On Tuesday, voters in Virginia, New York City, New Jersey, Texas, California, and Mississippi overwhelmingly supported Democratic candidates and ballot initiatives.

In New York, despite facing racist opposition from both Republicans and much of the Democratic establishment, Zohran Mamdani sailed to victory. The new mayor-elect won over 50 percent of the vote in a three-way race.

And in Virginia, Governor-elect Abigail Spanberger won with an even greater margin over her opponent, Winsome Earle-Sears, whose campaign weaponized transphobia in a vain attempt to defeat Spanberger.

In California, as of Wednesday, nearly two-thirds of the vote favored redrawing the congressional map to counter Republican gerrymandering in Texas.

[

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Zohran Mamdani Beats Andrew Cuomo in Victory for the Left in NYC Mayoral Race](https://theintercept.com/2025/11/04/nyc-mayor-election-results-zohran-mamdani-cuomo/)

The Intercept Briefing spoke with Amanda Litman, co-founder and president of the PAC Run for Something, and Maurice Mitchell, national director of the Working Families Party, to discuss what lessons Democrats and progressives should take heading into the midterm elections.

Mitchell pointed to Mamdani’s and other Democrats’ success last night at driving home a positive economic message for working-class voters as an important roadmap for next year.

“There’s elements of [Mamdani’s] victory that are very particular to New York, that are very particular to him, but the politics and the conditions that are a part of the victory are happening all across the country,” said Mitchell. “It’s clear that this was a wave election. And inside of that wave are a number of independent, progressive-minded folks who didn’t wait their turn, who are willing to fight for working people.”

Similarly, Litman argued that Democrats need to embrace a big tent that includes progressive voices. “You need candidates who know what they believe, who know how to communicate, who love the place they’re running, and who can articulate why voters should want them to win,” she said.

Litman continued, “Does every candidate need to have the exact same ideological profile? No. But also, the person who’s running and winning a seat on the Iowa City Council is probably not a good fit for the New York City Council, and vice versa. And that’s OK. To be a party that can win everywhere, which is what we need to be in order to stop authoritarianism and stop what the Republican Party has done, we need to have a big tent.”

Listen to the full conversation of The Intercept Briefing on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you listen.

Transcript

Jessica Washington: Welcome to The Intercept Briefing, I’m Jessica Washington.

On Tuesday, voters in New York City, Virginia, New Jersey, Texas, California, and Mississippi cast their ballots, in an early test of where the public stands ahead of a midterm election that could fundamentally reshape the political landscape.

The New York City mayoral election, in particular, has captured national attention — with both Republicans and establishment Democrats largely painting Zohran Mamdani as “dangerous” and weaponizing his Muslim identity to gin up post 9/11 levels of Islamophobia.

But Zohran Mamdani is now the mayor-elect, capturing more than 50 percent of votes in a three-way race as of Wednesday.

In Virginia, Governor-elect Abigail Spanberger won by even greater margins.

And in California, voters overwhelmingly passed a proposition to redistrict the state in favor of giving Democrats more congressional seats and counter Republican states’ gerrymandering efforts.

Now, as Democrats eye trying to reclaim Congress in the midterms, they’ll have to figure out which strategies to take from this election — and which ones belong in the political trash heap.

Joining me now to discuss are Amanda Litman, co-founder and president of the progressive PAC Run for Something, and Maurice Mitchell, national director of the Working Families Party.

Amanda and Maurice, welcome to the show.

Amanda Litman: Good morning.

Maurice Mitchell: Good to be with you.

JW: Amanda. I’ll start with you, the million-dollar question: Did the results of Tuesday’s selection tell us anything about where the Democratic Party is headed, or at least where it should be headed?

AL: I think it told us lots of things about where the Democratic Party should be headed — which is that it needs to be heading in lots of different directions.

Run for Something had 222 candidates on the ballot yesterday. We’re still waiting for results in about 100 of them or so, but we’ve already had 94 wins, including red-to-blue flips in all kinds of places. The thing that I think we saw with our Run for Something candidates — with the New York City mayoral, with the New Jersey and Texas and California and Virginia — is that Democrats are, or voters, rather, are pissed at Trump. They don’t like this economy. And they want candidates who can speak to their issues in a way that makes sense to them. Now, that doesn’t necessarily mean that every candidate is going to be fully aligned on every policy, but every candidate is fully aligned on values, and they are connected to their community.

