Democrat warns US progressives against moving toward the center: ‘It lost me the election'

The Guardian

a day ago

India Walton has a warning message for progressive Democrats during Donald Trump's second presidency: don't water down your politics to win over the establishment.
The Democratic socialist who stunned the Democratic establishment by defeating a four-term incumbent mayor in Buffalo, New York's 2021 primary believes moderating her leftwing message cost her the general election. It's a lesson that carries new weight now that Zohran Mamdani secured his own victory in New York City's Democratic mayoral primary earlier in the summer and inspired thousands of other progressive candidates to also run for office.
After disrupting the political base in the US by beating incumbent mayor Byron Brown in Buffalo's Democratic primary, she says she pivoted toward the center – and lost.
'Moderating is what got us here,' said Walton, now a senior strategist at RootsAction, referring to Donald Trump's return to the White House. 'I believe that moderating is what lost me ultimately the election in 2021.'
'I pivoted fairly quickly … to try and integrate myself into the party, because I thought that was the way to build a broad based coalition,' she reflected. 'It sort of ate away from our message from the inside out.'
After initially opposing charter schools in the primary to win the Buffalo Teachers Federation endorsement, Walton later told business leaders she supported 'school choice' – and lost the union's backing for the general election as a result. She also distanced herself from the 'defund the police' movement.
Shortly after Walton won the primary that year, the establishment and investor-aligned Brown mounted an unorthodox write-in campaign and won, even though his race was marked by possible campaign finance violations including receiving contributions from real estate corporations in defiance of election law.. Brown, an ally of New York governor Andrew Cuomo and a former New York Democratic party chair, would step down in 2024 to serve as president and CEO of a western New York off-track betting company.
But in 2021, there was widespread fear over Walton's socialist tendencies, with the city even researching whether or not it should entirely abandon its mayoral system over her primary win.
These days, Walton argues Democrats lost working-class voters by abandoning populist economics. 'I think a part of the reason how we got a second Donald Trump presidency is that the Democrats have not had a message that appeals to working-class and poor people.'
The establishment resists such policies because they're 'beholden to corporations and billionaires', she added. 'It's not the message they want to hear, but it is the message that is resonant with the voters.'
Walton's analysis runs counter to some Democratic strategists who argue the party moved too far left after 2024's losses. One post-mortem survey by the Progressive Policy Institute showed 68% of working-class voters believed the Democratic party had embraced overly progressive positions. Soon after Trump's election win and swing state sweep, New York Times columnist Ezra Klein argued that the Biden-era Democratic Party reflected 'a culture in which nobody is saying no to the groups at any level of American Democratic politics'.
Yet last year, progressive ballot measures thrived even as Democratic candidates struggled. Voters across the country approved minimum wage increases, paid leave expansions, and other progressive economic policies, with red states embracing progressive measures even while supporting Trump, like Missouri where voters passed a $15 minimum wage and paid sick leave, or Nebraska where voters approved guaranteed paid time off. A July 2025 poll by Democratic pollster Celinda Lake for progressive network Way to Win found that Democratic voters who skipped 2024 want candidates more like independent Vermont senator Bernie Sanders and New York member of congress Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, suggesting the party's problem may be insufficient progressivism rather than too much.
One example Walton pointed to was the debate on 'defund the police' that did damage to many progressive and centrist campaigns. The real message, which Walton said had been distorted, was about shifting police funding toward social services and mental health care.
The slogan ultimately became a political liability. In 2020, centrist Democrats warned it had cost them over a dozen swing district House seats after Joe Biden's presidential win and in Minneapolis, voters rejected a measure to overhaul policing even after George Floyd's murder. In a pre-Mamdani New York City, Eric Adams ran explicitly against 'defund the police' and won.
Now Mamdani – a democratic socialist assemblyman who defeated former governor Andrew Cuomo with 56% in the final ranked-choice count – has given progressives fresh momentum all over again. His victory generated immediate enthusiasm, with Run for Something, a progressive group that urges young candidates to seek public office, noting that 10,000 people nationwide signed up to pursue public office within two weeks of his win.
Walton sees opportunity in younger voters who don't follow traditional political voting patterns. 'Millennials are the first generation who are not becoming more conservative as they age.'
Her advice to progressive candidates is simple: resist the pressure to compromise.
'People hear hope in 'we're going to prioritize working-class people',' she said. 'People hear hope in 'I'm not going to capitulate to the establishment and negotiate all of our power that we've built'. This is the right time.'