Are Cadre Candidates all they’re Quacked Up to be?

Guest contributor Vivian G. from Groundwork responds to Geese Magazine’s T.E. Moon on the role of “cadre candidates” in the socialist electoral project.

To the observant consumer of left-wing internet discourse, Geese magazine, with their assembly-line production of daily articles, has become an unavoidable feature of debate. Founded by former cadres of the Communist Party USA, the so-called “Geeseniks” have taken to the Democratic Socialists of America’s internal debates with the zealotry of the convert. Perhaps unexpectedly to some, given their stalwart communist credentials, the publication has extensively centered electoral politics in its writings, commending the DSA for its wins at the ballot box but constantly urging us to do more. As a member of the DSA’s electorally-oriented Groundwork caucus, I have largely been happy with their output, bringing a refreshing mass politics bent to a political discourse dominated by more “skeptical” voices (among them the very publication I am writing for now). Nonetheless, despite my many agreements with Geese, I constantly run up against a fundamental disagreement over the role DSA plays in the struggle for socialism in America.

To me, DSA is the party. It is the only organization able to genuinely compete with the capitalist status quo. While we advocate for organizing the broader working class and mass movements, we cannot lose sight of the fact that our ability to do so comes from our size, organization, and democracy —in a sense, the DSA difference. Geese, on the other hand, is often critical of this perspective, labeling it “organizational chauvinism” or a failed attempt to subordinate the working class to DSA rather than a use of our resources to harness their energy. 

This distinction is perhaps most keenly felt in Geese’s continued encouragement of DSA to endorse left-wing and progressive insurgent candidates everywhere in a strategy of “electoral maximalism.” The logic posits that the US is in a “left-populist” stage of history, one that requires the full force of the left to ignite a mass movement willing and capable of militant action, progressing us towards a new revolutionary era. Critically, however, this movement need not be led by DSA, an organization which some of Geese’s editors seem to see as mere midwives of a revolutionary party. The candidates which Geese has called for DSA to endorse encompass a wide range of ideological credentials, from Los Angeles mayor-elect Nithya Raman to Angie Nixon of Florida.  This has naturally drawn ire from many in the organization — both from those who value ideological purity above all else, and from critics like myself who believe that this overflexibility could have adverse effects on the party-building process.

One of Geese‘s leading voices, T.E. Moon, responded to these critiques in the pages of Geese with their article, “Say the Magic Words: DSA’s Purity Problem Risks Missing the Moment”. This broadside to their critics defended the “electoral maximalist” approach against the “purity testers” in DSA who would use ideological differences to pass up major electoral opportunities for the left. To Geese, it matters less what a candidate says so much as what the act of campaigning does to build up the momentum of left populism. Moon argues that stated positions on Palestine, abolition, or even socialism are mere “magic words” that mean little to anyone outside of the insular DSA subculture.  In doing so, Moon also takes shots at an additional “magic word” which is the staple of the partyist theory of elections— the “cadre candidate.” This term, esoteric to those outside of DSA, is nonetheless core to our entire political strategy and my casus belli for total war on Geese. 

What “Cadre” Means

So what is Geese’s beef with the cadre concept? In short, the term “cadre” is often used as a way of denying the endorsement of non-cadre candidates, arguing that cadres, as a result of coming from within the organization, will be loyal to the cause and our membership. This is exactly the type of “purity testing” Geese fights so hard against. Moon contends that there is no fundamental difference between cadre and non-cadre candidates, that the cadre label is no more than a subcultural signifier and a way of making DSA members feel comforted by a perceived loyalty to the movement. To Moon, DSA members are obsessively scared of “liquidating” into the Democratic Party, and cadres are nothing more than saccharine words to allow members to swallow the medicine of voting on the Democratic ballot line. 

Moon is unconvinced by arguments that cadres will govern or legislate along DSA lines, pointing to New York City cadre-mayor Zohran Mamdani’s weak record on DSA’s abolitionist and anti-Zionist line. Similarly, they don’t buy the argument that we are maintaining ideological discipline by supporting cadre candidates. DSA does not have a monopoly on the term “democratic socialism,” and indeed the term has left containment. Millions of Americans are enamored with the concept of democratic socialism without any particular attachment to DSA as an organization. 

I understand this frustration with the cadre strategy, particularly if it is implemented in a self-defeating direction that removes the possibility of outside endorsements. But still, Moon misses the forest for the trees in his complete dismissal of the cadres as a “trap,” ignoring the tangible utility they bring to DSA’s wider political project. To my mind, the cadre candidate, while not a panacea, represents the ideal of what DSA should strive for in its electoral campaigns and we should work to emphasize them as much as possible. Despite their objective limitations, they nonetheless help lay the groundwork for a party that has a real chance to overthrow the current order of things.

Purity Politics?

