Five Incoming Socialists Offer Different Tools to Lower Costs

Card photograph: ARCHIVE. Alex Brower at DSA’s Power to the People rally outside Milwaukee City Hall, June 24, 2026. Photo: Paul Johnson (@7pej), CC BY 4.0. Cropped for the card. License. Source photograph.

The five DSA-backed candidates elected to the House on November 3 propose several different ways to reduce the cost of daily life: public provision, cash income, rent limits and stronger rights against employers. NPR identified the winners as Chris Rabb, Donavan McKinney, Melat Kiros, Claire Valdez and Darializa Avila Chevalier.

Their programs overlap without constituting a single negotiated legislative package. The distinction matters separately from their potential leverage in the House speaker election: agreement about the direction of change does not make the policy instruments identical.

Rabb and McKinney: services and income

Rabb’s platform proposes public grocery stores, free high-speed transit and public broadband, alongside universal basic income. The public-service proposals would bring government into supplying necessities rather than only helping households pay private sellers. The income proposal would leave recipients to decide how to spend an additional cash benefit.

ARCHIVE. Denny Substation and community space in Seattle on its opening day, July 20, 2019. SounderBruce / Bruce Englehardt. CC BY-SA 4.0. License. Source photograph.

Those tools can complement one another. A public grocery network could reduce dependence on a private retailer, while cash could meet expenses a food program does not cover. But cash alone leaves the prices and availability of goods in private hands.

McKinney also supports universal basic income, while emphasizing transit investment in Detroit and taxes on wealthy households and corporations to fund public services. Reliable transit can reduce the need to own a car. An income payment makes an existing transport bill easier to meet; a functioning public network can remove part of that bill entirely.

Kiros: ownership and care

Kiros’s program pairs Medicare for All and universal child and elder care with publicly owned utilities. These proposals concern both the service supplied and the institution controlling it.

Public utility ownership would give public bodies responsibilities now exercised by private owners. Universal care would reduce the unpaid work relatives perform when households cannot buy help. Neither is simply a tax credit reimbursing a portion of private costs. Both would require capacity to deliver the promised service.

Valdez and Avila Chevalier: enforceable limits

Valdez proposes ending at-will employment and expanding union organizing rights. Her program also backs universal rent control and public housing. The labor proposals address workers’ ability to challenge management without arbitrary loss of their livelihood. They would change bargaining conditions rather than only raise a statutory pay floor.

Avila Chevalier’s housing plan specifies a 5% annual rent-increase limit for existing units owned by large landlords, full funding for NYCHA and protection of Section 9 housing from market-rate conversion. The landlord and unit restrictions make that proposed cap more specific than a general endorsement of rent control.

Her day-one commitments include the Homes Act and protection against retaliation for voucher tenants who organize. That combines construction with residents’ ability to act collectively. The public-housing legislation also raises the question of residents’ authority over repair projects.

A rent cap limits what an owner can charge; public housing changes ownership; an organizing right gives residents a way to contest decisions together. The five programs are strongest where they combine these instruments rather than assume that a larger paycheck alone can defeat every claim a landlord, employer or utility makes on it.