Tiffany Cabán, the far-left candidate for Queens D.A., has lost the race for the Democratic nomination to Melinda Katz after a seven-week battle.
Cabán, who was backed by socialist Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY), conceded the race on Tuesday night after she previously claimed that she won and Ocasio-Cortez appeared to acknowledge a similar false claim on Twitter.
Executive Director of The Justice Collaborative Rob Smith tweeted: “This is the most stunning win yet in the movement to elect decarceral prosecutors: Tiffany Caban (@CabanForQueens), a 31 year-old queer, Latina public defender will become the District Attorney of Queens, the 11th most populous county in America. That’s people power.”
Ocasio-Cortez responded to that tweet by writing: “We meet a machine with a movement.”
“The pitched seven-week battle for the Democratic nomination for Queens district attorney finally ended on Tuesday, when Tiffany Cabán, whose bid galvanized progressive activists nationwide and exposed deep rifts within the left, conceded to Melinda Katz, the favorite of the state party’s establishment,” The New York Times reported. “The result was a vindication for the Queens Democratic Party, which was left reeling last year after the defeat of former Representative Joseph Crowley by Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez.”
“They said I didn’t look like a district attorney. They said I was too young. They said we could not build a movement from the grassroots. They said we could not win — but we did it, y’all,” the 31-year-old said back in June, claiming that she had won the race. “We built a campaign to reduce recidivism, decriminalize poverty, end mass incarceration, and to protect our immigrant communities. To keep people rooted in their communities with the access to support and services.”
Cabán had watched a 1,100 vote lead in late June vanish into a 55-vote loss over the course of the last few weeks.
Cabán’s loss casts doubts on how much political power Ocasio-Cortez actually has considering the fact that she is widely viewed as one of the most powerful politicians on the political Left yet she was not able to effectively help her candidate enough to win in her own backyard.
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