Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez is an American Democratic Socialist who made the news after comprehensively beating one of the party’s most senior congressman Joe Crowley in a stunning New York election victory.
On November 6, 2018, she was elected as the U.S. Representative for New York’s 14th congressional district. In the history of US, she will be the youngest female candidate ever to be elected to Congress. A bartender struggling to meet the month ends pulling of the victory had certainly generated shock-waves among democratic parties.
What is Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez’s net worth? Introduction Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez is an American politician and activist who serves as the U.S. Representative for New York’s 14th congressional district. The district includes the eastern part of the Bronx and portions of north-central Queens in New York City. As of 2021, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez’s net worth is roughly $100. In age, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez is currently 29 years. Moving to her education, the victorious politician attended Yorktown High School in New York. There she bagged the second prize on Intel International Science and Engineering Fair.
Born on October 13, 1989, in the beautiful city of New York, Ocasio-Cortez made through headlines with her dramatic upset over Crowley. Raised by working-class Puerto Rican parents, Alexandria had a hard time meeting the ends during her childhood.
Up to age 5, she was raised in an apartment in the neighborhood of Parkchester. After that, they shifted to Yorktown Heights, a suburb in Westchester County.
Ocasio-Cortez joined Yorktown High school as she traveled between the borough and Yorktown, 30 miles north, for school. During her high school years, she won multiple prizes including the second prize in the International Science and Engineering Fair. She also showed her public speaking qualities during her participation in the National Hispanic Institute’s Lorenzo de Zavala (LDZ) Youth legislative session where she also became the LDZ secretary.
In 2008, her father died suddenly at 48 years old due to lung cancer. During that time she was a sophomore at Boston University and worked for the late Senator Ted Kennedy. In 2011, she graduated with a degree in economics and international relations from Boston University.
Before moving to New York, Alexandria’s family were in Puerto Rico where her grandfather lived in a nursing home. Unfortunately, her grandfather died due to the Hurricane Maria which led her parents to shift to the US for a better life.
In a video campaign, Ocasio-Cortez said, “I wasn’t born to a wealthy or powerful family… mother from Puerto Rico, dad from the South Bronx. She further eluded that her parents worked hard to move her family to Yorktown Heights when she was five so she could attend a better public school. After her father’s death in 2008 due to lung cancer, she had to work two-day jobs at “18 hours shifts” as a waitress and bartender.
In a long rally of counterblow Tweets with John Cardillo, she tweeted “My mom scrubbed toilets so I could live here & I grew up seeing how the zip code one is born in determines much of their opportunity.”
Ocasio-Cortez credits her Catholic upbringings for her life decisions and its impacts on her campaign for criminal justice reform. In 2018, the activist group “Jews for Racial & Economic Justice” held a Hanukkah party where she announced that her family has Sephardic Jewish ancestry though they did not practice the faith.
Before blasting her way to politics, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez worked as a lead educational strategist at GAGE, Inc. She was also an educator at a non-profit National Hispanic Institute. In 2016, she worked as an organizer for Bernie Sanders in his 2016 presidential campaign.
She was inspired to begin to work for her own community after she visited North Dakota, where she saw people “putting their whole lives and everything that they had on the line for the protection of their community”.
After so much struggle she won the Democratic primary race for the U.S. and became the Representative for New York’s 14th congressional district. Her victory is one of the biggest parts of a larger story of a Democratic party in revolt.
At the age of 28, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez was one of the youngest nominees for Congress. She was the first Democrat to challenge Crowley to a primary race since 2004.
If elected, she would become the youngest woman ever to be elected at the U.S. House of Representatives. That distinction was previously held by New York Republican Elise Stefanik, who was elected at the age 30 in 2014. Ocasio-Cortez, however, will be 29 at the start of the 116th Congress making her the youngest among the candidates.
Words cannot express my gratitude.
The people of the Bronx and Queens, and countless supporters across the country, elected us on a clear mandate to fight for economic + social justice in the United States of America.
And that is what we will do. pic.twitter.com/kMYu804v4r
— Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (@AOC) November 7, 2018
Ocasio-Cortez starred in many campaigns including Medicare for all, a federal jobs guarantee, tuition-free public college, and the abolition of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement. She also appeared on a protest at an ICE child detention center in Tornillo, Texas just two days before the primary election. Her powerful video campaign struck a sensitive button that stated: “Women like me aren’t supposed to run for office.”
That campaign went viral and laid a perfect foundation for her victory. During her victory speech and for cheering supporters on Tuesday she told that “This is not an end, this is the beginning”.
Talking about her Net worth, the information hasn’t been totally disclosed. All we know is that the member of Congress has something like five times the net worth of the typical American household in an average.
That’s why instead of talking about her bank account, it will be fruitful to talk about how much her peers in Congress have in theirs.
When it comes to social media, there aren’t many political stars that are shining as brightly as Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez. She is most active in Twitter but she isn’t far behind in Facebook and Instagram. She often finds herself defending a flurry of tweets with her witty replies.
The 28-year-old racks around 1.2 million followers on Instagram, and more than 1.54 million followers on Twitter. And the number just keeps on increasing. As for us, we will be rooting for her to win!
Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez is an American politician who is the Representative for New York’s 14th congressional district. The district covers the Eastern part of the Bronx and North-central Queens in New York City. Alexandria is quite close to the people of New York, and it is viewed as the main reason why she upset 10-time incumbent John Crowley in the 2018 midterm election primaries.
Ocasio-Cortez beat Anthony Pappas in the November general election to become the youngest woman to serve in the United States Congress. Alexandria is an excellent speaker with strong ideals that endear her to the people. This piece will look at her personal life. It will focus on her relationship, her experiences growing up, her family, and her religious background.
