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An Upset in the Making: Why Joe Crowley Never Saw Defeat Coming

Representative Joseph Crowley, at a news conference in Washington last week, had not faced a Democratic primary since his congressional district was redrawn to include a section of the Bronx.Credit...Erin Schaff for The New York Times

It was less than three weeks until Primary Day and, on first blush, the poll that Representative Joseph Crowley had been shown by his team of advisers was encouraging: He led his upstart rival, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, by 36 percentage points.

It was the last poll Mr. Crowley’s campaign would conduct.

Despite his many reputed strengths — his financial might as one of the top fund-raisers in Congress, his supposed stranglehold on Queens politics as the party boss, his seeming deep roots in an area he had represented for decades — Mr. Crowley was unable to prevent his stunning and thorough defeat on Tuesday night.

Ms. Ocasio-Cortez bested Mr. Crowley by 15 percentage points, delivering a victory expected to make her, at 28, the youngest woman ever elected to Congress.

If it takes a perfect storm to dislodge a congressional leader, then Ms. Ocasio-Cortez and her crusading campaign about class, race, gender, age, absenteeism and ideology proved to be just that. She and her supporters swept up Mr. Crowley in a redrawn and diversifying 14th Congressional District where the incumbent, despite two decades in Congress, had never run in a competitive primary.

She flipped the levers of power he was supposed to have — his status as a local party boss and his money — against him, using that as ammunition in an insurgent bid that cut down a possible successor to Nancy Pelosi and the No. 4 Democrat in the House.

No single factor led to Mr. Crowley’s defeat, more than a half-dozen officials inside and close to his campaign said in interviews, most on the condition of anonymity. It was demographics and generational change, insider versus outsider, traditional tactics versus modern-age digital organizing. It was the cumulative weight of them all.

The multiple and overlapping layers of the biggest victory yet by the emboldened left of the Democratic Party — Ms. Ocasio-Cortez is a socialist — has complicated the calculation for party leaders scrambling to answer what, or who, comes next. Ms. Pelosi downplayed its significance on Capitol Hill on Wednesday; others signaled the alarm for change.

“It’s a wake-up for everybody,” said Michael Blake, a vice chairman of the Democratic National Committee and a New York assemblyman who represents a nearby district in the Bronx.

[Read more on Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez’s background, unlikely candidacy and sudden stardom]

Mr. Blake said Mr. Crowley, 56, ran into a charismatic younger challenger whose politics and profile — a woman with Puerto Rican roots — matched a diverse Queens and Bronx district, where 49 percent of residents are Hispanic and fewer than one in five are white.

“A lot of people of color were excited about a young woman of color,” Mr. Blake said. “People say demographics are destiny and you can’t ignore that reality when looking at the numbers there.”

But Ms. Ocasio-Cortez, in an interview on Wednesday, dismissed race as a driving factor in her win, though she had regularly highlighted her heritage on the campaign trail.

“It would be a huge mistake to just say that this election happened because X demographics live here. That is to absolutely miss the entire point of what we just accomplished,” Ms. Ocasio-Cortez said.

A former organizer for Bernie Sanders, Ms. Ocasio-Cortez won across the district, carrying Mr. Crowley’s home borough of Queens by a larger margin than she won the Bronx. “She won virtually everywhere,” said Steven Romalewski, a researcher at the Center for Urban Research at the City University of New York Graduate Center, who mapped the results.

She drew support for her progressive platform that included abolishing the Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency, Medicare for all and a federal jobs guarantee. Mr. Sanders had carried more than 41 percent of the vote in the district in the 2016 presidential primary.

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Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez: I’m ‘Unapologetic About What I Believe’

The Bronx native spoke about her campaign’s mission a day after she shook up the Democratic Party with her defeat of Representative Joseph Crowley.

