It’s been a sexy socialist summer for the Democratic Socialists of America party nationwide. But one highly contested Arizona congressional district race is experiencing some red-scare tactics.
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The phenomenon has already touched Arizona’s local politics this summer. In May, DSA member Bobby Nichols was elected to Tempe City Council. He’s the first DSA candidate to be elected in Maricopa County. The left-wing party’s influence is also playing out in a race where no DSA candidate is running: Arizona’s competitive Congressional District 1 race.
Jay Feely, a Trump-endorsed candidate, has tried to smear his opponent as a “socialist” member of DSA.
“It’s the same playbook we’ve seen for decades,” Nichols said in an interview with Phoenix New Times. “When the conservatives identify an opponent who is even slightly to the left of them, they scream socialism, they scream communism. And they clench their pearls and beat their chests and act like the world is ending.”
Former Cardinals kicker Jay Feely will face Amish Shah, who is an emergency room doctor and former state representative, in a tight race for CD-1’s open seat. The matchup could determine which party controls the U.S. House. The district’s current representative, Rep. David Schweikert, declined to seek reelection and instead ran (unsuccessfully) for Arizona Governor.
Two days after the two men won their competitive primary races, Feely called Shah a “Democrat Socialist” in an interview on Fox News. In August, he claimed Shah supported Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders and “socialist policies his entire career,” on social media, and said that the CD1 race was between “Capitalism & Socialism” or “Common-sense vs. Crazy.”
A week and a half later, Feely said that Shah “believes in these DSA policies all the way back to 2019,” during an interview on Arizona PBS’s “Candidates in Conversation” series. Shah notably decided to participate. “He talked at some of these DSA rallies, and he believes in these crazy policies that they want to implement. Things like no borders, no prisoners, no private property rights,” Feely added.
Members of Phoenix’s DSA chapter disagree. The chapter’s co-chair, Emily Kirkland, called the claim “one of the most ridiculous things I’ve ever heard.”
“Amish Shah is not a member of the DSA, has never been a member of the DSA,” Kirkland said, adding that Shah was “one of the more conservative members of the state legislature among the Democrats. He’s a moderate.”
In fact, the only actual tie that Feely and the National Republican Congressional Committee have been able to make between Shah and DSA was an event the former representative spoke at seven years ago. In 2019, Shah spoke at a healthcare panel that DSA helped organize for Bernie Sanders’ 2020 presidential campaign. At the event, Shah shared that he “saw a lot of what was wrong with American healthcare” while working as an emergency room doctor, according to the video shared by NRCC. Shah advocated for a “universal, single-payer” Medicare for All program and added that the policy position “drew” him to Sanders’ campaign. He also complimented Sanders’ economic policy stances.
“I don’t believe he has any other connection to DSA,” Nichols said. “I am not aware of him ever having been a member of DSA.”
Kirkland attended the April 2019 event, which she said DSA and a few other organizations co-sponsored.
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“The idea that Amish Shah is a Democratic socialist, it just makes me laugh,” Kirkland said. “I think that a messaging memo went out from the Republican National Committee headquarters and they said that DSA is the flavor of the week. We’ve been winning Democratic primaries and they’re flailing.”
Shah has since backed away from Medicare for All, instead supporting a public option healthcare system in which payees can buy into Medicare if they want to. Shah also made a name for himself as a more moderate member of the House Democrats who works across the aisle. He was the lone Democrat to vote for a measure to lower the felony threshold for fentanyl trafficking in 2022. He consistently worked and met with police unions, which has already earned him three endorsements from law enforcement groups in the race.
“Jay Feely is just making stuff up. Dr. Amish Shah has spent his career in the ER on the front lines of what happens when people don’t have access to health care in our country,” said Eve Zhurbinskiy, Shah’s spokesperson, in a statement to New Times. “These are nonsense claims from a desperate candidate who can’t defend his undying loyalty to Trump.”
The Red Scare
The DSA label has recently become a bugaboo for Republicans here and across the country. It has ramped up as momentum for the party, which kicked off with Zohran Mamdani’s November election win as Mayor of New York City, continued into a series of competitive Democratic primaries in the summer. Voters appeared to favor pothole politics and politicos tackling affordability issues amid the reign of a deeply unpopular president.
Two DSA members, Claire Valdez and Darializa Avila Chevalier, won their congressional primaries in New York in June. A week later, another DSA member in Colorado, Melat Kiros, defeated a 15-year incumbent in her House race. Party activists supported progressive candidate Abdul El-Sayed to victory in Michigan’s competitive U.S. Senate primary against a moderate opponent. Then, in Florida, state Rep. Angie Nixon, who recently joined the DSA despite not calling herself a socialist, won her primary for the state’s U.S. Senate seat. Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, a potential presidential candidate, recently rejoined the party after a seven-year lapse in her membership.
The word “socialist” is a longstanding scare tactic in American politics. Communist fear struck in the late 1910s, sparked by the Russian Revolution. McCarthyism was rampant amid the early Cold War. Those events resulted in long-lasting fear of the political movement, which Nichols attributed to many older voters operating from “the understanding that they had when they first became politically aware,” he told New Times.
“The Red Scare hysterics were a huge part of their political development,” Nichols said. People using “Red Scare hysterics will use the word socialism like a bludgeon and try to use it to scare people off” politicians and policies, things like Social Security and firefighters.
The party’s recent success has shown that it’s no longer the case. A Washington Post-Ipsos poll from July found that 46 percent of Americans under 30 would consider voting for a democratic socialist for president. That same poll found that 51% of Americans with postgraduate degrees would consider it.
“We still have to overcome that century of Red Scare propaganda,” Nichols said. “It’s not something that can just be papered over.” He still receives messages, at least once a week, from someone who claims that he’s trying to “destroy the country and undermine decades of American capitalism,” he said. “Obviously, that’s not the case. I’m very much here to make the world a better place.”
Feely appears to be betting that red-scare hysteria still lands.
In an email to New Times, stood by his comments. He referenced Shah’s appearance at the 2019 Sanders’ event and said his opponent “made his support of democratic socialism and his position very clear to the voters of the first congressional district.”
Whether Feely’s approach will be effective and sail through the uprights, or whether he will shank it like he did playing for the New York Giants with three potential game winning field goals in a row on Nov. 27, 2005, in a heartbreaking overtime loss to the Seattle Seahawks will, ultimately, be determined by the voters.
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