With growing membership rolls, Missoula’s Democratic Socialists of America chapter is fielding four city council candidates on the November ballot, with its leaders hoping to harness frustration over housing costs, low wages and the Trump administration to expand the left-wing movement’s foothold in Montana politics.
Interest in the organization is partly driven by the popularity of democratic socialists such as Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders, whose “Fighting Oligarchy” rally drew a crowd of nearly 7,500 in Missoula earlier this year. Additionally, local and national DSA leaders told Montana Free Press that in Missoula and across the country, people are fed up with the current system and are more open to alternatives to capitalism.
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“In large part, that’s due to the failure of the Democratic Party to deliver for working-class people,” said Mark Anderlik, a longtime labor organizer and member of the Western Montana DSA chapter in Missoula. “People are disgusted with the Democratic Party’s lack of vigorous opposition to Trump’s agenda.”
The Democratic Socialists of America claim to offer an alternative to capitalism where “ordinary people have a real voice in our workplaces, neighborhoods, and society.” The organization advocates for collective ownership of key economic drivers such as energy production and transportation, and for reforms like single-payer Medicare for All, defunding the police and redirecting funding to community support services and the Green New Deal, according to its website.
The Missoula City Council candidates endorsed by the Western Montana DSA — Daniel Carlino, Kristen Jordan, Lucas Moody and David Quattrocchi — described democratic socialism as a means to empower regular citizens, tenants and workers during a press conference Sept. 24.
“Capitalism is a system where profit is the main motivation, and it always is going to end up with people being left out,” Carlino said during the press conference. “When we have people’s need for housing, water, a clean environment built on a profit-based system, we’re always going to have winners and losers in that system. And really, we need to have a system that’s built off of putting people and our planet first and organizing our society democratically instead of on a for-profit system.”
The candidates presented a shared platform that includes social housing, which they describe as self-sustaining, permanently affordable, mixed-income housing paid for with municipal bonds and removed from the for-profit real estate market. That could include models like resident-owned communities and community land trusts. They also said they want to expand jail diversion programs, restrict the use of tax increment financing for economic development and divest Missoula city funds from Israeli companies.
The platform calls for “functional public accountability of law enforcement.” DSA-backed candidates and current council members Carlino and Jordan have said they support the Missoula police department but take issue with some city law enforcement actions like contracting with a private security company.
While the candidates’ opponents have not directly spoken against their DSA endorsement or platform in recent forums, some have generally spoken against a focus on “talking points” rather than working together with other council members.
When asked during an Oct. 13 candidate forum what sets him apart from his opponent, incumbent Mike Nugent, who is facing Quattrocchi, said he is willing to dig deep and find how to make a policy work.
“Sometimes in campaigns, people like catchphrases, they like words, they like promises, but they don’t ask how,” Nugent said. “How are we going to do it and pay for it?”
The DSA-backed candidates argue the council has been on “cruise control,” and they will seek meaningful policy changes for working-class Missoulians.
Missoula is home to the largest DSA chapter in Montana, formed in 2018, with more than 100 dues-paying members, said Anderlik, the longtime organizer. The Bozeman chapter has been around for about eight years and is quite active, he said. The Billings and Helena chapters have come and gone, but there have been attempts to reform them, along with the establishment of a new Kalispell-area chapter, Anderlik said. The groups are looking to potentially form a statewide organization to combine their efforts and organize more effectively, he said.
A handful of DSA candidates have held local and state elected positions in the last few years.
In 2017, Denise Joy was elected to the Billings City Council, Montana’s only DSA member elected to public office at the time, the Billings Gazette reported. Joy was appointed to serve in the Montana House in 2024.
Danny Tenenbaum, who was endorsed by the Western Montana DSA, won a Montana House race in 2020, representing Missoula’s Westside and Northside neighborhoods. Tenenbaum did not seek re-election in 2022.
The Western Montana DSA endorsed Jordan when she first successfully ran for Missoula City Council in 2021 and endorsed two city council candidates in 2023 who lost their races.
