By Dan Murphy
My family first moved to Westchester in 1972, from the same Parkchester neighborhood in the Bronx as Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, who shocked the political world last month when she defeated Congressman Joe Crowley in a Democratic primary in Queens and the Bronx. Both Ocasio-Cortez and I attended Yorktown High School; I graduated in 1985, and she graduated in 2007.
I remain in the same area of northern Westchester and southern Putnam County that I grew up in. I wanted to stay here, I’m proud of the roots that my family and I have made here, and I wanted my daughter to try and have the same experience and education that I had growing up.
Ocasio-Cortez has taken a different path that has catapulted her into the national spotlight and will likely, after Nov.6, make her the youngest female member of Congress in U.S. history – at age 28.
After her high school graduation, Ocasio-Cortez attended Boston University and worked for Sen. Ted Kennedy before returning to New York to work and help the family maintain their Yorktown home after the death of her father in 2008.
The Washington Post recently opined about Ocasio-Cortez and her unwillingness to acknowledge or be proud of her Westchester upbringing and education until she was confronted with it.
“In fact, there is another way Cardillo could have told this story: Ocasio-Cortez’s family did everything ‘right’ in the way we traditionally think they should do it in the United States,” writes the Washington Post. “Yet they still almost financially cratered when they encountered a bad patch. That’s not uncommon in a country with an inadequate safety net, where 40 percent of the population says they could not come up with $400 in an emergency.”
Because of the hard work of her parents and family, Ocasio-Cortez was able to live the American dream. That is the experience that most of us had growing up in Yorktown, and most of us freely admit it.
Previously, Ocasio-Cortez’s biography stated: “She ended up attending public school 40 minutes north in Yorktown, and much of her life was defined by the 40-minute commute between school and her family in the Bronx.”
But Ocasio-Cortez didn’t commute to school in Yorktown; she lived there with her mother in a house purchased for $150,000 in 1992. Like many families, her family pooled their resources and were able to come up with the down payment for a home with the help of family. My grandparents helped my mom and dad come up with the $6,000 down payment for our Ridge Street Yorktown home in 1972. The price was $32,000. My old home is now up for sale for $475,000.
Eventually her home was sold in 2016 for $355,000
After her primary victory June 26, Ocasio-Cortez told Stephen Colbert that President Donald Trump “doesn’t know how to deal with a girl from the Bronx.”
After being confronted with her Yorktown history, Ocasio-Cortez responded by saying: “A major part of my story, and what I’ve shared with my neighbors throughout this campaign, is that I grew up between two worlds. At a young age, my entire extended family (aunts, grandparents, etc.) chipped in on a down payment for a small home in Yorktown so I could go to public school there. My mom was as a house cleaner for other people in the town, so we could get by.
“Your attempt to strip me of my family, my story, my home, and my identity is exemplary of how scared you are of the power of all four of those things. It was clear to her, even then, that the zip code a child was born in determined much of their destiny. The 40-minute drive represented a vastly different quality of available schooling, economic opportunity and health outcomes.
“It is nice (Yorktown). Growing up, it was a good town for working people.”
Most of the teachers and students that graduated with Ocasio-Cortez at YHS remember her fondly. In 2007, she was honored by the Yorktown Town Board for her second-place finish in the Intel Science and Engineering Fair Competition. In another competition, the MIT Lincoln Laboratory named an asteroid after her – asteroid 23238 Ocasio-Cortez’s after a global science fair.
Yorktown High School science teacher Michael Blueglass called Ocasio-Cortez “extremely gifted and amazing. She’s always wanted to make a difference,” he said. “She cares about other people tremendously, always did. She was always friendly with all different groups of students and she always cared about doing the right thing.”
Another Yorktown alum in the Class of 2007, Jose Alvarado, became an unofficial photographer-videographer for Ocasio-Cortez’s congressional campaign. “Her story is unique, inspiring and historical, and she is only an election away from getting into Congress and being the first woman of color to represent her native Bronx neighborhood and district of NY-14,” he said.
Ocasio-Cortez is a self-described Democratic Socialist who has identified eradicating homelessness, Medicare for all, free tuition at public universities, a $15 minimum wage, and abolishing U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement as her major issues of concern, saying, “I believe that in a modern, moral and wealthy society, no person in America should be too poor to live.”
Politics appears to have always been in her blood. While at BU she worked in Sen. Ted Kennedy’s office. After volunteering for presidential candidate Bernie Sanders in 2016, Ocasio-Cortez moved to New York City and began part-time work to make ends meet, including bartending, before making her legendary run for Congress.
How did she do it? Hard work and by getting nontraditional voters out to vote on a nontraditional voting day. “People (pollsters) try to identify who is the most likely person to turn out. What we did is we changed who turns out,” said Ocasio-Cortez, who had many millennials and indivisible voters cast a vote for her.
Ocasio-Cortez and her volunteers collected 5,480 signatures to get on the ballot – a mammoth undertaking with an impressive result. The campaign was run out of her Bronx apartment, and clearly she was able to speak to underrepresented voters in the district.
Another reason not to believe pollsters anymore is the fact that in early June, one poll had Ocasio-Cortez down 30 points to Crowley. On primary night, she beat Crowley 57 to 43 percent, meaning the polls had it wrong by 40 points.
Crowley’s absence and stupidity also played a role, as he didn’t appear at debates, and he lives with his family in northern Virginia. Ocasio-Cortez tapped into the vastly changing demographics in the district where Latino voters outnumber all others.
Barring an unforeseen event, Ocasio-Cortez will be sworn in as the next member of Congress from the 14th District – a district that is Democratic by a 20-1 margin. Her opponent is St. John’s professor Anthony Pappas, a member of the Green Party whose major issue is judicial reform.
She’s Bronx born, but grew up in Westchester, which doesn’t have to go against her campaign persona as a Socialist-Progressive Latina. You don’t have to be embarrassed because your family worked their rear ends off to give you a better life.
