New York’s far Left may think that it is the vanguard of an envisioned American socialist commonwealth, but the real action this fall will be on the West Coast, where socialist candidates have won the mayor’s office in Seattle, seem on track to take control of the Portland City Council, achieved a critical congressional victory in Denver, and, most importantly, could even triumph in the mayor’s race in Los Angeles, the nation’s second-largest city.
The West Coast has long had a radical tradition, dating back to the Wobblies, who shut down Seattle with a general strike in 1919, and Upton Sinclair’s Depression-era End Poverty in California (EPIC) socialist campaign in 1934. Postmaster James Farley remarked two years later: “There are forty-seven states in the Union, and the Soviet of Washington.”
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In the recent past, West Coast Democrats had generally embraced mild redistribution as well as civil and gay rights but rarely waved the red flag. After all, they represented areas that appeared to be the prime winners in the emerging tech-driven economy. Today, however, Seattle, Denver, Portland, San Francisco, and San Jose suffer some of the nation’s highest office vacancy rates, sometimes higher than 30 percent. Seattle’s downtown is largely populated by “zombie buildings“ deserted by employers, while Portland’s once widely celebrated central core has become ever more dystopian.
Much of this reflects a radically changing job market. For years, West Coast cities lured young, educated professionals, particularly in tech and business-service jobs; in Los Angeles, the key attraction was, of course, the entertainment industry. Information jobs have since retreated to 2017 levels, and California has lost these positions faster than anywhere else in the country. In Seattle, Amazon and Microsoft have laid off more than 46,000 employees since 2023, accounting for 85 percent of layoffs by Seattle-area tech companies. In Los Angeles, entertainment has shed 42,000 jobs between 2022 and 2024. Since 2018, corporate headquarters have left San Francisco, Los Angeles, and San Diego, with many relocating to Dallas, Austin, Nashville, Phoenix, and Houston. Already-onerous tax and regulatory regimes have prompted some companies founded in the West, such as Starbucks and Amazon, to shift investment to less expensive and less socialist-leaning states, laying off employees even as they enjoy record profits.
Unemployment now exceeds the national average in Seattle, Portland, and Los Angeles, while labor shortages persist across the South and Great Plains. California alone has a worker surplus estimated at 500,000, and Oregon, meantime, ranks 48th among the states in per capita job growth over the past year.
The other key shift has been demographic. As in New York, the left-wing surge on the West Coast, particularly in the big cities, has benefited from increasing numbers of young, largely childless, and often well-educated voters. Seattle, Los Angeles, Portland, and Denver have among the lowest birthrates of any American city. Many West Coast cities, once filled with newcomers, have lost population both to other states and their own surrounding suburbs.
A decline in opportunity is feeding the socialist rise. The “yuppie dream“ of yesterday has faded as young urbanites embrace New York Mayor Zohran Mamdani’s “warmth of collectivism.” The “economic anxiety“ they feel is not imaginary; according to the New York Fed, 42 percent of recent college graduates are underemployed. These young people, disappointed by reality, are driving the rise of the Democratic Socialists of America (DSA).
As Tom Edsall observed recently in the New York Times, this is not a working-class movement or driven by “people of color.” Portland and Seattle are among the whitest big cities in America, and most unions, particularly outside the government sector, remain tied to the more centrist Democratic establishment.
The universities act as a gateway drug for many who rally to the radical Left. Los Angeles Councilmember and DSA-aligned mayoral candidate Nithya Raman has a graduate degree from MIT. Denver’s new 29-year-old Congresswoman Mirat Kiros—who has excused the pogrom of October 7—is a Ph.D. student. Like Mamdani himself, Seattle’s Mayor Katie Wilson is the child of prominent academics.
Superior organization—like Tammany Hall in the nineteenth century or the American Communist Party in the 1930s—makes a difference, particularly in low-turnout elections, where what Glenn Reynolds calls “the radical 7%“ can win using their excellent ground operation, particularly targeting deep blue districts in central cities. These efforts are buttressed as well by the clear shift leftward nationwide among Democratic voters.
Geography has also been key. In Denver, Kiros defeated 15-term House member Diana DeGette by winning in dense areas where renters predominate, but lost in homeowner-dominated suburbs. In Colorado’s Senate primary, Denver voted against its own former mayor, now-Senator John Hickenlooper, in favor of challenger Julie Gonzales. But Gonzales lost the more moderate statewide vote by almost five points. Similarly, Katie Wilson owes her election to voters around the University of Washington and in the renter-dominated parts of the city.
In Los Angeles, Republican Spencer Pratt did best in the neighborhoods on the west side and the San Fernando Valley. Mayor Karen Bass, meantime, romped in the still black-dominated areas in South Los Angeles. Raman’s second-place finish was powered by an avalanche of votes from the L.A. version of New York’s “Commie belt”—the fashionable districts of Echo Park, Silver Lake, Los Veliz, and parts of Hollywood—where her call to reduce the LAPD may be more widely tolerated. With Raman now taking a lead in the race by some measures, the city could replace Karen Bass’s leftish incompetence with Mamdani-like socialism.
The key test for the DSA and its allies will be following up their urban gains at the state level, always a tougher project. New York socialists may eye Albany as their ultimate target, but the real prize—“the big enchilada”—is California, with its much larger population and tech dominance.
Here, things get messy. Big tech firms have long favored and funded mainstream Democrats, reflecting the leanings of their employees, as indicated by their political donations. This alliance is fraying, however. In Washington, progressives enacted the nation’s highest estate tax to fund state spending that has grown twice as fast as median-family income. This has led to a hegira of the wealthy from Washington, including Starbuck’s Howard Schultz and Jeff Bezos.
In California, the radical Service Employees International Union (SEIU), which led the violent riots against immigration enforcement, is pushing a “one-time” 5 percent wealth tax on billionaires, drawn up by socialist-minded academics. Largely designed to pay medical workers dependent on tax dollars, the measure holds a lead in the polls, with over three-quarters of Democrats in support.
As in Washington, some of the wealthy are bailing, including Mark Zuckerberg, Sergey Brin, and Peter Thiel, guaranteeing that California will see less tax revenue. By some calculations, these departures have already taken nearly one-third of the potential haul from the new tax. Meantime, the state has already accelerated its spending SINCE 2020 by a remarkable 72 percent and faces a massive long-term structural deficit.
Some Democrats, like Governor Gavin Newsom and his possible successor, former Biden cabinet member Xavier Becerra, understand that California depends on high earners; the top 1 percent pays 39 percent of the state’s income tax revenues. Tech firms are also alarmed by socialist ambitions to ban data centers, a direct attack on the tech elites’ AI plans.
The business community is showing signs of awakening to the threat. It has backed Mayor Daniel Lurie in San Francisco, helping turn back a local “overpaid CEO tax“ this June. Some analysts even believe that conservatives can make a comeback in these states, which have elected almost no statewide Republicans for two decades.
For now, though, the West Coast’s struggling economy has been working to socialists’ advantage. Unless we see a stronger response from elites and the general public, Farley’s “Soviet of Washington” could end up shaping the West Coast’s future—and, in alliance with its northeastern counterparts, pose the greatest threat to free markets and private property since America’s last socialist surge, over a century ago.