AOC faces primary challenge from unknown Wall Street investor Marty Dolan, who says her ‘radical policies’ are on the ballot
A relatively unknown Wall Street investor on Tuesday launched a primary challenge against Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY) in New York’s 14th Congressional District, arguing that the election will be a referendum on the incumbent’s “Radical policies.”
Marty Dolan, a 66-year-old former Wall Street banker and Westchester County native, will be the far-left “Squad” congresswoman’s first primary opponent since 2020, and the political newcomer argues that Ocasio-Cortez hasn’t delivered “more than breadcrumbs” for New Yorkers.
“We are all for the ‘progress’ implied by the word Progressive,” Dolan said in his campaign launch announcement. “However, within the Progressive movement, there are Radicals whose influence on the Democratic Party is overweight.”
“The impact in NYC is obvious: bail reform a disaster, the National Guard in the subway, toothpaste locked up in drugstores but criminals running free, scarce resources directed to (non-sanctuary) immigrants coming from all over the world.”
“These difficulties must be addressed in the context of a runaway $34 trillion federal debt and NYC’s 14% marginal tax rate,” Dolan argued.
“The Radicals can’t deliver more than breadcrumbs when they ignore that the primary breadwinners are leaving and brush off taxpayer concerns in favor of abstract populist ideologies. Enough is enough,” he said, deriding the policies “Radicals offer” as nothing more than “scams.”
Dolan’s bid to unseat Ocasio-Cortez, who is now in her sixth year in Congress, is a longshot.
Ocasio-Cortez has $5.7 million in cash on hand compared to the $58,000 Dolan has raised so far, Federal Election Commission records show.
All but $3,000 of Dolan’s funds have been personal loans to his own campaign.
“There’s been nobody who’s more in favor of immigration than AOC, and there’s been no worse thing that’s happened in New York in the last year,” Dolan told Bloomberg News.
“There’s a lot of people who, even in Queens and the Bronx, think, ‘What has she done for us?’” he added, railing against her support of diversity, equity and inclusion, or DEI, initiatives.
Dolan, who initially planned to run against Rep. Jamaal Bowman (D-NY) in New York’s 16th Congressional District, made headlines last month when he confronted the fire-alarm-pulling lawmaker for honoring Joanne Chesimard on the “Wall of Honor” of the Bronx middle school where he served as principal.
Chesimard, aka Assata Shakur, was convicted of murder in the killing of New Jersey State Trooper Werner Foerster in 1973, before she escaped jail and fled to Cuba.
“What did [Assata Shakur] accomplish that would put her in the same realm as Thomas Jefferson?” Dolan asked Bowman during the fiery exchange, during which he accused the congressman of “using taxpayer dollars to teach our kids to glorify a cop killer.”