Perhaps the most common critique of the cadre candidate is that coming from within DSA does not guarantee good politics or organizational loyalty once elected. Whether through a change of heart, opportunism, or the moderating forces of governance, many a Socialist In Office has broken from the organization on policy and messaging. The poster child for this type of “betrayal” is, of course, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, who, despite coming from a grassroots, DSA-led campaign,  has distanced herself from the organization. Nonetheless, an argument could be made that AOC came from a time when DSA’s electoral project was far less developed, before the hegemonic rise of the “cadre concept” and Socialists In Office Committees. More pertinent is the case of Zohran, whom Geese rightly labels as an ideal cadre, a longtime organizer in DSA and someone whose political career was truly made by the organization. Nonetheless, Zohran has occasionally broken with DSA, particularly on issues such as policing, while cozying up to establishment Democrats like Hakeem Jeffries in his speakership bid. Moon implies that these cases prove the “cadre” label is essentially a meaningless signifier rather than a true guarantor of good politics. 

While I would agree that the cadre label is not a guarantee of someone following the party line on our positions or backing the organization to the hilt, as politicians have shown again and again, this seems to be a difficult standard for any politician in the current moment. Upon being elected, politicians are subject to a series of forces and influences that naturally push them away from absolute adherence to DSA. This is a fundamental problem for socialist electoral strategy, but as Moon would almost certainly agree, it is one to be confronted rather than run away from. 

I would contend that while the cadre strategy does not solve this problem, it has been shown to mitigate it. Take Zohran, for example: while he has no doubt been weaker on abolition than we would like, he has nonetheless carried out a popular program on housing, labor, and many other issues often taken directly from the DSA playbook. And while it’s true he has worked with the Democratic Party leadership, he also backed a slate of DSA candidates in the 2026 primaries directly against both the establishment and the progressive institutional opposition. These moves are not a coincidence and are reflective of the fact that candidates coming from within the DSA tend to, perhaps unsurprisingly, hold a politics and ethos more aligned with DSA. It is natural that even if he may diverge from the organization on certain issues, someone who has organized and worked within DSA for years would generally tend to govern more alongside us rather than the alternative. This is not to say we cannot find cadre candidates who turn out completely bad, or outsiders who can become our most loyal soldiers, but instead that on average, cadre candidates tend to perform better on the metrics we are looking for from a socialist candidate. 

It is also useful to consider what alternatives to the cadre system can yield. While no DSA chapter endorsed John Fetterman in his 2022 Senate race, his campaign was inescapable in leftist discourse. Indeed, while Geese did not exist at the time, he in many ways reflected a true Geese-style “class-struggle” candidate. Coming from a working-class background with a huge grassroots base and struggled against a fascist MAGA goon in the form of Dr. Oz. The left generally was behind this hoodied populist, and his eventual victory was seen as a triumph for the left amid the dark years of Brandon. Nonetheless, Fetterman has since proved to be one of the most right-wing members of the Democratic caucus, providing unconditional support to Israel and occasionally cheerleading the very MAGA movement he was elected against. 

One could, of course, argue that we were bamboozled, and this is evidently true, but I would put money on a cadre candidate being highly unlikely to make betrayals of this magnitude. It’s hardly a surprise that politics in general attracts opportunists, egomaniacs, or liars. Populist politics, in some ways, can magnify these effects. Lacking the traditional screening barriers of establishment politics, a populist insurgent is much more likely to be a wild card. Sometimes this wild card can come up in our favor, like the case of Abdul El-Sayed, who seems to be a good-faith left populist. But we should also consider the Graham Platner example. Platner’s lack of existing scrutiny meant that his politics, background, and character were complete unknowns, leading to the circumstances which brought down his entire campaign. The democratic, participatory structures of an organization like DSA are necessarily going to filter out all but the most competent of charlatans. 

The Party Needs Bouncers

Of course, it is not just an individual’s politics at stake with an endorsement, it is also the health of the organization as a whole. One of my primary critiques of Geese‘s position on endorsements and how we interface with politics as a whole is a seemingly one-sided approach to our endorsement process, where the organization considers endorsements in a vacuum with the candidate being none the wiser. This may have been the case when DSA was of comparable size and influence to our sectarian rivals, but not anymore. The DSA endorsement increasingly carries significant weight not just in terms of name, but in the growing army of canvassers and social media boosters we carry. Politicians are taking notice. 

Candidates want what DSA can offer them, and they are willing to make significant efforts to lobby chapters into supporting their campaigns. If you ask any longtime veterans in your local DSA chapter, you are sure to learn of numerous cranks and opportunists who have sought endorsements for their quixotic campaigns with mixed results. Nonetheless, these candidates often try to actively intervene in the chapter’s internal political situation in order to boost their chances of getting an endorsement.

As figures with access to resources and inherent luster of running for office, candidates often have an outsize influence in this sort of maneuvering. Local political factions are eager to latch onto an important figure to boost their own prospects or are simply awed by the attention of someone important, sometimes irrespective of ideological disagreements. It’s not unknown for the most radical of DSA ultraleftists to cozy up to liberal outsider candidates just because they were given the time of day. This type of strategy can serve to heighten internal political divisions in chapters, and these candidates are often completely aware of the way they can use internal factionalism to their advantage. 

