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A lobbyist who worked for both Bernie Sanders and Fortune 500 clients explains what democratic socialist wins mean for business, and how to prepare.
In 2016, my political outreach company, Firehouse Phones, worked on the presidential campaign of a democratic socialist. It was one of many campaigns my firm touched, but that one stays on my resume for a reason: it taught me more about how persuasion actually works than any client engagement before or since.
Today I run Ohio River South, a government affairs firm focused on the nation's fastest-growing region — the American South. Over the past decade we've advocated for nearly two dozen Fortune 500 companies — Amazon in my earlier lobbying years, and later growing a client roster that included Alphabet, Microsoft, General Motors, United Healthcare, and Capital One.
During last week’s historic night for the Democratic Socialists of America, a record number of candidates endorsed by the DSA and its local chapters were elected to the House of Representatives. Socialists now count at least 6 members of Congress among their ranks, not including DSA-aligned candidates. Also, the newly-elected mayors of DC, LA,NYC and Seattle all identify with the party. In the aftermath of their wins across the country, I’m being asked by executives what it means for their future since I've been an advisor on the other team.
Here is the read I give corporate leadership — and the to-do list that follows from it.
Start with a clear-eyed definition, because the confusion is doing half the damage. Democratic socialists are not proposing that the government seize your company. They want the basics working people struggle to buy on the market — housing, health care, child care, transit, utilities — provided or guaranteed publicly, and they want to get there by winning elections. That's the descriptive half. Here's the other half, and boardrooms should take it seriously: the program includes rent freezes and expanded rent regulation, campaigns for publicly owned power, higher taxes on corporations and high earners, aggressive labor standards, and open hostility to the incentive packages that anchor corporate site selection. Mamdani's first hundred days show both the capacity and the limits — a childcare deal struck with Albany, a signature fare-free bus plan stalled for lack of state funding. No, this is not the Comintern, and companies that treat it that way end up negotiating with a caricature while the actual organizers register voters in their host county. But it is a disciplined movement whose agenda touches your rate base, your rent rolls, your labor costs, and your next incentive vote.
Next, size the exposure precisely — it's operational, not existential. The agenda lands on specific line items: rent regulation where you hold residential assets, public-power campaigns where you're the utility — or the data center driving its load growth — state-level corporate tax proposals, labor standards, and organized opposition to the subsidy deals that used to sail through commissions on a Tuesday afternoon. What changes for most companies is process. Entitlements take longer. Incentive votes draw opposition that shows up with spreadsheets. Community benefits agreements move from exotic to expected. None of that is fatal to a project — all of it is priceable, the way you price currency or interest-rate risk. The companies that fall behind in this moment aren't the ones facing the strongest opposition; they're the ones that mistook a priceable operating condition for an existential threat, and either overpaid in panic or stalled in denial.
Then run the affirmative playbook. What this movement does well reduces to a discipline any company can copy: show up, listen, and give people a way to say yes. In practice, five moves. Map political exposure the way you map rate exposure — every jurisdiction where a permit, variance, rate decision, or incentive vote is coming in the next twenty-four months, and who organizes there. Build presence before you need it: fund the rec league, join the community development corporation, be a known quantity two years before you're an applicant. When opposition forms, engage early and without lawyers, and send an operator with authority to trade rather than a spokesperson with talking points. Price a community benefits agreement honestly against the alternative — eighteen months of entitlement war, a moratorium, a ballot question with your project's name on it — and treat signing one as procurement, not surrender. And look inside your own walls: the under-35 cohort that now tells Gallup it prefers socialism to capitalism is also your junior workforce and your customer base. Build the same listening discipline internally — the company that hears its own people early is rarely ambushed in public. One more, for the board: political risk belongs on the enterprise risk register next to cyber and currency — reviewed quarterly, owned by an executive, not delegated to a PR retainer.
