Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez threw her weight behind four left-wing candidates challenging incumbent Democrats in New York Assembly primaries next month, endorsing a slate that includes a former staffer for Mayor Zohran Mamdani who declares "sex work is work" and a lawyer who wants to hike the minimum wage to $30 an hour.
Three of the four candidates are card-carrying members of the Democratic Socialists of America. Their platforms read like a wish list drafted without a calculator, free college tuition, free bus rides, a ban on police cooperation with federal immigration agents, and the decriminalization of prostitution. AOC revealed the endorsements Thursday, the New York Post reported, in races spanning Queens, Brooklyn, and Manhattan.
The move fits a pattern. Ocasio-Cortez has steadily expanded her political footprint beyond her Bronx-Queens congressional district, and her endorsement of Mamdani for mayor earlier this year signaled her willingness to reshape New York City politics from the left. Just The News reported that AOC endorsed Mamdani, a DSA member polling at 23 percent behind frontrunner Andrew Cuomo, for the June 24 Democratic mayoral primary, telling the New York Times that Mamdani "has demonstrated a real ability on the ground to put together a coalition of working-class New Yorkers."
Now she wants to stock the state legislature with allies who share that vision.
Start with Christian Celeste Tate, 41, a former field coordinator on Mamdani's mayoral campaign. Tate is challenging Assemblymember Erik Dilan in Brooklyn's 54th District, which runs from East New York to Bushwick. Her signature cause is the decriminalization of sex work. She has publicly declared that law enforcement is "often abusive" to sex workers and "unlikely to help" them in dangerous situations. She supports the proposed New York for All Act, which would bar the NYPD from cooperating informally with Immigration and Customs Enforcement.
Then there is David Orkin, a 35-year-old lawyer at Make the Road New York, described as a George Soros-backed immigrant rights organization. Orkin is challenging Queens Assemblywoman Jennifer Rajkumar in the 38th District, which covers Richmond Hill, Woodhaven, and surrounding neighborhoods. He promotes himself as a "working class" candidate, a label that sits awkwardly next to his biography.
Orkin grew up in Rockville, Maryland, a wealthy Washington suburb, and is the son of Bruce Orkin, a celebrity doctor. His academic résumé includes a senior thesis analyzing "whiteness" at a Poughkeepsie farmers market. His platform calls for raising the minimum wage to $30 per hour by 2030. He is also described as an anti-Israel activist.
The gap between the "working class" branding and the Rockville upbringing speaks for itself.
Eon Huntley, 41, a former fashion designer and clothing salesman, is making his second run at Assemblywoman Stefani Zinerman in Brooklyn's 56th District, which covers Bedford-Stuyvesant and Crown Heights. His first attempt, in 2024, fell short. His platform includes eliminating tuition at all SUNY and CUNY schools and scrapping bus fares entirely, proposals the Post noted would cost the state billions.
Huntley carries his own credibility problem. During his first campaign, he railed against developer tax breaks while living outside the district in a building that received exactly those breaks. He told City and State in a 2025 interview that he has since moved into the district. Voters can decide how much weight to give that timing.
Ocasio-Cortez, who has been building a national profile with stops across the country, clearly sees these down-ballot races as part of a larger project. The fourth endorsed candidate, Eli Northrup, 41, is a public defender and former policy director at the Bronx Defenders, a progressive legal group. He is the only non-DSA member on AOC's slate and the only one not running against an incumbent, he is challenging Rabbi Stephanie Ruskay for the open Upper West Side Assembly District 69 seat.
Northrup's platform centers on shielding illegal immigrants from federal enforcement. He has said that defending "New York against Trump and ICE" is one of his top priorities. He is an enthusiastic backer of the New York for All Act, which would ban informal cooperation between the NYPD and ICE. He also supports Mamdani's proposal to create a Department of Community Safety, an agency that would dispatch social workers instead of police officers to mental health calls.
That proposal has already been scaled back dramatically. Mamdani pushed a $1.1 billion version of the agency during his campaign and early days as mayor. The city budget has since pared the program down to a $260 million office. Whether Northrup's enthusiasm for the original vision will survive contact with fiscal reality remains to be seen.
The broader pattern is worth noting. Fox News has reported on AOC's push to defeat establishment Democrats in New York City primaries, part of a sustained effort to pull the party further left. Mayor Mamdani himself has been doing the same from City Hall, having "shockingly boosted" fellow DSA member Darializa Avila Chevalier against Manhattan Rep. Adriano Espaillat in a congressional race. Mamdani also doubled down on pro-prostitution policies during his own campaign.
None of the four endorsed candidates responded to the Post's request for comment by press time.
Take a step back and look at what AOC's slate is actually offering New York voters. A $30 minimum wage, nearly double the current federal floor and well above even New York's existing rate. Free tuition at every public university in the state. Free bus rides. A billion-dollar social-worker agency to handle calls that currently go to police. And a legislative wall between local law enforcement and federal immigration agents.
Every one of those proposals costs money. Real money, drawn from taxpayers who are already fleeing New York's high-tax environment. The candidates offer no visible plan to pay for any of it. The word "billion" appears in the context of Huntley's transit proposal and Mamdani's community safety agency, but the word "revenue" does not appear anywhere in their platforms.
AOC's growing ambitions, she has been fueling speculation about a 2028 presidential run, give these endorsements a significance beyond four Assembly races. She is building a bench. She is testing whether DSA-aligned candidates can win not just in safe progressive enclaves but in working-class neighborhoods across Brooklyn and Queens where voters deal daily with the consequences of rising crime, strained public services, and an immigration system under stress.
The candidates themselves are a revealing bunch. A wealthy suburbanite's son who wrote a thesis on "whiteness" at a farmers market and now calls himself working class. A former fashion designer who campaigned against tax breaks from a building that enjoyed them. A mayoral staffer who wants to decriminalize prostitution. A public defender whose top priority is blocking ICE.
These are not kitchen-table candidates. They are ideological products, shaped by progressive advocacy organizations and academic theory, now asking voters in East New York and Bedford-Stuyvesant to trust them with real power.
Ocasio-Cortez herself has said her ambition is "way bigger" than the presidency. If this slate is any indication of what that ambition looks like in practice, more spending, weaker enforcement, ideological litmus tests for Democratic incumbents, New York voters deserve to know exactly what they are being asked to buy.
The incumbent Democrats targeted by AOC's slate are not conservative by any national measure. Jennifer Rajkumar, Stefani Zinerman, and Erik Dilan all represent deep-blue districts. But in the DSA's framework, they are insufficiently progressive, and that makes them obstacles.
This is the internal logic of the socialist wing: any Democrat who does not embrace a $30 minimum wage, sex-work decriminalization, and a ban on police-ICE cooperation is a candidate for replacement. The primaries are the mechanism. AOC's endorsement is the accelerant.
The broader 2028 Democratic landscape is already crowded, and AOC's maneuvering at the state level suggests she understands that a presidential campaign needs more than rallies, it needs loyalists in office at every level.
Whether New York voters in these districts want to be the proving ground for that project is another question entirely. The primaries are next month. The platforms are on the table. The price tags, as usual, are missing.
When politicians promise everything for free, taxpayers should check their wallets, because the bill always arrives, and it never comes with a discount.