So when we look forward to what the Democratic Party needs to do going into 2026 and, honestly, beyond. I don’t want to say like I’ve been right for a long time here, but we need to keep doing what Run for Something has been doing, which is finding great candidates who can connect to their voters, who understand the issues folks care about, who keep it hyper-local, and who can communicate it in a way that makes sense to them.

It is not complicated. It is hard work, but it is not rocket science.

JW: And Maurice, I want to get your thoughts.

MM: We have a slightly different perspective when we ask and answer this question at the Working Families Party because we are building a separate third party that is labor community-backed from the ground up.

But a lot of my assessments align with what Amanda said. So I think there’s two driving forces here: the affordability crisis that Americans — regardless of their race or their region or their religion, or anything else — are feeling in a very, very deep way. It’s a crisis, and it’s going in the wrong direction. And people’s deep concerns and antipathy and fear of MAGA and Trumpism — at a time when there’s a government shutdown.

And those are two animating forces that I think are affecting the electorate writ large. But the other thing I want to say is that in June, when Zohran Mamdani won focused on affordability. There were Democratic Party strategists that were ripping up their playbooks and recognizing that in 2025, if you wanted to secure victory, you had to tell a story about affordability.

JW: Right, he won the Democratic Primary in June.

MM: And so the Democratic Party and the pro-democracy movement writ large, that we’re a part of — even as we’re building our own party and our own brand with our own candidates — it’s a complicated united front that includes a lot of different factions with different opinions, different ideologies. But the question of who’s leading the united front, I think, is clear.

“Zohran’s victory in June had a huge impact on how the Democratic Party in general is seeking to secure victories and to compel working people.”

The leaders of the united front, I think, are the folks that took a chance on the idea that working people deserve — in the richest country in the history of countries — deserve a dignified life. I think everybody in all the factions are learning from the people that are often called the “left” or the “progressive” faction of that coalition.

And so even candidates like Mikie Sherrill and Abigail Spanberger and many, many candidates around the country that are considered “moderates” — they ultimately were running on affordability. And I think Zohran’s victory in June had a huge impact on how the Democratic Party in general is seeking to secure victories and to compel working people, many of whom left them, to vote for them.

JW: I want to dive deeper into the New York City mayoral election. That is the election that has arguably garnered the most attention of any of Tuesday’s races. Mayor-elect Zohran Mamdani defeated former Gov. Andrew Cuomo and Curtis Sliwa on Tuesday with 50 percent of the vote. Now that he’s won, do you think Democrats can take lessons for his victory, or does a candidate like Mamdani only work in a place like New York City?

And Maurice, I want to start with you on this.

MM: I think when we zoom out, the answer is pretty clear to us. Yes, Zohran was able to secure a victory in New York City. But what isn’t as touted is the fact that WFP-aligned progressives that built a labor and community coalition around them won in the cities of Buffalo, Syracuse, and Albany. Also, we had an upset victory in Dayton, Ohio, for a mayor’s race that wasn’t top of mind for a lot of people — but I think it suggests that what’s happening is much deeper than a unitary phenomenon.

I think it’s true that Zohran is a singular talent. I think he’s a brilliant communicator, and we couldn’t be more proud that he built this movement in New York. And there’s aspects of the victory that are very particular to New York, are very particular to him. But the politics and the conditions that are a part of the victory are happening all across the country.

And we’re still counting votes in Seattle. There’re other places we’re still counting votes, but I think it’s clear that this was a wave election. And inside of that wave are a number of independent, progressive-minded folks who didn’t wait their turn, who are willing to fight for working people.

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But also, when you’re fighting for working people that can’t just be performative. You actually need to fight against corporations. You need to fight against the establishment politics that have held back the possibility of a dignified life for everyday working people. Those candidates that did that were rewarded.

And so I think that there’s a story that includes Zohran and includes New York, but it portends to politics that are much deeper and broader than the politics of New York City.

JW: Amanda, it looks like you have something to say. I want to hear your thoughts on this as well.

AL: I think there’s two distinct components to Zohran’s victory.

Some are replicable, and some are not and shouldn’t be. He deeply deeply held his values. He was very principled. He clearly knew who he is, what he believes, and why it should matter to the voters of New York City.