Finally, expect this everywhere you operate — not just where the headlines are. The temptation is to file this as a coastal story. It isn't. The energy travels wherever affordability bites, and it has already arrived in the region absorbing the corporate migration: the South — hundreds of relocated headquarters, the Battery Belt, a data-center buildout worth tens of billions in Georgia alone, in what my firm's new report, Accelerating South, documents as the country's largest economy and its least settled electorate. Atlanta seated its first democratic-socialist council member in January. Carrboro, North Carolina elected another. And the same energy shows up in Southern county commissions without the label — data-center moratoria, utility-rate revolts, anti-subsidy backlashes that cross party lines. A company could once dismiss a Brooklyn assembly race as somebody else's politics. It cannot dismiss the city council seating its next zoning vote.
People ask how I square the two halves of my resume. Honestly: I've stopped treating them as halves. The Bernie campaign fell short of the nomination — but it reached people the system had stopped hearing, and the organizing craft it modeled is exactly what's winning elections today. My corporate practice is, at its best, the discipline of making institutions listen before they're forced to. The failure mode on both sides is the same — mistaking your own talking points for the public's actual concerns — and so is the fix.
The democratic socialists are having their moment because they mastered a discipline the rest of American politics let atrophy. The companies that navigate it best won't be the loudest critics or the quietest bystanders. They'll be the ones that learned the same discipline — before the next rate case, the next site-selection fight, the next election in a county where they just bet a billion dollars. The people across the table learned to organize. The question is whether you did.
Howard Franklin is the founder and CEO of Ohio River South, a government affairs and political-risk firm that works across the South from offices in Atlanta and Washington, D.C.
Hand placing VOTE sticker on shirt
After the 2024 presidential election, the headlines suggested that Latino voters were moving toward the Republican Party. Donald Trump’s gains were interpreted as evidence of a possible political realignment, particularly among working-class Latino voters and younger men.
Two years later, the story has reversed. Latino voters, we are told, are returning to the Democrats.
Both interpretations risk making the same mistake: treating changes in voting behavior as though they necessarily reveal changes in political identity.
Political scientists have long distinguished relatively enduring partisan attachments from shorter-term influences on elections. Realignment refers to more durable changes in political coalitions. The problem is not the concept itself, but the tendency to interpret changing election results as evidence that such a transformation has occurred.
I spent decades teaching voting behavior at California State University, Bakersfield, at the southern end of the Central Valley. As a public-opinion researcher, I also conducted dozens of surveys throughout the region, including communities that would eventually become part of Republican Congressman David Valadao’s district.
That experience taught me to be cautious about treating demographic characteristics or party registration as reliable predictors of voting behavior. The people who participate in an election are not necessarily representative of the larger population, and their choices can reflect considerations that national partisan statistics overlook.
The Latino Vote Reverses Again
The 2026 midterms produced another substantial change in Hispanic voting patterns.
According to the Associated Press Voter Poll, approximately six in ten Hispanic voters nationally supported Democratic House candidates, while about one-third supported Republicans.
That represented a reversal from 2024, when Hispanic voters were nearly evenly divided between Donald Trump and Kamala Harris.
The longer history makes the problem clearer. Pew Research Center’s validated-voter research found that Hispanic voters supported Joe Biden over Trump by 61% to 36% in 2020. Four years later, Harris received 51% and Trump 48%.
These estimates come from different surveys and, in 2026, a congressional rather than presidential election. They should not be treated as a precise measure of individual vote switching. But the broad pattern is clear: Latino voting margins have changed substantially across recent elections.
If each change represented a lasting transformation in partisan loyalties, Latino voters would appear to have repeatedly remade their political identities in just six years.
Election results cannot establish that.
Some individuals may have reconsidered their candidate preferences. Others may have stayed home, while people who did not participate in the previous election voted in the next one.
A voter can identify as a Democrat and support a Republican presidential candidate. An independent can vote for one party in a presidential election and another in a congressional election.
Party identification, candidate preference and participation are different dimensions of political behavior.
A July 2026 Pew Research Center analysis found that although Trump made substantial gains among Hispanic voters between 2016 and 2024, the partisan composition of Hispanic adults changed relatively little.
A May 2026 UnidosUS survey reported by CBS News found that one in four Latino voters who supported Trump in 2024 said they would not vote for him again. Yet Democrats had not necessarily won their allegiance.
These findings illustrate why changing candidate preferences should not automatically be interpreted as changing partisan identities.