We can confirm that Alexandria isn’t married, but she is in a serious relationship.
Alexandria and Roberts met during their time in college, and they have been together ever since. They did break up for a while, but they swiftly got back together. Roberts is a web developer, and he doesn’t take an active part in politics. However, he does a lot to ensure that Alexandria is successful.
In 2018, Alexandria and Roberts lived off of his salary after Ocasio-Cortez quit her job to focus on politics. She told The New York Times:
“I have three months without a salary before I’m a member of Congress. So, how do I get an apartment? Those little things are very real. We’re kind of dealing with the logistics of it day by day, but I’ve really been just kind of squirreling away and then hoping it gets me to January.”
Roberts might not be directly involved in politics, but he has come under the spotlight several times. In January 2019, Alexandria posted a tweet saying:
“GOP have been losing their mind + frothing at the mouth all week, so this was just a matter of time. There is also a Daily Mail reporter (Ruth Styles) going to my boyfriend’s relative’s homes + offering them cash for ‘stories’. Women in leadership face more scrutiny. Period.”
Riley is so quiet about his relationship with Alexandria, that he is often mistaken for a volunteer rather than her partner. However, Alexandria’s family is not mistaken about Riley’s place in Ocasio-Cortez’s life. Alexandria’s mom told The Daily Mail that she hopes that they will get married soon:
“I love him. He is the most loving, supporting person I’ve seen. He helped her tremendously during the election. They’ve been together four years now, after they reconnected from a college breakup. I know they love children, and they do very well with children from the family. So, I hope they get married soon.”
Alexandria was born on 13th October 1989 to Blanca Ocasio-Cortez and Sergio Ocasio. Her father was born into a Puerto-Rican family while her mom was born in Puerto Rico. Alexandria spent the first five years of her life with her family in the Bronx of New York City.
Ocasio-Cortez lived with her extended family in the Bronx, but her father felt that the family needed to move to give Alexandria a chance to go to a better school. Her extended family chipped in, and Alexandria and her family moved to a two-bedroomed house in Yorktown heights.
The move to suburban New York exposed Alexandria to the wealth disparity in New York. She told The Intercept;
“My extended family – my tias, my grandparents, everybody – all chipped in so we could get a down payment on a tiny home 40 minutes north of the Bronx, in a school district that was a little bit better than the one I was born into. It was the reality of my life. That 40-minute drive, from where I went to school to where my family spent their time, kind of told the whole story.”
Alexandria – nicknamed ‘Sandy’ during her high school days – was a brilliant intellectual, especially in the science field. At the age of 17, she emerged second in the Microbiology category during the Intel International Science and Engineering Fair. Her project detailed the effects of anti-oxidants on the lifespan of roundworms. Her science teacher, Michael Blueglass, talked to The New York Times about the town board’s reaction to her project:
“One of the administrators wasn’t there at the beginning and came in after she started, and he said to the superintendent, ‘What company is she from?’ The superintendent said, ‘She’s a 17-year-old senior in our high school.’ She presented herself, verbally, visually, everything as though she was a 30-year-old professional presenter business woman…”
MIT rewarded Alexandria’s efforts by naming an asteroid after her. 23238 Ocasio-Cortez is still floating around in space.
2008 was a difficult year for Alexandria and her family. She was an undergrad student at Boston University when she received news stating that her father was seriously ill. Alexandria took the next flight home to see her ailing dad, who died on 9th September 2008. She spent a week with her family and then flew back to Boston to continue her studies.
She told The Intercept that she didn’t have a lot of time mourn. The tragic event seemed to motivate Alexandria to do better in school. Her grades improved, and she was soon on the Dean’s list. However, the situation at home was not so rosy. The economy’s collapse hit her family hard, and her mom was involved in a probate battle to settle her father’s estate.
Sergio Ocasio hadn’t left behind a will, and the lawyers appointed by the court to administer the estate sought to enrich themselves rather than help the family. Alexandria’s mother had to work two jobs to keep the family afloat, and after graduating, Alexandria started bartending and waitressing to help with the situation.
All the while, bankers were keen on taking Alexandria’s family home. She told The Intercept;
“We just couldn’t afford to keep our home, and we had bankers going up to the curb of our home and taking photos of our house.”
in 2012, Alexandria’s mother and grandmother resorted to selling the home and moving to Florida. For four years, the family had managed to avoid foreclosure, and they got a good price for their house. Alexandria’s family was one of the few in New York who managed to stay afloat during the financial crisis.
Alexandria was born into a Catholic family, but she recently revealed that she has Jewish roots. She stated in December 2018 that her family descended from the Sephardic Jews who resided in Spain in the 1400s. In the late 1400s, the Catholic monarchs ruling Spain ordered everyone to convert to the Catholic faith.
The Jews who didn’t convert fled to countries like France, Israel, Turkey, and Mexico. A small contingent of those Jews landed and settled in Puerto Rico. According to Haaretz, Alexandria said:
“[My family has] been doing a lot of family trees in the last couple of years. And one of the things a lot of people don’t know about Puerto Rico, and something that we discovered ourselves, is that a long time ago, my generations ago, my family consisted of Sephardic Jews,”
With time Judaism mixed with other religions in Puerto Rico. She went on to state that people can find unity in their diverse cultures and beliefs. She continued:
“I think it all goes to show that our destinies are tied beyond our understanding, beyond even what we know. And as we learn more and more about the histories of others, our friends and neighbors, we start to uncover what we already know to be true: Your destiny is mine, and my destiny is yours.”