He was really able to answer the question, which is what Run for Something asks every candidate thinking about running for office: not why do you want to win, but why should they want you to win? Why should your community want you to win? What is going to feel different in their lives? What are you going to do for them? He had a such clear answer for that. In fact, he had three, and there’s a reason people could recite his platform back to him. They could see it, they could picture it.

“You cannot organize people you do not respect and care for.”

He also really loves New York City and loves New Yorkers. Like, loving the people you are trying to lead — it feels so obvious, but we have seen, the alternative is someone like Andrew Cuomo, who doesn’t live here but also doesn’t like New York City, does not like New Yorkers, campaigned against this place as a hellhole he wanted to try and save from the trash of the street. That vibe is very different. You cannot organize people you do not respect and care for. I think Zohran’s ability to do that is really powerful.

He campaigned with deep joy. He took the work seriously, but not himself. He showed deep respect for voters. And he communicated them to them and to us as a New York City voter where we got our information. You could not escape your social media feed, your news feed, your “For you” page without seeing him. Not just talking to the press, but talking to creators, to influencers, to other New Yorkers.

When he was bopping around the city, going to all these clubs, I saw literally hundreds of videos of different perspectives of him in these clubs, talking to folks where they are. And then more from him campaigning with cab drivers outside LaGuardia Airport at midnight on a Saturday night.

Now all of that, if not the exact specifics, are replicable in other places. You need candidates who know what they believe, who know how to communicate that, who love the place they’re running, and who can articulate why voters should want them to win.

Does every candidate need to have the exact same ideological profile? No. But also the person who’s running and winning a seat on the Iowa City Council is probably not a good fit for the New York City Council, and vice versa. And that’s OK. To be a party that can win everywhere, which is what we need to be in order to stop authoritarianism and stop what the Republican Party has done, we need to have a big tent.

Now, I think this is where you get some of the tension here, which is, there is one side of the Democratic Party that seems to understand this, and the other that does not. And the one that does not thinks that Zohran needs to be pushed out, that the tent should not be big enough to include him and candidates like him. And that is where I think some of our problem currently lies.

JW: Maurice, I want to start with you and follow up on something that you said. And then Amanda, also, this is something that is very clearly following up from what you’ve been saying, but what about what Mamdani did is replicable within a red state area within the South, within places that are not as liberal as New York City?

MM: There’s a number of lessons that we could take from his victory. Number one, organizing gets the goods. And it’s accurate that he’s a wonderful communicator and he leveraged new media and he leveraged social media in an expert masterful way. I think there’s some lessons here, but organizing gets the goods.

“Organizing gets the goods.”

So I was at the victory party yesterday, and the campaign’s field director touted a number that’s just, on its face, incredible: 104,000 individual volunteers. If you’re interested in building a movement candidacy, you need to figure out how to organize that grassroots energy of your people, your neighbors actually being involved in a deep way in the race, so it’s bigger than you. It’s actually a movement. You could repeat that anywhere. Actually considering how we’re building this organizing forward, people forward.

But the second thing is connecting that organizing, like Amanda says, I agree, to a compelling story that everyday people are actually hungry for. Which means not just speaking — listening. That’s organizing 101. I’m a trained organizer, and we talk about 70/30, 80/20: 80 percent listening, 20 percent talking. One of Zohran’s early videos was him just listening to his neighbors, many of whom voted for Trump. And so actually concerning your community, concerning your potential constituents in how you tell the story of your campaign, that is replicable.

I think the other thing is, look, not waiting your turn. We need more and more people willing to run for local office. And I’m happy that the Zohran story is about local office because that’s where the goods are at. Like at the Working Families Party, just in this election cycle we have close to 700 candidates that we’ve endorsed. Most of our candidates in any election cycle, including the big presidential cycle, are local candidates. If we’re serious about governing, then we have to think about how we’re recruiting folks to run for city council, to run for mayor, to run for state legislature, because that’s where the governing happens and that’s how you build a pipeline.

That’s how you build the ultimate ability for folks to have governing chops so that they can run for these higher offices. All of those things can be replicable and could be systematized — in some of the ways that our friends on the right-wing have systematized their pipelines for governance, right?

And then the laser-like focus on what working people have been telling us again and again. Like in 2024, we were screaming from the rafters, “It’s affordability. Tell a story about affordability and also name names of the villains.”

