Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez

Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (born October 13, 1989), also known by her initials AOC, is an American politician and activist who has served since 2019 as the U.S. representative for New York's 14th congressional district. She is a member of the Democratic Party.

Ocasio-Cortez was first elected to Congress in 2018, drawing national attention after defeating Democratic Caucus chair and 10-term incumbent Joe Crowley in the Democratic primary election. Crowley's defeat was widely regarded as the biggest primary upset that year. Ocasio-Cortez was reelected in 2020, 2022, and 2024.

Taking office at age 29, Ocasio-Cortez is the youngest woman ever elected to Congress. She was also, alongside Rashida Tlaib, one of the first two female members of the Democratic Socialists of America (DSA) elected to Congress. She advocates a progressive platform that includes support for worker cooperatives, Medicare for All, tuition-free public colleges, a jobs guarantee, a Green New Deal, and abolishing ICE. She is a leader of the left-wing faction of the Democratic Party and a member of the "Squad", an informal progressive congressional bloc.

Early life and education

Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez was born in the Parkchester neighborhood of the Bronx, a borough of New York City, on October 13, 1989, the daughter of Sergio Ocasio-Roman and Blanca Ocasio-Cortez (née Cortez). She has a younger brother named Gabriel. Her father was born in the Bronx to a Puerto Rican family and became an architect; her mother was born in Puerto Rico. The family lived in an apartment in Parkchester until Ocasio-Cortez was five, when they moved to a house in suburban Yorktown Heights. She said that her family raised enough money to buy a small home there so that she could go to school, and that her mother worked as a house cleaner in the town.

Ocasio-Cortez attended Yorktown High School, graduating in 2007. In high school and college, Ocasio-Cortez went by the name of "Sandy Ocasio". She came in second in the microbiology category of the Intel International Science and Engineering Fair in 2007 with a research project on the effect of antioxidants on the lifespan of the nematode Caenorhabditis elegans. In a show of appreciation for her efforts, the MIT Lincoln Laboratory named a small asteroid after her: 23238 Ocasio-Cortez. In high school, she took part in the National Hispanic Institute's Lorenzo de Zavala (LDZ) Youth Legislative Session. After graduating, she became the LDZ secretary of state while attending Boston University. Ocasio-Cortez had a John F. Lopez Fellowship.

Her father died of lung cancer in 2008, during her second year of college, and Ocasio-Cortez became involved in a lengthy probate dispute to settle his estate. She has said that the experience helped her learn "first-hand how attorneys appointed by the court to administer an estate can enrich themselves at the expense of the families struggling to make sense of the bureaucracy". During college, Ocasio-Cortez was an intern for U.S. senator Ted Kennedy, in his section on foreign affairs and immigration issues. In interviews, she said that she was the only Spanish speaker in the office and the sole person responsible for assisting Spanish-speaking constituents. Ocasio-Cortez graduated cum laude from Boston University in 2011 with a bachelor's degree in international relations and economics.

Early career

After college, Ocasio-Cortez moved back to the Bronx and took a job as a bartender and waitress to help her mother—a house cleaner and school bus driver—fight foreclosure of their home. She later launched Brook Avenue Press, a now-defunct publishing firm for books that portrayed the Bronx in a positive light. Ocasio-Cortez also worked for the nonprofit National Hispanic Institute.

During the 2016 primary, Ocasio-Cortez worked as an organizer for Bernie Sanders's presidential campaign. After the general election, she traveled across America by car, visiting places such as Flint, Michigan, and the Standing Rock Indian Reservation in North Dakota, and speaking to people affected by the Flint water crisis and the Dakota Access Pipeline. In an interview, she recalled her December 2016 visit to Standing Rock as a tipping point, saying that until then she had believed that the only way to run for office effectively was to have access to wealth, social influence, and power. But her visit to North Dakota, where she saw others "putting their whole lives and everything that they had on the line for the protection of their community", inspired her to begin to work for her own community. One day after she visited North Dakota, she got a phone call from Brand New Congress, which was recruiting progressive candidates (her brother had nominated her soon after Election Day 2016). Ocasio-Cortez said she was first exposed to the Democratic Socialists of America (DSA) when a friend brought her to a local meeting in Washington Heights. She has credited Jabari Brisport's unsuccessful City Council campaign with restoring her belief in electoral politics, in running as a socialist candidate, and in the DSA as an organization.

