Cortez Puts Foot in Mouth Again
Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez: A 28-Year-Old Democratic Giant Slayer
She has never held elected office. She is yet paying off her student loans. She is 28 years old. "Women like me aren't supposed to run for function," Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez said in a viral campaign video released final month.
They certainly weren't supposed to win.
But in a stunning upset Tuesday night that ignited the New York and national political worlds, Ms. Ocasio-Cortez, a Bronx-born community organizer and member of the Democratic Socialists of America, defeated Representative Joseph Crowley, a 19-year incumbent and Queens political stalwart who had not faced a primary challenger in xiv years.
Mr. Crowley, who is twice Ms. Ocasio-Cortez'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 Ms. Ocasio-Cortez defeats the Republican candidate, Anthony Pappas, in the predominantly Autonomous district in Nov, she would dethrone Elise Stefanik, a Republican representative from upstate New York, every bit the youngest woman ever elected to Congress (Ms. Stefanik was xxx when she took office in 2015).
"I'm an organizer in this community, and I knew living here and existence hither and seeing and organizing with families hither, that it was possible," a visibly shocked Ms. Ocasio-Cortez said in an interview at her victory party on Tuesday. "I knew that it was long odds, and I knew that it was uphill, just I e'er knew it was possible."
[Read more on Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez's major Democratic upset]
The girl of a Puerto Rican female parent and a Bronx-born male parent, Ms. Ocasio-Cortez earned a degree in economics and international relations from Boston University but worked as a waitress and bartender later graduating in 2011 to supplement her mother's income as a firm cleaner and bus driver, according to The Intercept. Her father, a modest-business organisation owner, had died 3 years earlier of cancer; after his death, her family unit fought foreclosure and her mother and grandmother eventually moved to Florida.
She dabbled in establishment politics during college, working for Senator Edward Thou. Kennedy, Democrat of Massachusetts, on clearing bug, but soon turned her attention to the grass-roots piece of work that would come up to define her candidacy.
Returning to the Bronx later graduation, she began advocating improved childhood education and literacy, starting a children's book publishing company that sought to portray her home borough in a positive light, according to a 2012 article in The New York Daily News. The importance of teaching had been instilled in her from a young age: As a kid, she was sent to school in Yorktown in Westchester Canton because of the dearth of quality schools in the Bronx.
She returned to national politics when she worked equally an organizer for the 2016 presidential campaign of Senator Bernie Sanders, contained of Vermont. Just even then, the idea of one 24-hour interval seeking role herself seemed unattainable.
"I never actually saw myself running on my own," she told New York magazine this month. "I counted out that possibility considering I felt that possibility had counted out me. I felt like the only mode 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 whatever of those things."
But if Ms. Ocasio-Cortez has, overnight, become the confront of progressives' hopes for ousting not but Republicans but also moderate Democrats who they see as insufficiently outraged nearly President Trump, her bid against Mr. Crowley predates the anti-Trump backfire that has fueled what many come across as a "blue wave" across the country.
She has credited her decision to seek office with her experience protesting at the Standing Rock Sioux Reservation in 2016 confronting the Dakota Access Pipeline. Presently afterwards, she was contacted past Brand New Congress, a newly formed progressive arrangement that asked her to run.
Ms. Ocasio-Cortez, who has chosen for Medicare for all, tuition-gratuitous public colleges and the abolitionism of the Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency, made her underdog status the cardinal pillar of her upstart campaign.
In her bid against Mr. Crowley, she was unafraid to foreground race, gender, historic period and class. When Mr. Crowley sent a Latina surrogate to debate Ms. Ocasio-Cortez terminal week, citing scheduling conflicts, Ms. Ocasio-Cortez blasted him on Twitter for sending someone with a "slight resemblance to me." She attacked Mr. Crowley for taking corporate money, for not living in the district and for looking increasingly unlike the constituents of the Bronx and Queens he was elected to correspond.
"These communities have been so ignored," she said in an interview with The New York Times earlier this month. "What other leaders or what other choices does this community fifty-fifty take? For me, I but feel like it's a responsibleness to show upwardly for this community."
She has joined activists in Flint, Mich., calling for safe drinking water, and traveled to the Mexican border this by weekend to protest family separations of migrants.
Similar Mr. Sanders, Ms. Ocasio-Cortez made her rejection of corporate donations and reliance on small donors a rallying cry for supporters; nearly 70 percent of her campaign funds came from private contributions nether $200.
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"Not all Democrats are the same," she said in her May campaign video, calculation — her voice rise with emotion — that a Democrat who "doesn't send his kids to our schools, doesn't drink our water or breathe our air cannot possibly represent united states."
"Congress is likewise sometime," she told a reporter from the website Aristocracy Daily. "They don't have a stake in the game."
Earlier Tuesday'southward victory catapulted her to the front of the political conversation, Ms. Ocasio-Cortez seemed to find readier audiences with outlets such every bit Elite Daily, Mic or Refinery29 — websites about often associated with millennial and female audiences — than with traditional publications.
That is about to change.
"I'one thousand hoping that this is a beginning," Ms. Ocasio-Cortez said at her victory political party on Tuesday. "That nosotros tin go along this organizing and continue what we've learned."
Still, shock seemed to be the predominant emotion at Ms. Ocasio-Cortez's party on Tuesday. "Oh my God, oh my God," she said equally she realized she had won, her hands flying to her oral fissure and her eyes widening. Throughout the night, as more and more people flooded into the packed Bronx puddle hall, Ms. Ocasio-Cortez was trailed by a swarm of reporters, supporters and campaign staff clamoring for hugs, selfies or just a glimpse of the adult female behind a feat many had considered impossible.
She added, "I hope that this reminds us of what the Autonomous Party should be about, which is, start and foremost, accountability from the working-class people."
Source: https://www.nytimes.com/2018/06/27/nyregion/alexandria-ocasio-cortez.html
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