Socialists’ agenda takes hold in America’s cities and towns, while their foothold grows in Congress

America’s new class of socialist leaders is imposing their agendas on some of the nation’s cities, scaring businesses and the wealthy with tax increases while expanding services for the poor and working class, whom they say have long been ignored.

In New York City, sales of luxury apartments priced at $10 million or higher fell after the July 1 implementation of socialist Mayor Zohran Mamdani’s new tax on high-end, non-primary homes.

In Seattle, the city’s biggest employer, Starbucks, laid off workers and announced it was expanding — in Nashville — after Seattle’s socialist mayor, whose campaign was backed by labor unions, joined a Starbucks picket line and called for a boycott of the coffee giant.

Burlington, Vermont, is struggling with a significant and rising homeless population and a spike in crime after imposing a socialist agenda that slashed police funding and boosted free medical care, food and services for drug-addicted people who pitch tents and sleep on the streets or in parks.

There are at least a half-dozen mayors or executives running U.S. cities who are members of the Democratic Socialists of America, which now boasts more than 120,000 members and chapters in all 50 states.

The DSA’s presence in Congress, meanwhile, is expected to more than double next year with the addition of three socialists from New York who won House Democratic primaries in deep-blue districts by beating establishment picks and incumbents.

They will join socialist Reps. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez of New York and Rashida Tlaib of Michigan and Sen. Bernard Sanders of Vermont.

Together, they will form an influential voting bloc in Congress alongside far-left lawmakers, including Sen. Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts, who aren’t official DSA members but embrace socialist policies such as wealth taxes, free child care, free college and federal control over large corporations.

Rep. Gwen Moore, a Wisconsin Democrat who is running against a socialist in the upcoming primary, said many in the Democratic Party, who often identify themselves as “progressives,” want some of the same things as socialists, such as money to help the disabled, the elderly and the poor, and more renewable energy.

The GOP, she said, is using the socialism label to try to scare voters away from Democrats.

“They want to frame all of the safeguards that we have in our capitalist society as socialist. Regulating industries so that they don’t dump poison into the water and the air. They want to call that socialist. To try to have alternative energy sources and to diminish our fossil fuel imprint, they call that socialist. So I think that Democrats have got to stop being shy about that term, which is going to be hurled at us,” Ms. Moore said on C-SPAN.

The DSA’s most prominent elected leader at the moment is Mr. Mamdani, an unabashed socialist who was elected last year in a shocking upset over former Gov. Andrew Cuomo. Mr. Mamdani won by promising free buses, free child care, city-run grocery stores and a rent freeze.

He has fulfilled part of his agenda, with mixed results. His Rent Guidelines Board last month approved a two-year freeze for the city’s approximately 1 million rent-stabilized apartments.

The rent in the city’s 1.3 million non-stabilized apartments, however, hit an all-time high this summer. Critics say part of the reason is that rent-controlled apartments push the cost onto other renters.

“For the units that don’t have rent controls, the landlords have to charge those other people higher rent. So you are just shifting costs,” Chuck Flint, executive director of the conservative-leaning Coalition for Affordability and Prosperity, said on the “Breaking Battlegrounds” podcast.

Mr. Mamdani fulfilled part of another socialist campaign pledge: taxing the rich to pay for new services. He secured a new tax from state lawmakers imposed on expensive New York City residences that are not used as primary homes.

The phased-in tax will likely more than double the property taxes now owed on many luxury apartments. Supporters of the tax say the city had long undervalued and undertaxed these residences.

Mr. Mamdani anticipates the new tax will bring more than $500 million annually and will be used to pay for free child care and other services.

“When I ran for mayor, I said I was going to tax the rich. Well, today, we’re taxing the rich,” Mr. Mamdani announced when Gov. Kathy Hochul unveiled the plan in April.

The new tax took effect on July 1, and, according to Olshan Realty’s Luxury Market Report, only one property priced above $10 million sold the second week in July. The report said it marked “the lowest total” in ultra-high-end sales since the last week in December.

Olshan Realty President Donna Olshan told The Washington Times that it’s too soon to tell if the July sales plunge indicates the new tax, coupled with Mr. Mamdani’s anti-wealth policies, will hurt the luxury real estate market.

