When New York City’s crowded, confused Democratic primary for mayor apparently ended in victory for former police Capt. Eric Adams, there were plenty of losers littering the field.
And Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez was one of the biggest, even though her name was never on the ballot.
That doesn’t bode well for AOC’s rumored desires to try for a seat in the United States Senate.
AOC endorsed Maya Wiley, a hyper-lefty with a flair for hypocrisy when it comes to protection from criminals: She’s all for defunding the police citywide, as the New York Post reported, while her own neighborhood was protected by a private security force.
Wiley was also legal counsel for leftist New York Mayor Bill de Blasio, as incompetent — and likely corrupt — an administration as has ever plagued the Big Apple.
Those are the kind of credentials that should get a candidate a frosty-cold shoulder from any politician with real concern for her constituents, but they drew AOC’s backing.
In an early June endorsement, according to NBC News, weeks ahead of the June 22 primary, Ocasio-Cortez said Wiley “didn’t just come up to run for mayor but has experience and has a lifetime of dedication to this.”
Well, as of Wednesday morning, she doesn’t have the votes — or anywhere close to the votes — to become the Democratic nominee for New York mayor.
And that raises real questions about how much weight Ocasio-Cortez can actually swing among normal Americans.
As Edmond DeMarch and Ronn Blitzer reported Wednesday at Fox News, she didn’t even deliver her congressional district to her chosen candidate.
“While Ocasio-Cortez remains wildly popular in her district, the mayoral race indicates that her influence may not extend far beyond that,” DeMarch and Blitzer wrote. “Her congressional district is located in areas of the Bronx and Queens. According to a map of unofficial results from the first round of voting published by Gothamist, the Bronx overwhelmingly supported Adams, and while Wiley fared better in Queens her support was largely limited to the western part of the borough while the rest was mainly split among Adams, Garcia and Andrew Yang.”
That’s bad news for AOC and Maya Wiley, of course. But it was good news for Adams — and potentially for the rest of the country.
If the Ocasio-Cortez power base really doesn’t extend much beyond the liberal hothouses of New York, her shot at having an even bigger impact on national politics from a seat in the Senate doesn’t look as strong as it may seem. (Much to the relief of Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, no doubt.)
As the most “law-and-order” candidate running, Adams might have been the most palatable candidate as conservatives are concerned, but in a New York City Democratic primary, the standards have to be pretty loose. Whoever has a chance to win in that competitive environment is almost guaranteed to be more liberal than reasonably sane Americans would like.
But that’s exactly the kind of environment where an AOC endorsement should carry real weight — if she really were the political powerhouse the enraptured mainstream media portray her as.
Instead, her preferred candidate finished third in New York’s ranked-voting system, according to The New York Times. She was among those defeated by Adams, a man with a 22-year career with the New York Police Department — possibly the most vilified institution in New York when it comes to the progressive political wing AOC leads.
That’s not just a defeat, that’s a stinging rejection by one of the country’s most liberal electorates — the kind that should feel like a slap in the face for the arrogant AOC.
Now, that doesn’t mean the kind of New York voters who let a leftist like de Blasio run the city for eight years have suddenly gotten sane.
Finishing second in the tally, according to The Times, was Kathryn Garcia, another de Blasio flunky who happened to have The Times’ editorial board’s endorsement.
Had one of those two not run, it’s possible the other might have defeated Adams.
Both Garcia and Wiley conceded the race to Adams Wednesday morning, and he will now be taking on Curtis Sliwa, the longtime New York City activist and founder of the civilian anti-crime group the Guardian Angels.
Sliwa won the Republican mayoral primary handily, according to The Times.
The results of that race remain to be seen — though possibly predictable in Democratic-dominated New York.
But the unofficial results of the Democratic Party seem to finally be in, after a nightmarish counting disaster, and they show AOC is not the political force progressives pretend.
New York City is better off for that.
And, with the 2022 midterms getting closer by the day, so is the rest of the country.
