Southern Queer Newsroom
Liberals, progressives, and socialists won some incredible victories in the 2025 off-year elections. Usually off-year elections—those in between a presidential election year and a midterm election year—get much lower turnout. This time, records were broken all across the country, and a very clear message was sent to conservatives about how deeply angry people are.
The focus of much of the nation's attention has been on the New York City mayoral race, where in the face of millions of dollars of opposition donations and a Cuomo endorsement from the president himself, democratic socialist Zohran Mamdani won a clean majority. Mamdani has never shied away from talking about Islamophobia, antisemitism, bigotry against immigrants, or transphobia during his campaign and has been a staunch ally even before he was well known. Whether it was attending a rally for trans youth or declaring NYC would be a sanctuary city for trans people in an ad honoring Sylvia Rivera, it's very clear that New York City will remain a beacon for trans rights throughout the country.
Off-year governor's races also punted anti-trans bigotry to the curb. In New Jersey, pro-trans Democrat Mikie Sherrill trounced Republican Jack Ciattarelli by 13 percentage points. Spanberger in Virginia won by 14.8%. Both conservatives tried and failed to make trans rights as losing issue for Democrats – a significant repudiation of centrist, careerist consultants. California's Prop 50 passed easily, inevitably kicking several anti-LGBTQ+ Republicans out of Congress.
Closer to home, Georgia voters swung hard to the left. Public Service Commission candidates Peter Hubbard and Dr. Alicia Johnson smashed all expectations and won with 63% of the vote for their seats. Sam Foster, a DSA member, came within less than 300 votes of ousting the incumbent mayor of Marietta, Cobb County, who had previously vetoed a Juneteenth resolution. Progressive Atlanta School Board candidates Royce Mann and Patreece Hutcherson are heading to runoffs, as is city council candidate Nate Jester, and Working Families Party endorsee Rohit Malhotra narrowly lost his bid for Atlanta City Council President against a wealthy Atlanta Way incumbent.
In some of the best news of the night for progressives and socialists, Kelsea Bond, a nonbinary democratic socialist and longtime Atlanta DSA member, utterly smashed their conservative big money opponents in Atlanta City Council District 2, with a commanding 64 percent lead. A Working Families Party and National DSA endorsee, they ran an incredible ground campaign, knocking thousands of doors in the weekend leading up to Election Day, and campaigning heavily on affordable housing and green transit, including Beltline Rail. Bond's win marks a second nonbinary person on Atlanta City Council and another vote to hold the city accountable for Cop City.
Democratic socialist candidates fared very well across the board. According to the DSA National Electoral Committee, two socialists won seats on the Minneapolis City Council, Denzel McCampbell won his race for Detroit City Council, and socialists won races in Metro DC and Ithaca, NY. Two races for Minneapolis Parks and Recreation Board have yet to be called along with the Renton and Tacoma city councils, and two seats on the Jersey City Council are going to runoffs. These counts are current as of 2:16 PM on November 5. Overall, 12 socialists have won outright, 7 are still being decided or are going to a runoff, and 4 have lost, including Minneapolis mayoral candidate Omar Fateh.
I have talked before about how difficult this year has been for transgender Americans like myself. With results like this, there is far more reason to hope for a better future than we previously feared.