Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (born October 13, 1989), also known as 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 and the Democratic Socialists of America.
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. Ocasio-Cortez has been described as progressive, left-wing, left-wing populist, and far-left. 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.
Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez was born on October 13, 1989, in the Parkchester neighborhood of the Bronx, New York City. Her father, Sergio Ocasio-Roman, was born in the Bronx to a Puerto Rican family and became an architect; her mother, Blanca Ocasio-Cortez (née Cortés Rivera), was born in Puerto Rico and raised in Arecibo. She has a younger brother, Gabriel. The family lived in an apartment in Parkchester until Ocasio-Cortez was five, when they moved to a small house in suburban Yorktown Heights. According to Ocasio-Cortez, her parents pooled their savings to buy the home so that their children could attend better public schools; her mother worked as a house cleaner and school bus driver.
Ocasio-Cortez attended Yorktown High School, graduating in 2007. She placed second in the microbiology category of the Intel International Science and Engineering Fair in 2007 with a research project testing the effects of antioxidants on the lifespan of the nematode Caenorhabditis elegans. In high school, she participated in the National Hispanic Institute's Lorenzo de Zavala Youth Legislative Session. Her first job was as a hostess at an Irish pub in Westchester County. After graduating from high school, she served as an LDZ Secretary of State while attending Boston University. She was also a John F. Lopez Intern.
Her father died of lung cancer in 2008, during her second year of college, and she became involved in a lengthy probate dispute over his estate. She said the experience taught her "firsthand 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 interned in the Boston office of U.S. senator Ted Kennedy, working on foreign affairs and immigration issues. She said that, as the office's only Spanish speaker, she handled calls from Spanish-speaking constituents. Ocasio-Cortez graduated cum laude from Boston University in 2011 with a Bachelor of Arts degree, double-majoring in international relations and economics.
After college, Ocasio-Cortez moved back to the Bronx, where she worked as a bartender and waitress to help her mother avoid foreclosure on their family home. She later launched Brook Avenue Press, a publishing venture intended to produce books portraying the Bronx favorably. Ocasio-Cortez also worked as an educational director for the National Hispanic Institute.
Before running for Congress, Ocasio-Cortez worked as an organizer for the Bernie Sanders 2016 presidential campaign. After the election, she traveled across the U.S. 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 received a 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.
U.S. House of Representatives (2019–present)
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 were said to have been inspired by "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.
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, who, like Ocasio-Cortez, was backed by Justice Democrats, initially endorsed Crowley but later endorsed Ocasio-Cortez in an unusual dual endorsement.
On June 26, 2018, Ocasio-Cortez received 56.7% of the vote (16,898) to Crowley's 43.3% (12,880). The result immediately attracted nationwide attention and was widely described as an upset, including by Time, CNN, The New York Times, and The Guardian. She was outspent by a margin of 18 to 1 ($1.5 million to $83,000) but was endorsed by some influential groups on the party's left. Crowley conceded on election night, but did not telephone Ocasio-Cortez that night to congratulate her, fueling short-lived speculation that he might 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.