“Congratulations.” “Thank you so much.” “Congratulations.” “Can I have a hug?” “Yes indeed.” “Everyone is saying it’s a surprise victory.” “Oh my God!” “She’s looking at herself on television right now. How are you feeling? Can you put it into words?” “Nope.” I’m good. It’s a whirlwind. It’s crazy. When we vote, this is what happens. This is the change that’s possible. This race is about people versus money. We’ve got people, they’ve got money. Hi, this is Alexandria Ocasio. Well, I think what it means is that working-class Americans are ready and willing and eager to hear a message of economic, social and racial justice and a plan. Just being unapologetic about what I believe and what my values were and to be very honest about what I thought the path forward was and also showing people how I was walking the walk now.” “I had my whole family vote for you.” “Oh my God, thank you.” “Thank you so much. I can’t believe it.” “O.K.” “We gotta get the selfie.” “Congratulations.” “Hi, thank you. I hope that this ushers in an era where we kind of expand what it means to be a candidate, expand who can be a candidate in this time. What this race has really shown is that anything is possible.”

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The Bronx native spoke about her campaign’s mission a day after she shook up the Democratic Party with her defeat of Representative Joseph Crowley.CreditCredit...Annie Tritt for The New York Times

“Her strongest support came from areas that were not predominantly Hispanic,” Mr. Romalewski said, citing Astoria, where white residents comprise nearly half the population.

To prepare for the race, Mr. Crowley’s campaign commissioned its first poll early in 2018; the results showed him far ahead. But the poll also had some worrisome numbers: He was remarkably little known back home, despite his many years in office, and his favorability rating was also low, according to people familiar with the findings.

Mr. Crowley’s family lives in the Washington area — a fact Ms. Ocasio-Cortez used as a cudgel. And the district itself had been redrawn following the 2010 census. This year was Mr. Crowley’s first primary since then.

By early June, the Crowley campaign was already on high alert. He had spent hundreds of thousands of dollars on mailers and voter outreach, but Mr. Crowley remained mired in the low 50s in the head-to-head matchup — a danger zone for any incumbent.

His bank account showed $1 million for the race’s final sprint. But Federal Election Commission records reveal that nearly two-thirds of those funds were earmarked for the general election. He couldn’t spend it on the primary.

In a pre-election interview, Ms. Ocasio-Cortez said Mr. Crowley’s blitz of activity and mail — one official involved in his campaign said some voters received more than a dozen pieces of literature — had redounded to her benefit.

“It’s funny,” she said. “A lot of people find our campaign because he comes out for the first time and they’re like ‘Who’s this? And who’s running against him?’”

At the end of May, Ms. Ocasio-Cortez released a two-minute biographical video that went viral, the latest instance of this “girl from the Bronx,” as she called herself, catching fire on social media.

Her video, and a competing three-minute clip that Mr. Crowley released days before the election, told the story of the race.

She rode subway trains in hers. He drove a car in his.

Mr. Crowley fawned over his district’s diversity and pitched himself as an ally. “The one thing about my life experience,” he said in the opening, “is the ability to put myself in other people’s shoes.” She pitched herself as a member of the community itself.

His video had fewer than 90,000 views on Twitter by Primary Day. Hers had more than 500,000.

There were some frustrations with Mr. Crowley and the Queens machine’s approach against Ms. Ocasio-Cortez’s more nimble social media presence.

“We had people running this like a 1998 City Council race and not a 2018 congressional primary,” said one person involved in Mr. Crowley’s campaign, granted anonymity to speak about its shortcomings.

By Tuesday, some members of Mr. Crowley’s team could feel the movement even before the polls closed. They saw heavier turnout in some more gentrified pockets of the district — Sanders-type strongholds. Her social media presence was swamping them.

Daniel Dromm, a Democratic city councilman who represents part of the congressional district, said he warned the Queens County Democratic leaders, including Mr. Crowley himself, that the district was shifting beneath them, ideologically and racially.

“They didn’t want to hear this,” Mr. Dromm recalled the response.

Still, few expected Mr. Crowley would be felled, as his family and staff filed into his headquarters on Tuesday evening. Two officials in the Crowley camp said turnout had been only slightly higher than expected. Either she had turned out different voters, or they voted the other way. It was too early to tell. The result was the same.

People were crying. Mr. Crowley was consoling them. “I’m sorry,” he apologized to some.

Vivian Wang and John Surico contributed reporting.

Follow Shane Goldmacher on Twitter: @ShaneGoldmacher

A version of this article appears in print on  , Section A, Page 21 of the New York edition with the headline: He Had Power and Loaded Campaign War Chest, but It Wasn’t Enough. Order Reprints | Today’s Paper | Subscribe

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