Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez goes into the June 23 Democratic primary for New York’s 14th congressional district with $15,939,144 in the bank, according to her most recent Federal Election Commission filing covering the cycle through June 3. The two Democrats trying to take her seat have almost nothing between them. Marty Dolan reported roughly $8,000 cash on hand and has loaned more than $33,000 to his own campaign. Felipe Garcia reported just over $4,000, the Bronx Times reported on June 8.
The congresswoman has pulled in more than $31 million for this cycle, per the same FEC record. Both of her challengers are running as moderates who say the district cares about the rent and the grocery bill, not socialism, and neither has the money to buy a single television ad making that case. The district runs from Astoria, Elmhurst and Jackson Heights in Queens to Hunts Point, Parkchester and Throggs Neck in the Bronx. The question is whether a near-broke local can dislodge one of the most famous politicians in America.
Garcia thinks he can, and his pitch is that he is from here in a way she is not. He grew up in Hunts Point, attended Cardinal Hayes, City College and Baruch, and told the Bronx Times he started his career as a hospital security officer before climbing to director of energy management and engineering at Mount Sinai, where he oversaw 12 million square feet of hospital space. He earned a master’s in healthcare administration in 2020. “It’s time to really put my district first, and the only way to do that is having someone who’s literally born and bred in the district, with no loyalty to anyone else but the upbringing that they have,” he said. His main proposal is small: add professional certifications to the high school curriculum and offer graduates guaranteed jobs in fields like phlebotomy, security and food handling. He told the paper his cousin was shot and killed last year in Soundview.
Garcia is blunt about the incumbent. “The Democratic Party has been hijacked by the woke and socialist party,” he told the Bronx Times, adding that he voted for Ocasio-Cortez twice and is now unconvinced she is helping the district. He is running with almost no staff and four thousand dollars. “I’m planning on winning by a landslide.”
Dolan has been here before. He is a retired Wall Street and London insurance executive, and the Bronx Times and other outlets describe him as a moderate who calls himself a “new progressivist,” per politicsny. His platform has two big financial promises: $75,000 in home equity to let New York City Housing Authority residents buy their apartments, and a program that would reimburse young workers up to $25,000 for taxes paid when they turn 26. “My campaign’s gonna be, I have $25,000 for your kid, and a free apartment for you,” he told the Bronx Times. “There’s nothing more important than that.”
Dolan first ran against Ocasio-Cortez in the 2024 Democratic primary, his maiden venture into politics. AOC took roughly 82 percent; Dolan finished with about 17 percent. He framed the loss as a moral victory, telling the Hudson Independent that “seventeen percent is better than zero” and noting that he had forced the congresswoman to spend about $8 million to win roughly 20,000 votes, the paper reported.
Then he ran again, for something else, and lost that too. In 2025 Dolan entered the New York City Public Advocate race, finished third in the Democratic primary behind incumbent Jumaane Williams and Jenifer Rajkumar, then stayed in the general election on a self-created “The Unity” ballot line. He pulled 45,685 votes, about 2.3 percent, while Williams won reelection with 72.9 percent, according to the New York City Board of Elections certified results. That is the record he brings into a third campaign against an incumbent with sixteen million dollars.
The money gap is why AOC is hard to beat from any direction. In the first quarter of 2025 she raised about $9.6 million, her strongest fundraising quarter ever, from roughly 266,000 individual donors at an average of $21 each, with 64 percent of them first-time contributors, her campaign disclosed. That is more than double her previous best quarter. You do not out-advertise a small-dollar machine like that with a personal credit card, which is roughly what both challengers are bringing.
Their bet is that the district has moved toward the affordability platform that put fellow Democratic Socialist Zohran Mamdani in Gracie Mansion, and that AOC’s national profile is a liability for a member of Congress who is supposed to be focused on the Bronx and Queens. But she has been delivering local wins. In May, after years of community pushback, the state Department of Transportation killed its entire $900 million plan to repair and widen five bridges on the Cross Bronx Expressway, a project that would have pushed a wider highway closer to the 3,000 families at Bronx River Houses in a corridor already known as an asthma alley. “Despite our best good faith efforts to bring this safety project forward, we have been unable to come to an agreement on how to successfully advance this project,” state DOT regional director Erik Koester said, per Streetsblog. Ocasio-Cortez, alongside Rep. Ritchie Torres, had loudly opposed the widening. In June 2025 she called President Trump’s strikes on Iran “absolutely and clearly grounds for impeachment,” Newsweek reported, a move that lights up her donor base and, her challengers argue, takes her eye off the district.
Whoever wins the Democratic primary faces Republican Diamant Hysenaj in November, in a seat AOC has never won by less than landslide margins. She has held the district since becoming the youngest woman ever elected to Congress in 2019 and was reelected in 2024 with roughly 69 percent of the vote over Conservative candidate Tina Forte. Hysenaj, a Kosovo-born entrepreneur endorsed by state GOP chair Ed Cox, has raised about $319,000 this cycle and holds roughly $16,000 cash on hand, his FEC filing shows, which makes him the second-best-funded candidate in the entire field, ahead of both Democrats trying to unseat the incumbent.
If you live in the 14th, the deadline is June 23, and you can verify your registration and party enrollment through the New York State Board of Elections VoterLookUp service at voterlookup.elections.ny.gov before you go. You do not have to take anyone’s word on the money: every dollar raised and spent is public, and you can read it line by line on the candidates’ own FEC pages, Ocasio-Cortez here and Hysenaj here, before you vote. The cash gap is real and on the record. Whether sixteen million dollars holds the seat, or four thousand and a Hunts Point address can take it, is up to the voters on June 23.
Featured image: U.S. House Office of Photography / Public domain via Wikimedia Commons
