Politics

Chicago’s Democratic Socialists Back 2 City Council Challengers, While Declining to Endorse 2 Incumbents

Two Chicago City Council hopefuls have won the backing of the Chicago chapter of the Democratic Socialists of America — but the expanding organization declined to endorse two incumbents in other races, a decision that could complicate efforts by the group to capitalize on the growing popularity of socialist candidates.

Chicago DSA backed four current members of the Chicago City Council, who are running for new four-year terms: Alds. Byron Sigcho Lopez (25th Ward), Rossana Rodriguez Sanchez (33rd Ward), Anthony Quezada (35th Ward) and Angela Clay (46th Ward).

Quezada was appointed to replace former Ald. Carlos Ramirez-Rosa, who stepped down to become the superintendent of the Chicago Park District, and is seeking his first full term on the City Council.

However, the group narrowly declined to endorse Ald. Daniel La Spata (1st Ward) because he would not tell the group he considers himself an anti-Zionist, sources told WTTW News.

And Chicago DSA did not endorse Ald. Jeanette Taylor (20th Ward) because she supported reversing a 2023 City Council vote to phase out the tipped minimum wage and voted against spending millions of Chicago taxpayer dollars to care for the migrants who made their way to Chicago between 2022 and 2024, Taylor said.

However, the group backed Kalen Luciano, who is running to unseat Ald. Bennett Lawson, whose 44th Ward includes Lakeview, and Raheem Uqdah, who is challenging Ald. Pat Dowell, who has represented Bronzeville in the 3rd Ward since 2007.

Deana Corbitt, Chicago DSA’s co-chair, told WTTW News that the group’s decision not to endorse La Spata and Taylor was not a condemnation of their two terms on the City Council but a reflection that all endorsements require a two-thirds majority vote of members.

“We hope both will be reelected,” Corbitt said, adding that the group will consider endorsing in two more races after candidates qualify for the ballot in late October. “We have our work cut out for us.”

La Spata, who declined to comment to WTTW News about the group’s decision not to endorse his bid for reelection, fell two votes short of securing the group’s backing, according to sources familiar with the Aug. 9 vote.

In a questionnaire that all candidates who sought Chicago DSA’s endorsement were required to fill out, La Spata indicated that he did not consider himself anti-Zionist. The group had a similar question on its 2025 candidate questionnaire, records show.

That question risks “fueling anti-Jewish sentiment, harassment, and, ultimately, violence against Chicago’s Jewish community,” said Rebecca Weininger, senior regional director of the Anti-Defamation League, a group dedicated to fighting antisemitism.

“Requiring anti-Zionist positioning as a prerequisite for public office is antisemitism,” according to a statement from the group. “The impact is the normalization of the exclusion of Jews, not only from government but from all spaces.”

In 2025, 88% of all hate crimes motivated by religion were committed against Jewish Chicagoans, according to Chicago Police Department data. However, the number of hate crimes committed against Jewish Chicagoans dropped 40% in 2025 after surging in 2024.

On Oct. 7, 2023, the terrorist group Hamas attacked Israel, killing more than 1,300 Israeli civilians and soldiers and taking more than 100 people hostage. The attack prompted Israel to launch a full-scale retaliatory bombing campaign and invasion of the Gaza Strip, triggering widespread condemnation. The war displaced most of Gaza’s 2 million residents and 73,000 Palestinians have been killed, according to Gaza’s Health Ministry, as a tenuous ceasefire is in place.  

Less than a week after the attack, the City Council voted to condemn the violence, with only Rodriguez Sanchez voting no, after her colleagues refused to include a condemnation of “the history of oppression, occupation and violence that Palestinians have endured” in that resolution.

La Spata was one of the lead sponsors of a resolution calling for a ceasefire in the Gaza War, which passed after Mayor Brandon Johnson broke a tie vote.

Johnson was the first mayor of a large American city to call for a ceasefire in Gaza.

Corbitt said anti-Zionism and support for a free Palestine and the right of Palestinian refugees to return to their homes in what is now Israel is a key part of the group’s platform and integral to its values.

Johnson, who is not a member of Chicago DSA and was not endorsed by the group in 2023, created a Jewish Engagement Council in June to tackle hate crimes and hate incidents against Jewish Chicagoans.

Taylor said the lack of an endorsement from the group was no great loss as she runs for what she said will be her final term on the City Council. Chicago DSA leaders failed to support her during the last year, she added.