“Tell a story about affordability and also name names of the villains.”

I think Zohran was an expert in running not just against Cuomo, but also running against the MAGA billionaires and the other billionaires that spent more than $20 million against him. That’s a excellent contrast, and those are excellent villains. It turns out that it’s true that those are the folks that are actually making it hard to afford living in New York City.

And that focus, that commitment to those principles and to the issues of affordability, we’re able to build a bigger “we” — where people across religion, race, ethnicity, were able to see themselves in the race.

[

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Then the last thing is that, even though he focused on affordability, no matter how much people tried to detract him, no matter how much there were bad faith messages, no matter how much at the end, there was so much blatant racism and Islamophobia — he was willing to and able to hold onto his values.

He didn’t shirk from having it be known that he was going to support trans rights because that is a core value of who he was. He didn’t shirk from letting it be known that he was a proud member of the Democratic Socialist of America and that he was a proud Working Families Party candidate. And he also made sure that in telling that, he was telling a story about who he was as a person, but ultimately, it had to come back to what he was going to do for you as a voter.

JW: Maurice, I want to touch on something that you said about local being king and this idea of we have to focus on local races, but obviously we also live in the Trump era where his hands are in everything. And so I wanted to ask you, can Zohran Mamdani get his agenda across if Trump is threatening to withhold federal funds? How does this — and I don’t want to even say his issues, I think Trump’s issues with Mamdani would be more accurate — but how does that play into being able to actually get his agenda across?

MM: I actually think that in some ways, like in union organizing, they say the boss is the best organizer. Trump being so fixated with Zohran both helped Zohran and our movement electorally because Trump and MAGA actually is being repudiated and was repudiated electorally.

But when it comes to governing, I think one of the arguments that Cuomo was trying to make was like, “Trump is fixated on Zohran, so you should ultimately vote for me because I’m closer to Trump.” But what people have seen is that Trump is a mercurial authoritarian, and there’s no way to get on his good side and stay on his good side.

So ultimately what you need is a fighter, right? And the governing project is gonna rely on Mamdani’s ability to use this tremendous mandate in order to negotiate with Kathy Hochul, the governor, as well as his colleagues, his former colleagues at the state legislature, to draw down revenue in the state budget.

But the reality is that always was going to be true for any blue state. In every blue state, they’re having those conversations in their legislatures where they’re going to need more revenue because the federal government is abrogating its responsibility. That’s not a Zohran phenomenon, that’s the nature of America under MAGA authoritarianism.

And what we need are bold leaders that are going to have to in state legislatures figure out where we get the revenue. And of course we believe that means taxing corporations, taxing billionaires and the ultrawealthy in order to fill the gap where the federal government is leaving us behind.

But also, we can’t just fill the gap. We have to be bolder and invest in programs Zohran run on mandate to make real in New York, like free buses, like childcare. Those are going to cost money. And I think we’re in a really good position because again, it wasn’t just Zohran’s victory in New York. For example, the fact that we won in Syracuse, Buffalo, and Albany, and the fact that the Onondaga County Legislature flipped. There’s all types of things that took place in New York and around the country that are going to reset our politics that will make it easier to argue for revenue and to argue for progressive revenue.

A billionaire’s tax of some form, some sort of corporate tax in the New York State legislature because of the nature of the victories. And no serious person could claim that the victory only happened in New York. There was a wave that took place all across New York state and Kathy Hochul is up for reelection next year, and she’s thinking about her politics.

JW: Yeah. Amanda, I want to have you come in and speak to this. How does Mamdani deal with Trump and get his agenda across? What does that look like in the next year or two years going forward?

AL: I think the strength that Zohran has is that he is able to communicate what’s happening to New Yorkers in a way that can help explain the challenges he’s going to face.

Not every politician has the skills he has where when they run into roadblocks, like people won’t get it. He has the platform and the capacity to create transparency into how things will be going. So I think it’s going to be hard. It would’ve been hard even without Trump. I also think he has already proven he can build really good relationships with people who are not fully ideologically aligned with him.

Like he’s out there with Hochul eating wings at the Buffalo Bills bar in Astoria, and bringing aboard state legislators and city council members who maybe are not fully with him on every issue. Knowing that he has a clear goal. And I think that’s actually the benefit of his clarity of agenda, which is that he is clear-eyed about what he wants the outcome to be and has already proven during his campaign.

