Brief overview

A candidate no one had heard of entered a statewide race no one really knew about and ended up with more than half a million votes. Oliver Ma’s campaign for Lieutenant Governor was California DSA’s first statewide candidate race and will not be the last. 

Across the board, people were excited about Oliver and about his platform, too [see accompanying article with chapter campaign reports]. Affordable housing, free healthcare, abolishing ICE, ending the genocide in Palestine—a platform familiar to us as socialists, but one that many voters are just now warming up to.

This race was a familiar story: we were up against long-serving politicians and candidates with deep pockets; we needed a mass movement of organized people to challenge that. 

With the support of DSA members, DSA chapters, and committed volunteers, this campaign showed that California voters, more than 620,000 of them, are supportive of Democratic Socialism and are ready for change. 

Lessons Learned

Going viral on social media is not enough to win elections, but it can be an extremely valuable tool when used intentionally. 

You may have seen Oliver on TikTok, Instagram, or even on one of your favorite streams talking boldly about Democratic Socialism and the importance of building a government that works for people, not corporations. Nearly every single volunteer I met or leader I trained certainly told me they had seen him online. And, of those people, many told me this was their very first time engaging politically. These volunteers helped us reach out to hundreds of thousands of voters across the state and they might not have ever even known about this race if it wasn’t for social media.

Motivating someone to turn out and vote, especially if they do not usually vote or if they feel abandoned by the current government, is often a more challenging task. It requires more than just seeing a few cool videos on the feed, so you can’t count only on social media if you want to build power (and win). Ultimately it was the conversations we had with voters in their communities, and on their phones, about the issues that matter most to them. Of course, those conversations are much easier if they have seen your candidate on social media before, but that alone is not enou

The things we are fighting for as socialists are broadly popular, even if the term “socialism” is not. We talked to voters all across the state in all different communities, but we so often heard the same issues coming up. Housing costs are rising. Healthcare is unaffordable. Everything is unaffordable. People should be safe in their neighborhoods, at home and abroad. What we have going now really isn’t working for working people. 

This gave us the chance to talk about how corporations and billionaires are often at the root of all these issues—and then about how Oliver was going to use the powers of this office to improve conditions for working people and tackle the issues impacting their daily life.

As socialists, we can diagnose that capitalism is broadly at the crux of nearly every problem, but it’s not always easy to have that conversation.

Running candidates who are Democratic Socialists allows us to talk about these broadly popular ideas. Then electing those candidates to positions of leadership, and power, can fundamentally change the lives of the working people in the communities they serve.

Mayor Zohran Mamdani’s New York is proof that it is possible, and those wins on the east coast have reverberated across the country. 

When voters saw “DEMOCRATIC SOCIALIST”at the top of Oliver’s literature they often asked us, “Like Zohran?”. This easily opened the door for us to have a conversation about DSA and socialism that might have been more challenging or less explicit otherwise. If voters didn’t know Zohran, or even if they were not sure about the whole DSA thing, we were still able to have those important conversations with them about their struggles and our common enemies. 

We might not have ever had these conversations with our community members if we did not show up in their neighborhood to knock on their door and talk about this election and this candidate.

The time to prepare for the next election cycle is now

Building and refining chapter infrastructure and process takes time, but time is always of the essence during an election year. Start having conversations now about your chapter’s endorsement timeline, process, and electoral program. Consider what it would take not only to endorse a candidate, but also to win. Does your chapter have tools you need? Do your members have the skills they need? If not, what can you do now to be prepared for the next electoral cycle? 

Socialism continues to gain momentum. We have the opportunity to build power for working people at the local and federal level; but it will take an organized mass movement to win.

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California Red asked several chapters to assess their participation in the Oliver Ma campaign for Lieutenant Governor, California DSA’s first foray into a state constitutional officer race. Their responses give us snapshots of the challenges and gains experienced in emerging chapter electoral structures at a time of rapid membership growth and new leader development. 

Inland Empire

The Inland Empire chapter of the Democratic Socialists of America’s electoral committee had not been active for nearly three years, but the energy and the excitement that brought in a flood of new members eager to reproduce the work done in New York needed to materialize here in our chapter. Thus arose from the collective imagination of our membership a yearning, an ambition, a dream—to build something, as workers have done throughout time immemorial, building a machine… the canvassing machine.

The canvassing machine became a collective project and an inside joke that inspired our membership to think of the endeavor as something we were building and refining through grass roots organizing. In total we knocked over 600 doors in Perris and Riverside. 

Overall, the campaign was a success for our chapter. Although we fell short on Election Day, the campaign gave our relatively new Electoral Committee invaluable experience running a serious electoral effort alongside a strong democratic socialist candidate. Members were highly engaged throughout the campaign, gaining practical organizing experience through canvassing, phone banking, and having meaningful conversations with voters about the issues and our vision for the community. Those experiences strengthened both our members' skills and our chapter's capacity to run future campaigns.

The campaign also highlighted several important areas for growth. We learned the importance of beginning our organizing earlier, establishing clear leadership roles, and building stronger campaign infrastructure from the outset. These are foundational lessons that will make our future electoral work more organized, efficient, and effective.

Perhaps most importantly, the campaign helped grow our chapter. We recruited new members directly at our canvass launch locations, and many people were motivated to get involved after seeing a local DSA chapter actively supporting a viable democratic socialist campaign. While Oliver did not win the election, the campaign was far from a loss. It strengthened our chapter, developed new organizers, expanded our active membership, and left us better prepared to run even stronger campaigns in the future. 