“I’m not interested in being part of an organization that is anti-Black,” Taylor told WTTW News.

Taylor said Chicago DSA has too few Black members in a city where the population is nearly one-third Black, and the group’s decision not to endorse former Vice President Kamala Harris in the 2024 presidential election helped President Donald Trump win a second term in the White House.

“I’m still a socialist,” said Taylor, one of two Black socialists to serve on the City Council. “They don’t get to take that away from me.”

Corbitt said she was “disappointed” to hear that Taylor believes Chicago DSA to be “anti-Black.”

“We take these sort of concerns seriously,” Corbitt said. “We are an anti-racist organization.”

Taylor said the votes that cost her the Chicago DSA endorsement “were not easy” and faulted the organization for not allowing her to defend her decisions.

When Taylor voted in favor of spending $51 million to care for the migrants in May 2023, she was called a “sellout” and a “traitor” by members of the public.

Taylor vigorously opposed plans crafted by former Mayor Lori Lightfoot to transform a shuttered school in Woodlawn into a shelter for migrants, saying officials had not consulted with her community and had picked a bad location.

“Saying ‘no’ doesn’t mean that I want to hurt migrant families,” Taylor said, weeping, in May 2023. “Voting ‘yes’ doesn’t mean I don’t care about Black Chicagoans. If my yes vote bothers you, then so be it. Because hurt people don’t hurt people.”

The arrival of the migrants strained the city’s social safety net, ballooned the city’s budget shortfall and exacerbated tension between Chicago’s Black and Latino communities.

The city and state’s concerted effort to care for the people they called “new arrivals” by providing temporary shelter and rental assistance infuriated a wide swath of Black Chicagoans, who found it deeply painful to see the city spend hundreds of millions of dollars to care for the newest Chicagoans while they have lived in neighborhoods that have suffered from disinvestment for decades — with no end in sight.

“Chicago DSA doesn’t understand politics,” Taylor said.

Ald. Andre Vasquez, whose 40th Ward includes Lincoln Square, is also a Democratic Socialist but left Chicago DSA after the group objected to his vote in 2020 for a budget crafted by Lightfoot that raised property taxes and did not cut the Chicago Police Department’s budget.

Vasquez, who is also running for a third term, has not sought the group’s endorsement since then.

Two of the three City Council challengers endorsed by the group in 2023 lost, records show.

44th Ward candidate Luciano, 26, a software engineer, founded a group that has lobbied city officials to build more homes and improve transit, while making Chicago’s streets safer, according to his website.

Luciano is set to face Lawson, who endorsed former Chicago Public Schools CEO Paul Vallas in the 2023 mayor’s race, only to see Johnson win a majority of votes in his North Side ward.

Lawson declined to comment on Chicago DSA’s decision to endorse Luciano.

In the 3rd Ward, Uqdah is taking on Dowell, Johnson’s choice to lead the Finance Committee, one of the most powerful positions at City Hall. Despite that, Dowell helped craft the 2026 spending plan that took effect over Johnson’s objections and has split from the mayor on a number of key issues, including his proposal to tax large companies for every employee to fund violence prevention measures.

“I have a tremendous track record of accomplishments,” Dowell said, adding that she had never heard of Uqdah before he filed to run against her.

Johnson overwhelmingly won the 2023 mayoral contest in the 3rd Ward, records show.

Uqdah, who has two children, is a social investor and community organizer, according to his website.

Chicago DSA encouraged candidates in the 31st, 32nd and 36th wards to apply for its endorsement, but did not endorse any candidates in those contests, records show.

The internal divisions the endorsement process laid bare will complicate Chicago DSA’s efforts to expand its power and capitalize on the nationwide energy that helped catapult New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani into office, while helping more than three dozen candidates across the nation defeat more moderate candidates in Democratic primaries.

Chicago DSA has more than 3,100 members in good standing, according to spokesperson Rachel Monk, who said the group had grown by more than 25% since February and approximately 45% in the past 13 months.

The group is working to push the Chicago City Council to back Johnson’s rewrite of a 40-year-old law to add new protections for renters and scale back the power of landlords.

But that effort — likely Johnson’s last chance to champion new legislation demanded by the progressive organizations that fueled his come-from-behind win in the 2023 mayoral election — drew swift and vehement opposition from landlords and business groups, with whom he and Chicago DSA has long been at loggerheads.

A vote on the competing measures could come as soon as this fall.

Contact Heather Cherone: @HeatherCherone | (773) 569-1863 | [email protected]

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