You can see over the course of interviews over the last six months, he’s flexible on tactics. Because it’s not really about how he gets there, but what he gets done. So I am cautiously optimistic that by the end of his hopefully second term, but by the end of his leadership, he will have been able to deliver on the things that he has promised in at least some meaningful way.

And if he’s not, it’s not going to be because he didn’t try hard enough, which I think for a lot of elected leaders, it’s often because they didn’t feel like they could spend the political capital to try and swing for the fences. At this point, the status quo is so clearly not working that you gotta appreciate someone willing to take a big swing.

MM: Yeah. And to your point, I feel like Zohran has rescued pragmatism from the status quo. And I’ve had a problem with the idea that being pragmatic somehow couldn’t mean that you were aligned with your values. Pragmatism just means getting things done, operationalizing things.

And I think he’s shown that pragmatism in very principled ways in how he was able to broaden the tent during the general election. He was able to communicate different messages to different audiences, while maintaining his core values and not urning himself into a pretzel in order to reach those audiences.

And we’re going to need that type of pragmatism in order to govern and to bring together the largest coalition to make the governing aspirations and experiment of the Zohran Momdani coalition real, and that’s very exciting. A pragmatic progressive that has vision, like that’s exactly what we need in cities like New York.

[Break]

Jessica Washington: I want to switch gears over to the Virginia race because we obviously had a bunch of races yesterday. Something that stuck out to me about the race between Abigail Spanberger and Winsome Earle-Sears was the really blatant use of transphobia from the Republican side in this campaign.

I honestly couldn’t tell you how many advertisements, I live in DC, that I saw attacking Spanberger for her support of trans youth. After the Presidential election, some more conservative Democrats like Rep. Seth Moulton, were making the case that the party will continue to lose unless they back away from advocating for transgender rights.

But in this election, those attacks didn’t seem to land. Why do you think that is? And what does this tell you about how Democrats should handle anti-trans bigotry heading into the midterms? Amanda, I want to start with you.

AL: I think it’s clear it didn’t land. They spent something like $30 million on anti-trans ads. I think it was the biggest topic of Winsome Earle-Sears’s advertising campaign. Most people aren’t thinking about trans kids in sports day in, day out. They’re thinking about the fact that Trump just laid off huge numbers of federal workers, especially Black women across Northern Virginia and across the Commonwealth. They’re thinking about the fact that the federal government is currently shut down and they’re not getting paid. They’re thinking about the fact that he’s trying to build data centers or the folks are trying to build data center, not Trump, but that there are big corporations trying to build data centers that are making their energy prices skyrocket.

In the list of things that people care about, this is not high on there especially given everything else that’s happening in this moment. And I think voters are smarter than we give them credit for. They know this is a bullshit argument. I am glad to see that Spanberger was very clear on her values here and kept refocused on the issues that really affect people’s quality of life.

And also, we shouldn’t let the federal government bully kids. Which is what they’re trying to do here. So I think that is really the place where people need to stay strong: we know this is a distraction, we know this isn’t about your quality of life, we don’t want them to bully kids, we don’t want them to make kids feel unsafe.

We need to focus on the things that matter to you and your ability to live where you want to live and have the kind of life you deserve.

JW: Maurice, I want to get your thoughts.

MM: Yeah, I just think that there’s a set of people, and this is one of the reasons why we build the Working Families Party, there’s a set of establishment politicians and consultants that read polls and believe that polls are somehow determinative for the future prospects of politics, right?

And polls are one way to get a sense of where people might be at any given point. But I think those anti-trans ads in 2024, in as much as they were effective, they were only effective in the context of a larger story about Democrats abandoning working people. And those anti-trans ads had less to do with trans people because they don’t care about trans people. Trans people are simply a cudgel for them to make the larger argument about Democrats not caring about you.

Our politics have transformed significantly. When you look at where people are with immigration. There were a number of Democratic elected officials that totally swung and basically aligned with the anti-immigration position based on that signal, right? And what ends up happening is that you have a set of elected officials that have no center. Have no moral core, have no vision, have no clarity chasing the pulse, chasing the culture instead of setting the culture. If you want to learn from the right-wing, is the right-wing was clear about setting the culture.