The Missoula DSA chapter formed following Bernie Sanders’ 2016 presidential campaign, and the group saw bumps in interest following Sanders’ 2020 campaign and President Donald Trump’s re-election in 2024, Anderlik said. The chapter’s organizing activities — including helping workplaces unionize, demonstrating against the overturn of Roe v. Wade and a campaign against the “Born Alive” referendum in 2022 — have helped draw members, he said.
In the last eight years, the chapter grew from about a dozen people to a “significant dues-paying base” and a mailing list of hundreds of people, Anderlik said.
Many people he’s met while doorknocking for city council candidates this year have heard of New York mayoral candidate Zohran Mamdani, a democratic socialist, if not the DSA, Anderlik also said.
“We’re becoming a lot more known,” he said. “How much people know is another question.”
Anderlik, citing a recent Gallup poll, said there is growing sympathy, if not understanding, about democratic socialism as an alternative to capitalism nationally.
“Young people, I think it’s a plurality if not a majority, do not like capitalism,” he said. “And even among older folks like myself, there’s a lot more skepticism and a lot less support for capitalism than I’ve seen in my lifetime.”
Gallup’s August survey found the percentage of Americans who feel positively about capitalism decreased from 60% in 2021 to 54% this year. For the first time since the poll began in 2010, less than half of the surveyed Democrats reported viewing capitalism positively. About 39% of survey respondents reported viewing socialism favorably, but that has increased from 50% to 66% among Democrats in the last few years.
Anderlik said people get concerned about “the ‘s’ word,” but he said he sees democratic socialism as being about democratizing the economy, not creating a big government. People in Montana are generally pragmatic and want results from the government, Anderlik said, noting how, in Missoula, there seems to have been a lack of effective action to address low wages and high housing prices.
“We’re looking at the city council as just one more venue to try to put a halt on this ever-rising housing cost and try to raise wages,” he said. “The city council has more limited reach on the latter, but the former is why we’re talking about social housing as a more comprehensive approach. It doesn’t solve the whole problem, but right now there’s no constructive help from federal, state governments, so we have to start doing it for ourselves.”
Ashik Siddique, the DSA’s national co-chair, said the group is growing nationwide because people are concerned about attacks on working people, the distribution of wealth to the rich, increased militarization and the Trump administration’s attacks on vulnerable populations and social safety net programs. People want a “fighting alternative” to the Democratic Party establishment at the federal, state and local level, he said.
The DSA had 80,000 members in good standing as of September, an increase of nearly 30,000 in the last year, according to the organization. The DSA has more than 200 local chapters nationwide, with new groups forming in red states and more rural areas, Siddique said.
In the last year, the Western Montana chapter has grown by 15%, and the Bozeman chapter has increased by 25%, Siddique said.
Many new members are college-age or in their 20s, but the organization is seeing an increase in parents and a broader age range among its members than eight years ago, Siddique said. That likely reflects the maturity of the organization and the decreased stigma around socialism, he said.
The national organization is trying to support chapters to run candidates across the country and has an estimated 200 to 400 DSA members in elected office, Siddique said.
“People are fed up with the existing political system, are ready for big changes and see concrete ways to do that,” he said. “It’s not like people can snap their fingers and everything is different, but we’re running people for city council and other electoral campaigns, organizing labor unions and tenants. People want to be part of doing something tangible.”
Paul Lachapelle, a political science professor at Montana State University in Bozeman, said candidates like Sanders and Mamdani and the Missoula City Council candidates are speaking to a certain constituency that has a positive view of more socialist policies. Millennials and Gen Z Americans are more open to these kinds of social democratic ideas than older voters, he said.
Politicians are likely to respond to the polling data showing a less favorable view of capitalism, Lachapelle said.
“If we see candidates like Mamdani elected, politicians will take note and see that as a bellwether,” he said. “We’re going to experience more conversations about equity and equality and justice as it relates to government at all levels, whether that’s in local politics, the state or federal level.”
Lachapelle said he hasn’t seen enough data to comment on what is happening in Montana, but if Missoula is any indication, democratic socialism may become more common in liberal-leaning counties or communities.
“It comes down to turnout,” he said. “If young people come out, as has been the case in the past, that is such a great determinant of the election outcome for ballot initiatives and candidates. … That will dictate present and future policies.”
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