nypost.com

A Crowley insider told Politico that the campaign of the 10-term incumbent — and would-be future speaker of the House — underestimated the electorate’s volatility.

“About two weeks ago, three weeks ago, we had our last poll which had Joe up by about 35 points. So the electorate’s really volatile,” the insider said.
“(The) Crowley campaign had a huge field program, but it’s still a district where Bernie [Sanders] got almost 45 percent of the vote. We took it seriously, I mean we spent $1.5 million on it. … It was a bloodletting of Washington Democrats.”

Some analysts said the furor over President Trump’s immigration policy energized voters in the heavily Hispanic 14th Congressional District to go with the newcomer, who won easily with 57 percent of the vote to Crowley’s 42 percent.

Last weekend, just days before the primary, Ocasio-Cortez left New York to join protests at an Immigration and Customs Enforcement detention center in Texas.

Ocasio-Cortez, a former organizer for Sanders’ 2016 presidential campaign, ran on a sharply liberal agenda, including abolishing ICE and making Medicare a universal program.

Crowley became just the third sitting member of Congress, and the first Democratic incumbent, to lose a primary this year — less than five months before the midterm elections.