And you’re either setting the culture, you’re either telling the story or you’re in somebody else’s story. And instead of trying to figure out how they tell a more compelling story, they were simply seeking to figure out how best they can manage inside of the Republicans anti-trans story, and that’s not how you win and that’s not leadership.

And ultimately what that looks like to most voters is weakness. There’s a reason why, again and again, when voters, when they talk about the attributes of the Democratic Party, one of the attributes is weakness, right? Because ultimately people don’t need to agree with you, but they need to believe in you, and you can’t believe in somebody who one day is pro-trans, and then after an election, another day, it turns out that they’re anti-trans. One day they’re pro-immigration, and then it turns out after a bad election, then they’re anti-immigrant. Whether or not I agree with you, I don’t believe in you.

And I’m happy to see the results and hopefully this is a lesson to a number of those consultants that swung wildly to the right. And days after November’s really hard showing, they were jumping over each other to prove who was the hardest on immigration, who was the hardest on gender. And I think this is a rebuke of many of those folks inside of the Democratic Party that thought that’s how anybody wins in this moment.

JW: I want to switch gears again over to California. As you both know, California had a very important proposition on the ballot, Prop 50, which allows for the use of new congressional maps until 2030. This is meant to counter gerrymandering of Republican states to add congressional seats. It won by a resounding majority.

What does this tell us about the appetite to fight against Republicans and the Trump administration? Amanda, I want you to go first.

AL: People are hungry to do literally anything they can to show Trump that they do not like what is happening. They do not like what the Republicans are doing. I think Trump won the popular vote by what, like a point and a half in 2024 and everyone seemed to think that indicated a massive vibe shift and we are a reactionary country. We’re not. People don’t like this. He’s not popular. I hope that more institutions and business leaders and Democratic senators understand that, that if they fight back, the people will have their back. And the reverse is also true.

The people are fighting back. They are using every possible lever they can. It is one, one of the most frustrating narratives I’ve seen over the last year is “Oh, the resistance is dead.” It’s no, it’s not. Run for Something had 72,000 young people raise their hands to say they want to run for office in the last year. That is more than we had in the entirety of Trump’s first term. People are pissed. They do not like this. The powerful are cowards, but the people are brave and they’re willing to push back.

I am, I think, comforted to see that even in this moment where no, it’s not great gerrymandering is bad, people understand that we have to fight fire with fire. We have to neutralize what they’re doing. And I think the results from this week really tell us that the Republicans may be overplaying their hand here because if you just took a bunch of Trump plus 10 districts and turned them into Trump plus five in order to create more Republican areas that may not cut it in a wave election in 2026.

JW: Maurice, what did you make of the gerrymandering vote?

MM: I couldn’t agree more. The California Working Families Party was very much a part of the Prop 50 vote. And what we saw on the ground was incredible. People are looking for meaningful avenues to push back against authoritarianism. I see it every single day. I crisscross the country. I’m in sometimes rural communities. I’m in suburban communities. I’m in urban communities. I’m in Black communities. I’m in Latino communities, I’m in white communities. There is a through line through all of these communities. Most everyday people have completely rejected MAGA and the Trump policies. It’s exhausting to them. This includes people who are self-identified progressives and activists. It also includes people who don’t really attach themselves to politics in the way that people who are more ideological are, and people who identify as independents.

There was an opening for Trump to actually deliver on his populism, and he failed because he was always the self-interested conman that he’s always been and people see it for what it is and are looking for any avenue to demonstrate their displeasure with Trump and MAGA. And that’s what this vote was about. That’s what that’s what this vote was about. That’s what the more than 7 million people that came together during the No Kings rallies was about, and it’s growing. The momentum is growing and I couldn’t agree more, I think we’re looking towards a wave election in 2026, and you could only gerrymander a district so much. And they might be surprised with the outcomes despite their best efforts at gerrymandering and engineering a majority for themselves.

I think they might be overwhelmed by what’s coming, because I don’t see any indication as the economy continues to fail as Trump administration officials continue to signal that there will be a recession as prices go up, as Trump continues to operate in the chaotic fashion that he operates, and as we know when he becomes more desperate, when he is more in a corner, when he recognizes that his grip on power is becoming more fleeting, then that’s the version of Trump that is the most chaotic.

