Americans for Prosperity (AFP) launched a national “Fight Socialism” campaign as DSA-backed candidates continue building infrastructure across the country.
The group unveiled FightSocialism.com with educational materials, advertising, grassroots training and a playbook targeting six proposals tied to DSA members and allies: rent control and government housing, government-run grocery stores, government-run health care, government ownership and wealth taxes, a 32-hour workweek with free college and debt cancellation, and the Green New Deal.
You can view the entire playbook here.
The campaign follows 2026 primary wins by socialist-aligned candidates. New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani, a DSA member elected in 2025, backed slates that unseated establishment Democrats in New York House primaries. Similar candidates have won or advanced in Colorado, Michigan, Pennsylvania and elsewhere.
Wisconsin just ran the same experiment statewide. State Rep. Francesca Hong, a dues-paying Madison Area DSA member since 2020, led the Democratic gubernatorial field for months. Milwaukee DSA and Madison Area DSA endorsed her to “advance our socialist movement to the state level.” She finished within about 4,000 votes of Milwaukee County Executive David Crowley on Aug. 11, a margin of roughly half a percentage point. DSA organizers called the loss a proof of concept.
While Hong lost the primary, the movement did not pause. Milwaukee already has DSA-backed officials on the Common Council, County Board and Milwaukee Public Schools board, plus an informal Socialist Caucus in the Assembly revived in 2023 for the first time since 1931.
Wisconsin has a longer socialist electoral history than almost any other state. Milwaukee elected socialist mayors for much of 1910 to 1960. The current socialist platform AFP is fighting against includes price controls, public ownership of groceries and banking, wealth taxes, Green New Deal-scale industrial policy and abolishing ICE and treating prison abolition as a long-term goal.
AFP’s campaign argues that socialists treat any problem in society as proof that America’s foundation should be dismantled rather than repaired through competition and growth.
“Free people build things nobody planned for them to build,” the campaign says. “The phone in your pocket. The company that started in a garage and now employs thousands. None of it happens on command. …That bet paid off. It made us the freest, richest country in human history.”
The campaign will also feature events with Daniel Di Martino, a Manhattan Institute fellow who fled Venezuela and argues that “democratic socialist” rhetoric often precedes price controls, nationalizations and collapse.
