UPDATE: June 26 Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez has bested Rep. Joe Crowley (D-N.Y.) to clinch the Democratic nomination in New Yorks 14th Congressional District.
Her win has been described as the biggest primary upset of 2018 . With almost 90 percent of precincts reporting, Ocasio-Cortez amassed 57 percent of the vote to Crowleys 42 percent.
PREVIOUSLY:
Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez is a young progressive Latina running for Congress in New Yorks 14th District but her bid is a longshot against longtime Democratic incumbent Rep. Joe Crowley .
The 28-year-old, who has never held elected office, is challenging Crowley chairman of the House Democratic Caucus, described by some as one of the most powerful Democrats in the House who has been in Congress for nearly two decades.
The Latina millennial, born in the Bronx to a Puerto Rican mom and a Bronxite dad, is running on a boldly progressive platform, including ideas like Medicare for all, which have become more mainstream among Democratic Party leaders in recent years, and other more radical proposals, like abolishing Immigration and Customs Enforcement and having a federal job guarantee .
The newcomer is one of several Democratic candidates in 2018 challenging seats held not by Republicans but by longtime Democrats such as state Sen. Kevin de Len trying to unseat Sen. Dianne Feinstein in California.
Ocasio-Cortez is also part of a wave of women running for office since President Donald Trump s election with some historic victories in primaries so far for Stacey Abrams in Georgia and Lupe Valdez in Texas.
The district in New York she hopes to represent, which encompasses parts of the Bronx and Queens, is one of the most diverse areas in the country.
Our district is overwhelmingly people of color, its working class, its very immigrant and it hasnt had the representation weve needed, Ocasio-Cortez told HuffPost by phone Thursday. She referred to Crowley, 56 who is white and a New Yorker from a middle-class Irish family as a more middle-of-the-road candidate financed by corporations.
I just dont think its good enough, she added. After 20 years of the same leadership, its time for a new day.
Its worth noting that Crowleys political track record includes supporting progressive policies like co-sponsoring the Medicare for All Act , signing onto legislation to increase the federal minimum wage to $15 an hour, and supporting closing New Yorks notorious Rikers Island prison.
The odds are heavily stacked against Ocasio-Cortez. Her fundraising numbers are a fraction of Crowleys, with about $250,000 raised to her name so far, according to her team, compared to Crowleys approximately $1.5 million , per OpenSecrets.
In a recent political ad , which made waves on social media and which Ocasio-Cortez wrote herself, the millennial touts her working-class roots and her campaigns refusal to take corporate money.
Im not running from the left; Im running from the bottom, she told HuffPost. Im running in fierce advocacy for working-class New Yorkers.
She was born in the Bronx and moved to the wealthier suburb of Yorktown at a young age, in her parents effort to provide her with access to better schools. But with her dads small business and much of her family remaining in the Bronx, she felt like she grew up between two worlds.
My cousins had different schools, quality of life, different air than me, because of the ZIP Codes where we [lived], Ocasio-Cortez said. I know what its like to access the privilege of a ZIP Code but also be born in one that could have destined me to something else.
A generation later, my nieces and nephews are facing the same inequity, she added. Its not going stop unless we make it stop.
While in college at Boston University, she interned and worked in the immigration office of the late Sen. Ted Kennedy (D-Mass.), where, as one of the only Latinas and Spanish speakers, she became intimately familiar with the struggles of undocumented immigrants. Of her proposal to abolish ICE, she says its not as radical as separating parents from their babies referring to a recent policy from the Trump administration to split migrant parents and kids at the border, which has sparked outrage.
When Ocasio-Cortezs father died at the height of the financial crisis in 2008 and her mom had to go back to work cleaning houses and driving a bus, Ocasio-Cortez took shifts as a waitress to pitch in. After she graduated college in 2011, she moved back to the Bronx. She later became an educator with the nonprofit National Hispanic Institute, and volunteered as an organizer on Bernie Sanders 2016 presidential campaign.
Last year, she launched her own bid for office.
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