If Tuesday night was a glorious vindication of NYC-DSA's strategy of relentless canvassing and message discipline, it was a more dispiriting affair for the Working Families Party.
Two of their three candidates for Congress—Antonio Reynoso and Effie Phillips-Staley—lost by wide margins in the "Commie Corridor" and the Hudson Valley, respectively. For every victory they picked up against a weak incumbent in New York City (see: Jessica González-Rojas), their candidates lagged in other competitive races (see: Jibreel Jalloh, Yuh-Line Niou, Ryder Kessler). Upstate they fared better, backing state legislative primary candidates in Buffalo, and taking another to the wire in Syracuse. (Small caveat: Those candidates were also supported by their local DSA chapters.)
Moments after Reynoso stood onstage at Xanadu with his WFP allies and conceded to Claire Valdez, Mayor Zohran Mamdani's chosen candidate, Hell Gate spoke with Jasmine Gripper, the WFP's state director, to get her immediate reactions to the loss.
"The more we all win—I don't see my job as defeating the DSA," Gripper told us. "My job—and I hope they don't see their job as defeating the Working Families Party—our job is to get bigger, bolder, transformational wins for working families, and the stronger we both are, the more that is possible."
This interview has been lightly edited and condensed for clarity.
Hell Gate: So, what happened?
Jasmine Gripper: I think the Reynoso campaign and coalition was a multiracial, multigenerational coalition, and I think one of the things we realized is a lot of voters of color have been disappointed in our democracy, and haven't been going to the polls. And when there was an election they really cared about, and they wanted to come out, they realized they weren't registered. And so you know, we need to do our part, we need to get our people active, we need to get them to see that their vote matters, and we need to get them to the polls.
I still remain deeply committed to building a political party for Black, brown, and working-class people to call their own, and I think that's still our coalition, that's still our base, and we need to do more to get them out.
So it was a mobilization issue, is what you're saying?
I think it's a mobilization issue. I mean, the mayor is really popular. That's the main thing that drove this campaign. But I think at the end of the day, when you look at who was in the Reynoso coalition, you see the working-class communities of color of New York. It's a beautiful stage, it's a beautiful room that looks like New York, or what New York used to look like. I think we need to make sure that our people who are here know how to stay active in our political process.