Friday, June 29, 2018

Ocasio-Cortez Toppled a Giant. Are These N.Y. Democrats Next?



The night after Representative Joseph Crowley’s stunning defeat, another Bronx politician who faces an energetic primary challenge from the left, State Senator Jeffrey D. Klein, happened to be holding a birthday party at Limani, the upscale Rockefeller Center restaurant.

The topic, inevitably, turned to the fate of Mr. Crowley. Making the case why his own primary would be different, Mr. Klein told attendees the story of when he ran into Mr. Crowley, whose district overlaps with Mr. Klein’s, at a Bronx parade last year.

“Good to see you here,” Mr. Klein recalled telling the congressman, according to a person at the party. “You must have gotten a new GPS.”

The victory of Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, a 28-year-old activist, over Mr. Crowley, one of the state’s most powerful Democrats, has reshuffled New York’s political order. As emboldened progressive activists dream of their next targets, Mr. Klein and the band of renegade Democrats he led in Albany, who for years broke with the Democratic Party to help keep Republicans in power in the State Senate, are at the top of the list.

The districts of two of the eight senators, those of Mr. Klein and Jose R. Peralta, overlap with the seat that Ms. Ocasio-Cortez won, underscoring just how close to home the progressive insurgency had struck. Like in Mr. Crowley’s race, younger female candidates are challenging both men.

“Even though I set out on this race knowing this is possible,” Alessandra Biaggi, the 32-year-old challenger to Mr. Klein said in an interview on Thursday, “it feels like voters are waking up.”

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Source: The New York Times (via Empire Report New York) 

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