Two Democrats in Congress who flipped Republican-held seats in 2024 plan to debut a pledge for their party’s candidates that acts as a rallying cry for centrists, calling for a “politics of persuasion over purity” and declaring that “we are capitalist, not socialist.”
The pledge is a direct rebuke to the party’s leftward tilt as democratic socialists such as New York Mayor Zohran Mamdani and Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vermont) capture the party’s energy and activism.
Rep. Tom Suozzi (D-New York) and Rep. Adam Gray (D-California) said they will announce the pledge Wednesday afternoon at the center-left conference WelcomeFest, and hope to get candidates up and down the ballot to join them in signing it. As Democrats wrestle with their identity heading into the midterms and 2028 presidential race, the effort marks moderates’ latest bid to assert themselves.
Their push could face skepticism in the party. Self-described democratic socialists such as Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-New York) and Sanders have wielded significant influence with the base and gained traction last year with Mamdani’s upset victory. Suozzi, a Long Island moderate especially critical of the New York mayor, acknowledged in an interview that the Mamdani wing of the party has been “very well organized.”
But Suozzi and Gray argue that their message has broader appeal, and some Democrats worry the left flank of the party becomes a political liability in the battleground races that decide control outside blue strongholds. Suozzi and Gray flipped GOP-held districts that Trump won in 2024.
“A lot of the movements now between, you know, democratic socialists or MAGA, are playing into people’s frustrations, and they’re identifying, correctly, people’s economic insecurity … [saying] we’re going to tear down the whole system,” Suozzi said. “And I don’t think that’s the answer.”
“We need to build an organization that will be equally effective,” Suozzi said.
The pledge originated with a newly formed centrist group called Promise to America. Felix Frisch, the 20-year-old director, worked on the campaigns of his father, Adam Frisch, a Democrat who came close to unseating Rep. Lauren Boebert (R-Colorado) in a red-leaning district in 2022.
“I was shocked at the gap between the lessons that I learned … and the unwillingness to listen to leaders like Rep. Gray and Rep. Suozzi who actually win,” Felix Frisch said.
Frisch said he began working on the pledge with several other young people “frustrated with the Democratic Party and where it was going” and then approached Suozzi and Gray about it.
Many elements of the pledge are broadly echoed by Democratic leaders. It asks candidates to affirm that they “want safety, not lawlessness” and an “orderly immigration system”; many Democrats tried to send a similar message as Republicans criticized an influx of undocumented immigrants under President Joe Biden and accused them of being soft on crime.
But parts of the document could be polarizing on the left. It says the signatories are “proud, not ashamed of America,” drawing a contrast with some others’ rhetoric. And it calls for “persuasion over purity, contempt, and cultural division,” a rebuke the lawmakers said is aimed at both parties.
“We’ve let the loudest voices be the folks with the most extreme positions on both sides,” said Gray, lamenting that many voters “feel abandoned by both.”
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