DSA-endorsed candidate N’Kiyla Jasmine Thomas won Oklahoma’s Democratic Senate primary runoff Tuesday night. Yes, a socialist is now the party’s nominee in a deep-red state where President Donald Trump beat former Vice President Kamala Harris by nearly 35 points in 2024.
As one X user rightly notes, the Hasan Piker/Zohran Mamdani wing is no longer a fringe element of the Democratic Party, “they’re taking control of it.”
Thomas, 31, a nurse and member of the Chickasaw Nation, defeated 70-year-old attorney and minister Jim Priest despite being vastly outspent, according to NBC News.
The good news is that Thomas will almost certainly lose to her Republican opponent, Rep. Kevin Hern, in November. The two are competing for the seat vacated in March by former Sen. Markwayne Mullin following his confirmation as secretary of Homeland Security.
The last time the state elected a Democrat to the Senate was 1990. Former Oklahoma governor Sen. David Boren served from 1979 to 1994. [He did not complete his final term; He resigned his seat in November 1994 to become president of the University of Oklahoma.]
While Hern is heavily favored to win the race given the Sooner State’s overwhelmingly conservative electorate, Thomas is likely to face an enormous financial disadvantage in the general election as well. NBC reported that, as of Aug. 5, Thomas’ campaign had just $456 cash on hand, compared with $2.6 million for Hern’s campaign as of June 30.
During a Tuesday morning interview, Thomas told NBC that although she has not joined the DSA, she is “a self-proclaimed democratic socialist.” As she sees it, the DSA represents “the next generation” that is “looking to change the system.”
“The system right now doesn’t work for us and it never has,” she said. “I’m just ready for change and I think everyone else is as well.”
She does not support the entire DSA platform. While she backs Medicare for All, abolishing ICE, universal childcare, parental leave, and “making sure that everyone pays their fair share,” as a military spouse, she opposes the party’s call to defund the Department of War.
While she believes that “capitalism is what’s destroying our country right now,” she later said “described capitalism as ‘inevitable,’ saying she supports the concept of people owning their own businesses and property.”
Thomas’s win comes on the heels of a string of victories by DSA-endorsed candidates throughout the country this primary cycle. Most recently, Florida state Rep. Angie Nixon scored a stunning upset over her establishment-backed Democratic opponent, retired Air Force Lt. Col. Alexander Vindman.
Although Thomas has no plausible path to victory in the general election, her primary victory is nonetheless disturbing. It’s another sign of just how normalized socialism has become within the Democratic Party. Ideas — and candidates — that would have been scoffed at by most Democrats even five years ago have increasingly been embraced by the party’s mainstream.
Younger voters, largely unaware of the death and misery socialism has left in its wake wherever it has been tried, have become some of its most enthusiastic proponents.
In a July interview with local media outlet NonDoc, Thomas said, “They’re wanting a different vision, and I have a different vision as a progressive myself. Most countries that have socialism, they are thriving.” [Emphasis added.]
Thomas will not become Oklahoma’s next senator. But that’s not really the story. The story is that a self-described socialist just became the Democratic nominee for the U.S. Senate in one of the reddest states in America. If socialism can become politically unremarkable inside the Democratic Party in Oklahoma, perhaps the better question is no longer whether the party’s socialist wing is gaining ground — but how much ground it has already gained.
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