Said one Inland Empire member, Crystal: “Canvassing for Oliver Ma was heartwarming. It was a unique experience in that the candidate we canvassed for actually came out to knock doors with the people! Amidst the backdrop of an otherwise fascistic and suffocating reality, there are people willing to commit their hearts and time for humanity. It’s a beautiful thing to see.”

Long Beach

DSA-LB is proud to have endorsed Oliver Ma for Lieutenant Governor and campaigned for his candidacy in Long Beach. The June 2026 primary marked our chapter's first statewide endorsement, first Voter Guide, and our Electoral Politics Committee's first significant experience with electoral campaigning, canvassing and phone banking. Although Oliver's election outcome wasn't what we had hoped for, campaigning for Oliver significantly boosted our chapter's electoral politics skills, which we are carrying forward into the November election. DSA-LB is now campaigning for the Billionaire Tax initiative; we have built a Billionaire Tax Now ("BTN") Working Group and are putting the skills we honed for Oliver into action for BTN and future campaigns. We're grateful to Oliver for running and can't wait to see what all of us in California DSA do next. 

Orange County

Oliver Ma’s campaign came at a time when our chapter was rebuilding our electoral committee from the ground up. When we held the candidate endorsement forum for Oliver, we saw new faces excited to ask questions of a candidate they completely aligned with. One of the campaign’s strengths that we really benefited from was its goal to recruit new DSA members and engage them in electoral work. Through the campaign, we not only grew our electoral committee, but the chapter as a whole and new leaders began to emerge. The campaign provided the tools for many of us to learn how to canvass and phone bank and many members who had never knocked on doors for a candidate before participated in canvassing. Oliver’s mission and his platform made it easy to talk to voters in our community, and we started to have hope that California could be a place where massive change could take place.

Kern County

One of our biggest lessons from this election was simple: be early.

If possible, avoid entering an election cycle while still in Organizing Status. By the time we were ready to engage seriously, other organizations had already endorsed candidates, including candidates we believed offered less to the working class than Oliver. Many of our members and the broader activist community were also already committed to other campaigns. 

Kern County also needed to start earlier and organize more intentionally around the campaign. As campaign captain, I did not do enough to build internal enthusiasm, recruit volunteers, and turn an endorsement into sustained member participation.

At the same time, we were trying to bootstrap an electoral operation while still building the chapter itself. We were developing structures, relationships, and organizing capacity in real time.

Those are growing pains, but they are also lessons. Endorse early. Organize early. Assign clear responsibility. 

For us, an endorsement is not an aspirational checking a box, but a mandate to put momentum behind what we believe in.

Contributors:

Odeh G. and Lawrence C. are members of Inland Empire DSA. Odeh is chapter co-chair.

Sidra G. is a member of DSA Long Beach Electoral Politics Committee and serves as Communications Coordinator of the Chapter.

Kathryn M. is an At-Large member of the Orange County DSA Steering Committee.

Robert F. is on the Kern chapter Steering Committee.

Jack R. provided editorial support.

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On April 19th, Lyle Prijoles, a long-time Bay Area organizer and SFSU alum, was killed by the Armed Force of the Philippines (AFP), in Toboso, Negros Occidental, Philippines. The AFP displaced hundreds in Negros and massacred eighteen others, including a fellow Filipino American organizer from Washington, Kai Sorem, and Filipino journalists, students, organizers and youth, many of whom were in Negros to report on state repression and the plight of peasants in the area. DSA SF is heartbroken and enraged by these murders, by the loss of a dedicated comrade and member of our community, by the continued exploitation of and violence against the indigenous people of Negros, and by all of the horrors that imperialism continues to inflict on workers across the globe.

DSA SF recognizes that Lyle’s work selflessly organizing for the oppressed in the Philippines and for the restriction of US funding for the AFP exemplifies our positions advocating for the end of imperialism and for the rights of the working class to build a better world. We recommend reading more about his work and life in this statement by the International Coalition for Human Rights in the Philippines (ICHRP). 

The United States has not only been a major source of funding for the AFP across multiple administrations, but also regularly performs military exercises with them. The largest of these, the annual Balikatan, took place from April 20th until May 8th this year, immediately after the AFP murdered Lyle. While the US has an endless supply of tax dollars for foreign militaries like the AFP or IDF, even as these forces kill Americans and terrorize poor, innocent people without any recourse, our government has little to offer those of us here at home needing housing, food, healthcare, or education. This is not a mistake; we exist in a system of capitalist exploitation that depends on the continuation and escalation of this existing arrangement, reliant on the ability of the US and its allies to kill whomever they so desire. Without this ability, the US would be unable to continue its project of imperialist resource extraction in the Philippines and elsewhere, and the benefits for the corporate class – lower costs, higher growth, and increased profit – would cease.

DSA SF echos ICHRP’s demands to:

1. Hold an immediate and independent investigation into the AFP’s massacre on April 19th in Negros Occidental;
2. End U.S. support and funding for the Marcos Jr. administration, as well as U.S. military aid to the Philippines.

You can sign a petition to amplify these demands to the U.S. State Dept. & U.S. Embassy in the Philippines at https://tinyurl.com/negros19-petition.

We stand in solidarity with our kasama from the Bay Area to the Philippines in the continuation of this 400-year struggle of the oppressed against the land-owner and slaver class. We also call on those interested to attend upcoming actions in solidarity with Lyle, the Negros 19, and everyone continuing to suffer under this imperialist regime. You can find more information here:

https://www.instagram.com/defendnegros.norcal

We often say that a better world is possible. Lyle lived this ethos through his actions, through his tireless resistance, organization, and dedication to the most oppressed. May his memory and the memories of all those who stand against oppression be a reminder and inspiration for us all. 

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