28-year-old NYC community activist becomes giant slayer in U.S. House race
NEW YORK — She has never held elected office. She is still paying off her student loans. She is 28 years old. “Women like me aren’t supposed to run for office,” Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez said in a viral campaign video released last month.
But in a stunning upset Tuesday night that ignited the New York and national political worlds, Ocasio-Cortez, a Bronx-born community organizer and member of the Democratic Socialists of America, defeated Rep. Joseph Crowley, a 19-year incumbent and Queens political stalwart who had not faced a primary challenger in 14 years.
Crowley, who is twice OcasioCortez’s age, is the No. 4 Democrat in the House of Representatives and had been favored to ascend to the speaker’s lectern if Democrats retook the lower chamber this fall.
If Ocasio-Cortez defeats the Republican candidate, Anthony Pappas, in the predominantly Democratic district in November, she would dethrone Elise Stefanik, a Republican representative from central New York, as the youngest woman ever elected to Congress (Stefanik was 30 when she took office in 2015).
“I’m an organizer in this community, and I knew living here and being here and seeing and organizing with families here, that it was possible,” a visibly shocked OcasioCortez said in an interview at her victory party Tuesday. “I knew that it was long odds and I knew that it was uphill, but I always knew it was possible.”
The daughter of a Puerto Rican mother and a Bronx-born father, Ocasio-Cortez earned a degree in economics and international relations from Boston University but worked as a waitress and bartender after graduating in 2011 to supplement her mother’s income as a house cleaner and bus driver, according to the Intercept. Her father, a small-business owner, had died three years earlier of cancer.
She dabbled in establishment politics during college, working for Sen. Ted Kennedy, D-Mass., on immigration issues, but soon turned her attention to the grassroots work that would come to define her candidacy.
She returned to national politics when she worked as an organizer for the 2016 presidential campaign of Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt. But even then, the idea of one day seeking office herself seemed unattainable.
“I never really saw myself running on my own,” she told New York magazine this month. “I counted out that possibility because I felt that possibility had counted out me. I felt like the only way to effectively run for office is if you had access to a lot of wealth, high social influence, a lot of dynastic power, and I knew that I didn’t have any of those things.”