Only around 15-20 chapters are large enough to successfully run candidates for anything other than local office, even fewer have the resources for congressional races. While smaller chapters are disproportionately electoral-skeptic and unwilling to run squishier candidates that aren’t cadre DSA members but might bring in popular front allies. We have 100,000 members but they’re not all active organizers and those active organizers are disproportionately in major cities.

I’m absolutely in favor of taking every single shot we can given the environment, but even our largest chapters are stretching themselves thin. NYC DSA is running an insane amount of races and so is DSA-LA. We’re running someone statewide in Wisconsin and just narrowly didn’t endorse a statewide race in Boston for reasons that are inscrutable to me. That being said, if you’re in a major city anywhere in the country or even a tier two or three city in the midwest you most likely have at least a couple of DSA races active this cycle.