NY-14: Goliath falls to OCASIO!

[Jeppe]

Representative Joe Crowley’s primary opponent, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, recently went viral with her ad. She’s running to Crawley’s left and attacking him for not living in the district.

https://twitter.com/ocasio2018/status/1001795660524457985?s=21

Crowley has been taking the primary challenge very seriously, but his loss would be very similar to Dave Brat’s upset win in VA-07 several years ago. Joe Crawley is a part of Democratic House leadership and Pelosi’s likely successor as Speaker/Minority House Leader, so his loss would send shockwaves through the entire Democratic Party.

[Jeppe]

Crowley apparently complained that his opponent focuses too much on race and that he can't help. Which if true seems rather unwise to do in a district that is only 25% white.

https://theintercept.com/2018/06/09/joe-crowley-alexandria-ocasio-cortez/

18%, actually.

[Jeppe]

Do voters actually care if their U.S. representative even lives in their district or not? I feel like that line of attack never really works. Another state, yes, but another district?

It's more so that Crowley lives in Virginia, rather than in New York. His children go to schools in Arlington too, and ACO has been hitting him on that. It's quite a bit different from say, representing CA-45 but actually living in CA-48.

https://nypost.com/2011/07/08/queens-democratic-party-boss-lives-in-northern-virginia/

[Jeppe]

I think AOC has several factors working in her favour, although still faces an uphill climb.

- The district is split between Queens and Bronx, Crowley’s the boss of Queens, AOC’s Bronx born and raised. The battle lines get drawn easily here.
- The district is almost majority Hispanic, she’ll still face an uphill climb against an incumbent among this group regardless of her own race, but she’ll have an easier time persuading Hispanics to vote for her compared to an Alexandra Smith-Thompson.
- A lot of the white population in the district is basically hipsters (Astoria is the only sizeable community in the district with a large white population), and they’re more persuadable than old-school Catholic Irish or Italian ethnic whites.

[Jeppe]

Joe Crowley spent over $1.1 million in the pre-primary reporting, a sign that the race is more competitive than it appears on the surface. Him and Ocasio-Cortez are having a debate tomorrow night.

[Jeppe]

Why would he even debate?

The same reason he’s spent millions on the race already. He’s running scared.

[Jeppe]

Anyone have a link to the full debate? I missed it.

https://twitter.com/people4bernie/status/1007763237029359616?s=21

[Jeppe]

<0.5% people outside of his district even know who Khanna. I don't even know why he's bothering  endorsing anyone and why he thinks it matters.

Because it gives legitimacy to  a congressional candidate, when they claim an endorsement on a mailer from a sitting congresscritter. There are some other congressmembers that endorse a candidate in basically every single contested primary, like Lois Frankel, and even she basically said that “My endorsement certainly doesn’t matter that much, I’m not Michelle Obama”.

[Jeppe]

If Newman can’t take out Lipinski, this rando can’t take out the Borough Boss.

The differences are that this race is less nationalized and this race doesn't have a history of social conservatism (or any kind of conservatism).

Republicans aren’t also going to be voting en masse to save Crowley (nor will a bunch of Republican Super PAC’s spend hundreds of thousands for him). The only people Crowley’s accountable to in this primary is his Democratic base.

[Jeppe]

https://twitter.com/jiveDurkey/status/1007791114848489483

Was thinking about endorsing Ocasio-Cortez, but not after this.

It’s a safe-blue district, so it really doesn’t matter whether AOC or Crowley endorses their opponent or not.

[Jeppe]

I think AOC will be just as classless when she loses as Marie Newman was

I don’t blame Newman, Lipinski and his people ran a very mean-spirited whisper campaign against her, texting basically everybody in the district saying that she was a Neo-Nazi and a Catholic-hater.

Crowley hasn’t been running as negative of a campaign, but that’s probably because he’s in a much more comfortable position than Lipinski was.

[Jeppe]

https://twitter.com/moveon/status/1008767780584349700?s=21

Ocasio-Cortez passed the 66% required for an endorsement between 2 candidates.

[Jeppe]

https://twitter.com/nytopinion/status/1009291277937139713?s=21

The NYT’s editorial board is criticizing Crowley for sending in a surrogate to debate AOC in his place, even though he was in the area.

“Instead of attending Monday evening’s debate, which was hosted by The Parkchester Times, Mr. Crowley visited a civic association meeting in Queens. Ms. Ocasio-Cortez was left to debate Mr. Crowley’s chosen surrogate, Ms. Palma. Ms. Palma once represented the Bronx on the City Council and now serves in Mayor Bill de Blasio’s administration as a deputy commissioner at the Department of Social Services.

Mr. Crowley’s constituents might well now wonder whether he intends, if re-elected, to have Ms. Palma make his floor speeches and cast his votes as well.”

Lol.

[Jeppe]

Crowley paid Global Strategy Group $22,000 for polling in mid-May but he never released the results.

[Jeppe]

Speaking of terrible debate performance from NYC incumbents:


https://twitter.com/insidecityhall/status/1008864032277909506?s=21

Clarke whooped him like a schoolboy.

[Jeppe]

All the mailers that Crowley has sent out to Ocasio-Cortez’s address, lol.

[Jeppe]

https://twitter.com/ocasio2018/status/1010216291536441344?s=21

[Jeppe]

Did anyone on here realize that Clarke almost lost NY-9? Lol. I read on Twitter that she, as expected, did well in the heavily black/Caribbean precincts, did okay in Russian & mixed districts, and poorly in gentrifying & wealthy precincts.

Yeah, Clarke held strong support with her black base, but the white folk moving into Brooklyn had high turnout and supported Bunkedekko by large margin. Black turnout will probably be higher in the 2020 primaries, especially if Kamala Harris is competitive by then, so I think Clarke will be in a safe position in 2020, especially if a bunch of other candidates jump into the race.

[Jeppe]

Some people were doing a documentary about her and her campaign, and they took this photo of her at 6pm, frantically talking to her family on the phone, worried about her (seemingly) inevitable loss.



Then her reaction to winning

https://twitter.com/bendreyfuss/status/1011822342740291584?s=21