And so when he builds this culture of chaos, it actually creates an opportunity for solidarity and more and more Americans across all types of difference are coming together. And so when I look at what happened in California, that’s what I see. People wanted a meaningful action to demonstrate that they do not support the Trump agenda and they want to fight back.

JW: Now that we’ve spent so much time talking about the lessons from this election, I want to get into the future of the party. Are there any emerging Democratic or progressive leaders that you’re watching out for as we head into midterm season? Including those whose names aren’t even on the ballot yet?

Maurice, I’d like to hear from you first.

MM: I continue to be inspired by congressional leaders like Greg Casar, like Summer Lee, like Delia Ramirez who started off running on the local level. They governed, they secured things for their people. They built coalitions that were multiracial, that included labor and community, and now they’re representing us in Congress.

And they’re arguing for a working class politics. And they’re arguing it in a way that is something other than just a sectarian or ideological means, right? Like Summer has been on the front line talking about accountability for the victims of Epstein. And that has won her popularity with a whole new group of people who are not necessarily progressives, but want accountability too.

Greg has been an excellent communicator on the issues of affordability and focusing like a laser on the issues of working class people, and has reached out to colleagues that don’t fit within the narrow confines of what you think of as a progressive.

So not only are they leading in ways that are focusing on the working class, challenging the corporate agenda, but they’re also bridge builders, which I think those are the leaders that we’re going to need in the future. The very clear very sharp young progressive voices that are interested in building a bigger we and interested in building a coalition of all types of people.

I couldn’t be more excited about the politics to come. And the other thing I’ll say is that those politics are going to be about what we’re fighting for, what we’re willing to vote for, not simply based on all the horrible things that MAGA and Trump have to offer. Like at a certain point, American people are like, “Yes, we understand Trump’s brand. We know it’s bad. Tell us what you’re going to do for us.” And I think those are the leaders that are best positioned to tell that story.

JW: Amanda, your organization focuses on recruiting progressive candidates. Who should we keep an eye out for?

AL: I am so excited about so many of our alum who, you know, as Maurice noted, started on the local level because Run for Something exclusively works with candidates running for local office and are now running for higher office going into 2026.

I’m pumped about Christian Menefee who just moved into the runoff in Texas for the open congressional seat there. Aftyn Behn, who’s running for a special election in Tennessee, incredible progressive organizer who’s been fighting especially for reproductive rights in an open election, special election, for Congress in Tennessee next month.

I’m excited about James Talarico in Texas, a state legislator, pastor, former teacher who really speaks the language of faith and can connect his progressive values to how it really translates to Texans all across the state. I’m excited about Rua Roman, who’s running for governor in Georgia, a state legislator, a young Muslim woman who’s been a fierce and strategic thinker, really centering working families there. Francesca Hong, running for governor in Wisconsin. Francesca is a single mom, a restaurateur, another union organizer who’s been an incredible leader in the state assembly there.

Running for governor Alexis Hill, who’s running for Governor of Nevada. My buddy Zach Wahls, who’s running for Senate in Iowa. Anna Eskamani, who’s running for mayor in Orlando. She’s a state rep down there who’s flipped seat red to blue back in 2018 is now running to be the executive there. That’s actually a 2027 election. So looking even further ahead.

We have so many amazing leaders who Run for Something has been working with now for years. We’ve built this incredible bench of candidates who are so deeply connected to community, who have the receipts of delivering for folks in these local offices and are now moving up the ranks. I wouldn’t say to better jobs but more prominent ones for sure. And I’m just really excited for the country to get to know them because I think they, much like Mamdani can give you hope that actually a better way of politics is possible and that we don’t have to constantly be disappointed by our leaders or by choosing from the lesser of two evils that actually one of them doesn’t have to be evil to begin with.

JW: We’re going to leave it there, but you both have shared such great insights into this election and what’s going to happen moving forward, so I really appreciate you both for joining me on the Intercept Briefing.

AL: Thank you.

MM: Thanks, good to be with you.

JW: That does it for this episode of the intercept briefing.

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This episode was produced by Laura Flynn. Sumi Aggarwal is our executive producer. Ben Muessig is our editor-in-chief. Chelsey B. Coombs is our social and video producer. Desiree Adib is our booking producer. Fei Liu is our product and design manager. Nara Shin is our copy-editor. Legal review by David Bralow.

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Until next time, I’m Jessica Washington.

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