What the Central Valley Taught Me
As I discussed in an earlier examination of California’s 22nd Congressional District, Republican David Valadao repeatedly won elections in a heavily Latino region that also supported Democratic presidential candidates.
In 2016, Hillary Clinton carried his then-congressional district by more than 15 percentage points. Valadao nevertheless won reelection by approximately 13 points. Four years later, he returned to Congress even though Joe Biden carried the district.
Valadao, a Hanford dairy farmer, emphasized agricultural interests, water policy and long-standing community relationships. His victories demonstrated that presidential preferences and congressional voting could produce very different outcomes in the same district.
In 2026, however, Valadao faced a redrawn district and a different national political environment. Democrat Randy Villegas defeated him by a substantial margin, according to preliminary returns.
His earlier victories and subsequent defeat illustrate the interaction of voters, candidates and political circumstances. They do not, by themselves, establish which of those factors mattered most.
What Elections Can—and Cannot—Tell Us
In a March 2026 analysis, political scientists Matt Barreto and Gary Segura raised a familiar question: Were Latino voters changing their preferences, or were differences in turnout producing different electoral outcomes?
Their assessment was that both processes appeared to be occurring.
This is precisely the distinction that matters.
Election returns tell us who won and how voting margins changed. Surveys help us understand attitudes and motivations. Statistical models estimate how demographic groups voted.
But these measures do not necessarily reveal whether the same individuals changed their preferences, whether their partisan attachments changed, or whether a different electorate participated.
A panel study could help answer those questions. By interviewing the same people across elections, measuring their partisan attachments and candidate preferences, and accounting for new participants, researchers could distinguish individual changes from changes in the composition of the electorate. With respondents’ consent, voter records could also help verify participation.
The movement toward Republicans in 2024 was real. So was the movement toward Democrats in 2026. What remains uncertain is how much of either shift reflected changing political attachments, short-term candidate preferences, or differences in who participated.
The mistake is not recognizing that Latino voting patterns changed. It is treating those patterns as an explanation of the voters, rather than something we still need to explain.
The Latino Vote Keeps Changing. Why Do We Keep Calling It a Realignment? was first published by the Latino News Network and is republished with permission.
Kent C. Price is a retired political science professor with four decades of experience in applied public‑opinion research, including extensive work on large two‑thirds revenue elections in California.
Voters cast their ballots at a polling station at Midtown Mall on October 31, 2026 in Anchorage, Alaska.
This year’s midterm elections have put a spotlight on Alaska’s “top-four” election system – which includes an open, all-candidate primary and a ranked-choice voting (RCV) general election.
Alaskans voted to adopt this system in 2020 and again to keep it in 2024. It was on the ballot again this November; voters in my home state will likely vote for reform for the third time in six years.
That’s because RCV and open primaries have delivered more choice, more voter power, and better government for Alaskans.
How do Alaska’s elections work?
All candidates compete on the same ballot in the primary, regardless of party. Voters each pick one candidate, and the top four vote-getters advance to the RCV general election.
In the general election, voters can rank candidates in order of preference: first, second, third, and so on. If a candidate receives a majority of voters’ first choices, that candidate wins. If not, the candidate with the fewest votes is eliminated, and voters who ranked that candidate “number 1” will have their vote count for their next choice. This repeats until two candidates remain, and the candidate with a majority of votes wins.
How has the reform affected Alaska?
With open primaries and RCV, Alaskans get more choices and can vote honestly for the candidates they like most, without fear of “spoiler” candidates. Candidates listen to more voters and build broad coalitions to win majority support. Elections are more competitive. 84% of Alaska voters say that RCV is simple. RCV is party-neutral, and fiercely independent Alaska voters have elected Democrats, Republicans, and independents since it was first used in 2022.
Since Alaska implemented RCV, the state legislature has been led by a cross-partisan coalition including Republicans, Democrats, and independents. This coalition has put Alaskans’ needs over partisan politics to advance issues that matter to voters. In 2025, the coalition passed the largest school funding increase in state history.
How long will results take?
We might need 15 days to call a close race. But it’s not because of RCV, which takes just minutes to tally.