While this phenomenon was already problematic on a small scale, the danger has only magnified as DSA has gained prominence and accompanying resources. Imagine candidates with real money and resources essentially trying to form political constituencies within DSA for their own benefit, or worse, outside organizations doing this. The progressive wing of the Democratic Party, with its army of nonprofits, could very well attempt to use its substantial resources to lobby chapters into supporting their political agenda. 

While the cadre strategy is no antidote to this problem, it does hold potential antibodies. By creating a culture that prioritizes cadre candidates, we can put a higher barrier to entry for those who are seeking an endorsement. It is much harder to influence an endorsement process if the general expectation is that you yourself organize within the general fabric of a chapter outside of simply promoting one’s own campaign. More importantly, however, it prioritizes candidates who are not career politicians, and instead centers the ordinary workers and organizers that make up DSA. 

DSA as an Electoral Pipeline

Another central problem with Moon’s dismissive attitude towards the cadre strategy is that it views the prioritization of cadre candidates as exclusively an argument against endorsing particular non-DSA candidates. Indeed, this is often how the concept is deployed. However, to my mind, the more important aspect of the cadre strategy is not those it denies DSA support, but instead who it enables to run for office. 

Running for office is an exceedingly difficult task, one that naturally filters out working-class people for any number of reasons. This includes a lack of resources, education, or simply buying into the unspoken mentality that politics is not the realm of the working class. On the other hand, many of those candidates whom Geese has positioned as tribunes of proletarian electoral power come from the same pipelines as the majority of the political establishment: well-educated career nonprofit bureaucrats, small business owners, or well-positioned professionals. While is not necessarily an inherent problem, a key part of our strategy as socialists should be to show working people that they have political weight and social power. 

In this way, the cadre approach can act not as a barrier, but a door to working-class power. Cadre candidates tend to be longtime organizers within DSA, coming from everyday backgrounds like union workers, teachers, and grad students— those who experience the everyday struggle that we center in our politics. It creates a pipeline by which an organizer from any background can enter the halls of power and fight on behalf of their class. If we are to build up a bloc of socialist electeds, it is essential that we are not forced to simply rely on whatever progressive comes passing around the hat. Instead, we need to show that everyday people can take power for themselves.  

Laying the Groundwork

DSA does not just provide the confidence for these cadres; it also provides the resources for them to win. This infrastructure does not come from nowhere: the expertise, the list-building, the webs of donors, all built over the course of years. Fortunately, the cadre campaign itself begets these tools. A key benefit of running a DSA-first campaign is that DSA gets to control how that campaign is run. Cadre candidates tend to prioritize the hiring and recruitment of DSA staff and volunteers, allowing them to develop valuable knowledge and expertise. 

Through this strategy, we can build up a body of institutional knowledge that can be used for future campaigns, embed DSA cadres in staff once elected officials take power, and help create the next generation of cadres. Many of DSA’s most successful candidates, including Zohran, worked on the campaigns of their forebears. Moreover, in many cases, DSA members will be running the canvassing operations and collecting troves of data on voters and households. Even a failed campaign can help pinpoint areas of concentrated support for future campaigns. Events can be cohosted with DSA to bring in additional members to the organization itself, with the campaign training new layers of DSA organizers and leaders. While many of these opportunities can come from supporting outside campaigns, they are less likely to center DSA in the same way that a cadre campaign would. DSA is often simply a partner, sometimes among many, rather than the prime mover. This forces us to negotiate for space in a wider coalition, often at a real political cost.  

Although nearly all electoral campaigns are a net benefit to DSA, cadre campaigns simply allow us to collect a greater share of the spoils, to further bolster the organization for its next battle. To be frank, I trust DSA more than any other organization to use those resources to the best of its ability. The mosaic of nonprofits that litter the progressive political landscape does not move like DSA moves. They are often undemocratic, beholden to outside donors, and, perhaps most critically — not socialists!

Cadre Begets Cadre

DSA has proven time and again to be the only major left-wing organization in the 21st century to have an inkling of a hope of mobilizing a true mass movement that can challenge capital in the United States. I am in DSA, not because it is a good place to organize, but because I genuinely believe that it is the larval form of a left-labor party in America. It is composed of over a hundred thousand working-class people tirelessly working to achieve socialism. I support the cadre strategy because I believe it gives us the best shot at making that vision a reality. While outside left-populist candidates can be critical in this cause, they are not a sustainable path to building a party. We can’t rely on candidates coming to us for support, or chasing after those who don’t; we need to create those candidates ourselves. 

For now, many chapters can’t run cadre candidates or are presented with opportunities they can’t turn down. If the membership decides to support these races and they can be used to advance the organization, I would encourage them to do so. However, I want to build a future where these types of concessions are unnecessary. A future where any DSA member can run for office, where every legislature has blocs of elected officials who are DSA first, where every DSA candidate is a cadre candidate. The only way to get there is to put one foot in front of the other and start running!