radical democracy devolving into factional trench warfare the moment a real decision is on the table.
The Groundwork caucus had laid out its case in blunt terms. In written materials, its authors declared that Ocasio-Cortez is "on the precipice of running for, and potentially winning, the presidency of the United States" and that "this opportunity is years in the making." They urged speed, warning that if DSA drags its feet, "we will have forced ourselves into the backseat and miss the opportunity to strike when the iron is hot."
Their vision was sweeping. DSA, they argued, "should be ready to position ourselves as the political home for the millions of people that will be inspired by AOC's message and position our organization as the vital core of AOC's campaign." A separate online petition from DSA members echoed the urgency: "if we don't have a member poll, we as members will be left out of DSA's most fundamental way of building a democratic strategy."
Recent polling has shown Ocasio-Cortez leading early Democratic presidential surveys, a development that tells its own story about where the Democratic base is headed.
J. Ryder, founding editor of a magazine on communism, offered a sharper critique of the NPC majority. The committee's decision "to suppress polling the will of the members on presidential endorsement is severely disappointing," Ryder wrote, adding that "this will inevitably put DSA on the back foot in the 2028 moment."
"Waiting to endorse in August of next year at the convention may mean 6 months+ of vital AOC campaign time where the masses will be mobilizing without intervention by DSA."
Ryder went further, accusing dissenters on the NPC of bad faith: "The fact the some sectarians on the NPC are suppressing even a non-binding poll shows that they know this, and are scared of the implications of member democracy and mass politics in DSA."
The irony is that DSA and Ocasio-Cortez have been at odds for years, a fact that makes the Groundwork caucus's eagerness all the more revealing. In 2024, DSA withdrew its endorsement of AOC's re-election campaign, citing her failure to meet conditions that included opposing all U.S. funding to Israel and publicly supporting boycott and sanctions against the Jewish state. NYC-DSA, Gordillo's chapter, retained its endorsement in defiance of the national organization.
The tensions deepened in the summer of 2025, when DSA issued a statement condemning Ocasio-Cortez for voting against an amendment that would have blocked an additional $500 million in U.S. funding for Israel's Iron Dome missile defense system. For DSA's anti-Israel faction, that vote was a betrayal. For anyone who values the security of a democratic ally, it was one of the few defensible things Ocasio-Cortez has done.
Yet the Groundwork caucus now wants DSA to hitch its future to the very politician its leadership has publicly rebuked, because the prospect of a socialist in the Oval Office apparently outweighs all prior grievances. That tells you everything about the movement's priorities.
Eve Seitchik, a Massachusetts DSA member, characterized the NPC vote as "a massive escalation of factional tensions." Her warning was stark:
"I'm afraid DSA has been set down a dangerous path."
DSA's internal meltdown doesn't exist in a vacuum. It is one front in a widening split inside the Democratic Party between its socialist wing and elected officials who recognize the political cost of the label. The New York Post reported that Gordillo said his organization would be "thrilled" if AOC ran in 2028, while Ocasio-Cortez herself has remained coy, saying only, "Could I be president? Could I not be president? Maybe, maybe not."
DSA-backed candidates have recently defeated multiple incumbent Democrats, including Rep. Diana DeGette in Colorado and Rep. Adriano Espaillat in New York. Ocasio-Cortez has publicly encouraged her Democratic colleagues to support these challengers, a posture that amounts to aiding a hostile takeover of her own party's incumbents.
That dynamic has drawn sharp responses from within Democratic ranks. Sen. John Fetterman has publicly condemned the socialist surge, and Gov. Josh Shapiro has drawn a line against DSA-backed nominees, arguing Democrats need to fight over what their party actually stands for.
Meanwhile, AOC and Sen. Bernie Sanders conducted a "Fighting Oligarchy" tour that drew 12,500 people to a rally in Nampa, Idaho, on April 14, 2025, according to event organizers. The tour's branding, and its crowd sizes, suggest the socialist wing believes it has a mass constituency. Whether that constituency can survive the movement's own internal contradictions is another question.
A spokesperson for Canary Mission, which tracks anti-Israel and antisemitic activism, offered a blunt assessment of what a DSA-aligned presidency would mean. The group, which keeps its representatives unnamed for security reasons, told Fox News Digital that "an AOC presidency would give that movement more than influence: it would give its agenda access to the full power of the executive branch."
"Putting that power in the hands of a movement that repeatedly places ideological allegiance above America's national interests, regards America and its allies as the problem, and shows sympathy toward their adversaries would not be political progress. It would be a profound national-security risk, and could be devastating for the country."
The spokesperson added that "DSA presents its agenda as a project of reconstruction, but much of its politics begins with dismantling the institutions, alliances, and economic system that sustain those achievements." Canary Mission stated it has spent "more than a decade" documenting "numerous instances in which anti-Zionist activism has crossed into antisemitic harassment, support for extremism, and hostility toward the United States and its democratic allies."
DSA, the spokesperson said, "has emerged as the primary vehicle through which radical ideology is translated into political success." That assessment may be the most important sentence in the entire dispute, because it frames the stakes beyond an organizational squabble over bylaws.
Fox News Digital reached out to both Ocasio-Cortez's office and DSA for comment. Neither response was noted in reporting. The silence is itself telling. AOC benefits from the speculation without bearing the cost of a formal announcement, and DSA's leadership evidently prefers not to air its laundry in front of a conservative outlet.
The broader trajectory of DSA-backed candidates toppling Democratic incumbents suggests the organization's influence is growing even as its governance frays. The question is whether a movement that can't hold a clean internal vote on a nonbinding poll is capable of running a national presidential campaign, or whether the factional warfare will consume it first.
For the rest of the country, the lesson is simpler. The organization that wants to reshape American government from the top down can't manage its own committee of twenty-seven.