Alaska has long allowed absentee ballots to arrive up to 15 days after Election Day because of its size and geography. Over 80% of the state is not connected by road. In close Senate races in 2008 and 2010, officials declared the winner at the end of the 15-day period. Alaska did not use RCV until 2022.
Additionally, Alaska’s Division of Elections released a preliminary “cast vote record” on Election Night this year, which can be used to create unofficial RCV tallies. Alaska already has preliminary RCV results.
What about the two Dan Sullivans?
Alaska’s Senate race has two candidates with similar names: incumbent Republican Senator Dan S. Sullivan and nonpartisan candidate Daniel J. Sullivan. The New York Times reported that Democrats recruited the second Sullivan to play “spoiler” and siphon votes away from Senator Sullivan.
Ranked choice voting had nothing to do with Daniel J. Sullivan getting on the ballot – and it actually makes the tactic less effective. RCV can neutralize the “spoiler” effect by giving voters backup choices. In Alaska, any small number of voters uncertain about the “Dan Sullivans” could rank both candidates on their ballot, and their vote will end up counting for the more competitive candidate, Senator Sullivan.
RCV gives all Alaska voters a more meaningful vote. They do not have to vote for the lesser of two evils, or fear “throwing their vote away” if they do not. In the Senate race, 4,481 voters ranked Daniel J. Sullivan or long-shot Gerald Heikes first – but also weighed in between Senator Sullivan and Democrat Mary Peltola, using their backup choices.
Compare this to races without ranked-choice voting, like Tuesday’s Ohio Senate race – where 222,781 voters chose the Libertarian or independent. These voters had no backup choice. They did not get to weigh in between the candidates who actually had a chance to win.
What’s next?
Alaska will release additional updates through its 15-day window, and we’ll get official results on Wednesday, November 18.
We’ll also get a final answer on whether voters want to keep Alaska’s election system – though preliminary results indicate it is here to stay. That’s because Alaska’s election system lets Alaskans vote their values, and support the candidates they believe will best represent them in office. It also empowers elected leaders to govern — by putting the needs of their voters before partisan interests.
Meredith Sumpter is President and CEO of FairVote, a nonpartisan organization seeking better elections.
economics graph on blackboard
Post-1971 supply-side economics—often referred to as "trickle-down economics" or "Reaganomics” fundamentally transformed the relationship between the federal government and military veterans. The year 1971 marked the end of the Bretton Woods system, the closing of the gold window, and a pivot toward neoliberal economic frameworks that prioritized deregulation, sweeping tax cuts, and aggressive federal deficit reduction via domestic spending cuts.
For veterans, who had previously benefited from the expansive, New Deal-style social investments of the original G.I. Bill, this macroeconomic paradigm shift led to four distinct structural consequences:
The Erosion of Universal Benefits and Introduction of Means-Testing
Before the 1970s, veteran benefits were broadly viewed as an uncompromised societal obligation. However, as supply-side doctrine focused on lowering federal domestic expenditures to offset tax cuts, veterans' health and income programs became targets for cost-containment.
The Shift to Means-Testing: Under the Reagan administration, the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) began viewing universal veteran healthcare as an unsustainable entitlement. This shift culminated in proposals to virtually eliminate medical benefits for veterans whose household income exceeded certain thresholds ($15,000 to $18,000 at the time).
Budget Cuts: Instead of treating veterans' care as a protected debt of war, supply-side budgets sought “Cuts in veterans benefits totaling about $500 million” by enforcing strict income-level tests for non-service-related illnesses.
The Privatization and De-funding of the VHA
Supply-side theory posits that private enterprise is inherently more efficient than government-run entities. Over the post-1971 era, this logic drove sustained efforts to privatize parts of the Veterans Health Administration (VHA).
Neglect of Infrastructure: In the 1980s, budget drafts consistently aimed to reduce hospital staff and lower patient admissions. For instance, the FY1987 budget blueprint called for “Reducing the number of patients admitted to veterans' hospitals by 62,000” and dropping outpatient clinic visits by over a million.
Corporate Outsourcing: Decades of underfunding created severe backlogs, which proponents used to justify shifting care to the private sector. This set the stage for modern policies like the Veterans Community Care Program (VCCP), which critics argue diverts public funds to corporate healthcare providers and threatens the structural integrity of specialized VA care.