Elections

2018

Ocasio-Cortez began her campaign in April 2017 while waiting tables and tending bar at Flats Fix, a taqueria in New York City's Union Square. "For 80 percent of this campaign, I operated out of a paper grocery bag hidden behind that bar", she told Bon Appétit. She was the first person since 2004 to challenge Joe Crowley, the Democratic Caucus Chair, in the primary. She faced a financial disadvantage, saying, "You can't really beat big money with more money. You have to beat them with a totally different game." Ocasio-Cortez's campaign undertook grassroots mobilization and did not take donations from corporations. Her campaign posters' designs were said to have taken inspiration from "revolutionary posters and visuals from the past".

The candidates' only face-to-face encounter during the campaign occurred on a local political talk show, Inside City Hall, on June 15. The format was a joint interview conducted by Errol Louis, which NY1 characterized as a debate. A debate in the Bronx was scheduled for June 18, but Crowley did not participate. He sent former New York City Council member Annabel Palma in his place.

Endorsements

Ocasio-Cortez was endorsed by progressive and civil-rights organizations such as MoveOn and Democracy for America. Governor Andrew Cuomo endorsed Crowley, as did both of New York's U.S. senators, Chuck Schumer and Kirsten Gillibrand, multiple U.S. representatives, various local elected officials and trade unions, and groups such as the Sierra Club, Planned Parenthood, the Working Families Party, NARAL Pro-Choice America, and Moms Demand Action for Gun Sense in America, among others. California representative Ro Khanna, a Justice Democrat like Ocasio-Cortez, initially endorsed Crowley but later endorsed Ocasio-Cortez in an unusual dual endorsement.

Primary election

Ocasio-Cortez received 57.13% of the vote (15,897) to Crowley's 42.5% (11,761), defeating the 10-term incumbent by almost 15 percentage points on June 26, 2018. The result shocked many political commentators and analysts and immediately garnered nationwide attention. Many news sources, including Time, CNN, The New York Times, and The Guardian mentioned how the win completely defied their predictions and expectations. She was outspent by a margin of 18 to 1 ($1.5 million to $83,000) but won the endorsement of some influential groups on the party's left. Crowley conceded defeat on election night, but did not telephone Ocasio-Cortez that night to congratulate her, fueling short-lived speculation that he intended to run against her in the general election.

Bernie Sanders and Noam Chomsky congratulated her. Several commentators noted the similarities between Ocasio-Cortez's victory over Crowley and Dave Brat's Tea Party movement-supported 2014 victory over House majority leader Eric Cantor in the Republican primary for Virginia's 7th congressional district. Like Crowley, Cantor was a high-ranking member in his party's caucus. After her primary win, Ocasio-Cortez endorsed several progressive primary challengers to Democratic incumbents nationwide.

Without campaigning for it, Ocasio-Cortez won the Reform Party primary as a write-in candidate in a neighboring congressional district, New York's 15th, with a total vote count of nine, the highest among all 22 write-in candidates. She declined the nomination.

General election

Ocasio-Cortez faced Republican nominee Anthony Pappas in the November 6 general election. Pappas, an economics professor, did not actively campaign. The 14th district has a Cook Partisan Voting Index of D+29, making it New York City's sixth-most Democratic district, with registered Democrats outnumbering Republicans almost six to one.

Ocasio-Cortez was endorsed by various politically progressive organizations and figures, including former president Barack Obama and U.S. senator Bernie Sanders. She spoke at the Netroots Nation conference in August 2018, and was called "the undisputed star of the convention".