Wednesday, June 27, 2018
Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez Defeats Joseph Crowley in Major Democratic House Upset
By Shane Goldmacher and Jonathan Martin
Representative Joseph Crowley of New York, once seen as a possible successor to Nancy Pelosi as Democratic leader of the House, suffered a shocking primary defeat on Tuesday, the most significant loss for a Democratic incumbent in more than a decade, and one that will reverberate across the party and the country.
Mr. Crowley was defeated by a 28-year-old political newcomer, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, a former organizer for Bernie Sanders’s presidential campaign, who had declared it was time for generational, racial and ideological change.
The last time Mr. Crowley, 56, even had a primary challenger, in 2004, Ms. Ocasio-Cortez was not old enough to vote.
Mr. Crowley, the No. 4 Democrat in the House, had drastically outspent his lesser-known rival to no avail, as Ms. Ocasio-Cortez’s campaign was lifted by an aggressive social media presence and fueled by attention from national progressives hoping to flex their muscle in a race against a potential future speaker.
Ms. Ocasio-Cortez had used Mr. Crowley’s role in the leadership, and the fact that he was the head of the local Democratic Party machine, against him in her bid to upend the existing political class. She will face Anthony Pappas, the Republican candidate, in the November general election.
[Read more on who Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez is and her history]
Mr. Crowley is the first House Democrat in the nation to lose a primary in 2018. His loss is most
significant for a congressional incumbent since Eric Cantor, then the No. 2 Republican in the House, was defeated in 2014 to a Tea Party activist, David Brat.
Like that contest, the Crowley defeat is expected to shake up Congress, where Mr. Crowley was seen as a top contender to replace Ms. Pelosi, if she stepped aside after the midterms.
The race was not close. Ms. Ocasio-Cortez had more than 57 percent of the vote, with almost all precincts reporting.
“It’s surreal,” Ms. Ocasio-Cortez said in a live television interview as the votes were being tallied.
By then, no television showed results at what was supposed to have been Mr. Crowley’s victory party.
Mr. Crowley appeared rattled when he spoke. “I know you’re all trying your best to make me cry, but it’s not going to happen,” he told supporters.
The guitar-strumming incumbent later played Bruce Springsteen’s “Born to Run,” and dedicated it to Ms. Ocasio-Cortez.
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Ms. Ocasio-Cortez is a native of the Bronx and a Latina in a Queens and Bronx district that is majority-minority, a fact she emphasized repeatedly on the trail against Mr. Crowley, who is white. In hindsight, the seat represented perhaps a perfect brew for an upset: a rusty incumbent, a charismatic challenger and a liberal district that gave Mr. Sanders more than 41 percent of the vote against Hillary Clinton.
“Women like me aren’t supposed to run for office,” Ms. Ocasio-Cortez said at the start of a biographical video that went viral last month and was viewed more than half-a-million times.
She ran as a woman, as a young person, as a working-class champion, as an unabashed liberal and as a person of color. She piled up endorsements from national progressive groups in recent weeks and from Cynthia Nixon, who is running her own insurgent bid for governor against Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo. Ms. Nixon attended the Ocasio-Cortez victory party.
“What I see is that the Democratic Party takes working class communities for granted, they take people of color for granted and they just assume that we’re going to turn out no matter how bland or half-stepping these proposals are,” Ms. Ocasio-Cortez said in a recent interview about why she was running.
A member of the Democratic Socialists of America, Ms. Ocasio-Cortez gathered endorsements from liberal groups like MoveOn, Democracy for America and People for Bernie. The news site The Intercept had urged her on, publishing a drumbeat of negative stories about Mr. Crowley, and glowing stories about her, in the campaign’s closing weeks.
President Trump, who like Mr. Crowley is from Queens, waded in on Twitter. “That is a big one that nobody saw happening,” Mr. Trump wrote. “Perhaps he should have been nicer, and more respectful, to his President!”
Days before the election, Ms. Ocasio-Cortez had unexpectedly left New York entirely to travel to Texas to protest the ongoing separation of children from their parents who crossed the border illegally.
That came on the heels of her call to abolish the Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency. Mr. Crowley heated up his own rhetoric in response to her challenge, calling it a “fascist organization,” but stopped short of saying it should be dissolved.
Ten days before the primary, Mr. Crowley skipped a debate against Ms. Ocasio-Cortez, and instead sent a surrogate, a Latina former city councilwoman. Ms. Ocasio-Cortez called it “a bizarre twist” on Twitter to be seated across from someone “with slight resemblance to me” instead of her opponent.
Ms. Ocasio-Cortez used the moment to generate a fresh wave of publicity in the race’s crucial closing days.
Waging a sharp and sometimes personal campaign, she attacked Mr. Crowley for not living in New York and, specifically, sending his children to school near Washington. When there was tear gas released on protesters in Puerto Rico, she tagged Mr. Crowley on Twitter and wrote, “You are responsible for this.” And when he asked her at a debate if she would endorse him, if he prevailed, she pointedly refused.
Mr. Crowley was not caught totally off guard. He had campaigned aggressively in the last six weeks, pouring hundreds of thousands of dollars into television ads and mailers, often highlighting his opposition to Mr. Trump.
But in an indication of how disparate the two camps were and how much of an outsider Ms. Ocasio-Cortez was, Mr. Crowley said that, as of 11 p.m., they had yet to speak. He did not have her number and he did not believe she had his.
Ms. Ocasio-Cortez’s triumph echoed some of the past upsets in New York City races that turned on a yearning for generational or racial change.
In 1992, for example, Nydia Velázquez, then 39, became the first Hispanic woman to represent New York City when she defeated a veteran congressman in a newly drawn district that was filled with Puerto Rican voters.
And two decades earlier, Elizabeth Holtzman, then only 31, unseated 84-year-old Representative Emanuel Celler, the chairman of the House Judiciary Committee, who had come to Congress during the Harding administration.
Mr. Crowley’s loss left Democrats in Washington stunned. In recent months, he had begun meeting with lawmakers in small groups in a quiet effort to prepare for a bid for the speakership.
His departure leaves a gaping vacuum in the House, where he is the top-ranked Democrat under the age of 70.
“Hi Nance,” Mr. Crowley greeted Ms. Pelosi when she called him shortly after his defeat. He later told reporters, “She called me to tell me how much she loves me.”
Representative Steny Hoyer, a longtime rival of Ms. Pelosi’s, now is freed from having to worry about Mr. Crowley in his ambition to be leader. But some House Democrats, speaking anonymously to discuss a delicate topic, said Tuesday night that given the party’s changing face, it would be difficult to dump Ms. Pelosi for an older, white male lawmaker.
In a flurry of phone calls and text messages, Democratic lawmakers floated names such as Cheri Bustos of Illinois, Linda Sanchez of California, Joseph Kennedy of Massachusetts and Seth Moulton of Massachusetts as potential younger alternatives to Ms. Pelosi. But Ms. Pelosi has made clear she intends to seek the post again if Democrats take back the House and it is not clear that any potential alternative candidate could build a coalition to defeat her.
As for Ms. Ocasio-Cortez, she had complained in recent weeks about media coverage that didn’t include her name but only that of the better-known man she was running against.
“Headlines from the Political Patriarchy,” she wrote on Twitter of one recent story.
Now, she is likely to be in headlines for years to come.
J. David Goodman and John Surico contributed reporting.
A version of this article appears in print on , on Page A1 of the New York edition with the headline: Democratic Power Broker, Once a Possible House Leader, Loses New York Primary. Order Reprints | Today’s Paper | Subscribe
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