Structural Vulnerability to Economic Stratification
The core promise of supply-side economics—that wealth at the top would "trickle down" to create a rising tide for all—never materialized for working-class Americans, a demographic heavily represented by veterans.
The Post-Industrial Trap: As supply-side policies accelerated deregulation and globalized outsourcing, America’s industrial base hollowed out. Working-class veterans returning from Vietnam, and later the Gulf War, no longer found the stable, unionized manufacturing jobs that sustained World War II veterans.
Compounded Trauma: Lacking a robust public safety net, low-income veterans bore the brunt of macroeconomic shocks. This directly contributed to the modern crises of veteran homelessness, substance abuse, and suicide.
The "Robbing Peter to Pay Paul" Legislative Playbook
Because veterans are a highly visible and politically sensitive group, outright slashing their benefits faces massive public backlash. Consequently, post-1971 fiscal policy frequently relies on zero-sum legislative engineering: expanding benefits for one group of veterans by cutting them for another, all to stay within rigid supply-side spending caps.
Modern Zero-Sum Politics: This trend has persisted into recent legislative cycles. For example, a recent major Veterans Reform Package (H.R. 9237) offered critical expansions (such as full retirement and disability for combat-injured vets) but funded them by raising home loan fees and undercutting disability ratings for conditions like sleep apnea and tinnitus for up to 1.5 million others.
To address the impacts that post-1971 supply-side economics has had on military veterans, several targeted policy adjustments are required. Critics argue that these economic models have systematically underfunded the Department of Veterans Affairs (VA), hollowed out the federal workforce, and over-privatized core care networks.
Reverse Privatization and Fully Fund the VHA
The shift toward private care alternatives, accelerated by programs like the VA Choice Act and MISSION Act, has often diverted critical public resources to less integrated, costlier private providers. Research indicates that the VA’s integrated hospital system actually improves health outcomes and reduces 28-day mortality by 46% compared to private options.
The Remedy: End the outsourcing of core medical services.
The Action: Reinvest private-care vouchers back into the Veterans Health Administration (VHA) infrastructure. This will expand institutional capacity and retain specialized staff.
Strengthen Federal Hiring Preferences and Staffing
Supply-side austerity frequently targets the federal workforce through hiring freezes and budget caps. Because veterans make up more than one-quarter of the VA workforce, cutting these positions directly hurts veteran employment and erodes the quality of care they receive.
The Remedy: Protect and expand federal hiring advantages.
The Action: Pass explicit legislative carve-outs that exempt the VA from blanket federal hiring freezes or downsizings. This guarantees stable career pathways for transitioning service members.
Safeguard and Expand Safety-Net Benefits
Proposals tied to supply-side fiscal consolidation often seek to restructure or trim social programs like Medicaid, food assistance, and disability rating schedules to save budgetary costs. Low-income and rural veterans heavily rely on these interlinked safety nets.
The Remedy: Protect broader health and nutritional entitlements.
The Action: Block structural changes like capping Medicaid or restricting the VA disability rating schedule. Ensure these foundational programs remain fully funded to protect vulnerable veterans from severe financial distress.
Upgrade Transition and Credential Transferability
The post-1971 labor market demands high flexibility, yet veterans often struggle with underemployment because military credentials do not seamlessly transfer to civilian licensure.
The Remedy: Federalize and streamline state licensing processes.
The Action: Implement mandatory cross-state compacts that automatically convert military operational training into civilian technical licenses. This quickly absorbs veterans into high-paying sectors without forcing them to redo entry-level schooling.
Reinforce Modern Housing and GI Bill Policies
The erosion of public housing investments and shifting educational landscapes require modern updates to traditional veteran safety nets.
The Remedy: Protect home loan access and adapt education stipends.
The Action: Expand Housing First models paired with wraparound services to combat homelessness. Update GI Bill benefits to comprehensively cover non-traditional, online, and skills-based professional training.
Hugh J. Campbell, Jr., CPA, is a Governance, Risk & Compliance (GRC) professional and a student of W. Edwards Deming, the American statistician often credited as the catalyst for the Japanese economic miracle after WWII.
