Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez has inspired a wave of progressive candidates and even when they lose they force change
Earlier this month, Tiffany Cabán stood on a stage in Queensbridge Park, New York City, and told roughly 26,000 Bernie Sanders supporters that Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez had inspired her to run for office. This year, Cabán, a 31-year-old public defender, ran in the Democratic primary for Queens district attorney on a platform calling for serious criminal justice reform. Cabán lost by the slimmest of margins, 60 votes, to the Queens borough president, Melissa Katz, the favorite of the Queens political machine and its real-estate developer patrons.
The massive crowd had gathered in Queens because Ocasio-Cortez had endorsed Bernie Sanders for president. The Sanders campaign had bet on the so-called “AOC effect” buoying his candidacy, and Ocasio-Cortez’s political clout was on full display that afternoon. But the real evidence that the “AOC effect” will deliver returns for Democrats and progressives in coming years is not in Sanders’ resilience but in the power of local progressives like Cabán, who are changing expectations about what is possible in their cities and states nationwide.
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