She called the new tax “a money-grab wrapped in deep politics,” and said it has created questions and uncertainty about who will be subject to the tax that could spook buyers.

“I don’t think the New York market is in jeopardy, but we’ll see,” Ms. Olshan said. “We’ll just see how far you can push this kind of thing.”

She predicted the tax would at most raise $320 million.

New York City “is spending a lot of money, but they don’t have money coming in,” she said.

Smaller cities are also living under socialist leaders.

The DSA calls Richmond, California, population 115,000, “an epicenter of our fights.”

The city’s mayor is a socialist, and the DSA has endorsed socialist City Council member Claudia Jimenez to succeed him. She earned the most votes in the June primary and will face off against self-described moderate Ahmad Anderson in November.

Richmond has been governed by socialists for years and has implemented a $15 minimum wage, rent control and other provisions with the help of Ms. Jiminez.

She helped secure a $550 million settlement from Chevron, which operates a refinery in Richmond and is the city’s largest taxpayer, by threatening to put a refinery tax on the ballot.

She also secured a ballot initiative that significantly raised taxes on businesses and helped launch the city’s unarmed mobile crisis response unit, known as ROCK, or Reach Out with Compassion and Kindness, to assist police.

Ms. Jiminez, who is a U.S. citizen who immigrated from Colombia, helped pass an ICE-free zone ordinance to respond to U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents who come to the area to round up illegal immigrants. The city law prohibits ICE from using city property and resources for enforcement.

“They are people who are not being trained and are killing our communities,” she said. “People are being murdered by militias, and we need to be prepared.”

Socialist mayors are governing in Irvine, California; Burlington, Vermont; and Seattle, where Mayor Katie Wilson recently laughed off the threat of millionaires fleeing the state due to a new 9.9% wealth tax.

“I think the claims that millionaires are going to leave our state are … super overblown. And if — the ones that leave, like, ‘Bye,’” Ms. Wilson said at a Seattle University event in April.

Her socialist agenda focuses on affordability. It includes building thousands of affordable housing units and new shelters for the homeless, as well as banning junk fees on rental applications.

Fulfilling a campaign promise to improve public transit, she recently signed an executive order to create a dedicated bus lane through one of the city’s most congested routes. The bus lane will narrow car traffic to a single lane. Critics say the change will worsen the gridlock.

Ms. Wilson’s efforts to quickly build affordable housing have fallen short. The city has only managed to build a few dozen “tiny” homes. She also appears to have dropped a proposal for a $1 billion bond that would pay for affordable housing built by union workers.

In a May 11 op-ed in the Wall Street Journal, Howard Schultz, the longtime CEO who now serves as chairman emeritus of Starbucks, blamed Seattle’s new socialist mayor for the decision to shift much of the coffee giant’s corporate operations out of Seattle.

“Seattle’s mayor, Katie Wilson, has chosen to cast business as a foil rather than a partner. Her socialist rhetoric vilifies employers, even while she continues to rely on them for revenue. She has encouraged residents who disagree with her policies to leave,” Mr. Schultz wrote.

Starbucks in April announced plans to build a new hub in Nashville, bringing a $100 million investment to Music City that will employ 2,000 people.

While Nashville will still be Starbucks’ global headquarters, the operation’s center of gravity will be in Nashville.

Some community leaders recently warned that Seattle is increasingly seen as hostile to businesses.

The Downtown Seattle Association issued a report in June warning that the city’s business climate is driving out economic growth, jobs and tax revenue.

Seattle’s downtown vacancy rate has spiked from 6% in 2019 to 32% in 2025. The city has lost businesses to neighboring Bellevue thanks to Seattle’s higher taxes that include a payroll expense tax to fund affordable housing and address climate change and a 5% social housing tax on high earners.

Those taxes came before Ms. Wilson took office. She is now considering expanding the payroll tax or implementing a new capital gains tax to fill a $140 million budget deficit.

She walked back her call for a boycott of Starbucks in a recent interview with the New York Times.

“Those comments were not productive in the sense that they caused more harm than good,” she said.