Hammered At The Polls By AOC, Irvington’s Marty Dolan Calls His Maiden Voyage Into Politics “100% Worth It”

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Marty Dolan and Alexandria Ocasio Cortez

June 30, 2024

By Barrett Seaman–

Marty Dolan, Irvington native and retired Wall Street and London banker, with no prior political experience, took on Alexandria Ocasio Cortez (a.k.a. AOC), leader of Congress’s ultra-progressive “Squad” as representative of New York’s 14^th District in last month’s Democratic primary—and lost, garnering just 17% of the vote to more than 80% for AOC.

Was it worth it?

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“One hundred percent, it was worth it,” exclaims Dolan. “Seventeen percent is a wipeout,” he laughingly concedes, and yet voters in District 14, which runs through the south Bronx into Queens, he claims, “perceived that I’m good at what I do.”

“For a newcomer,” he has concluded, “I did pretty well.”

“It was a whole new world for me,” he says, while noting that the feedback he got from local elected officials, city council members, community board members, neighborhood associations and folks whose doors he knocked on was that he did a creditable job on the hustings. The message he got in return from voters was that his incumbent opponent had “completely abandoned the district” and that her politics were “lunatic.” He says he heard that from four out of five voters in the Bronx and three out of five in Queens. And yet….

In the context of the Democratic Party, Dolan holds relatively conservative views on taxes (he ran on cutting city and state taxes by 25-30%, offsetting that with a Value Added (VAT) tax, and “refunding, not defunding the police.” He believes the federal government needs to step in and relieve states like New York of the fiscal distortions brought about by their property tax system. His goal is to pull Democrats back from the far left towards what he views as more sensible, centrist ground. Some who heard his pitch early on thought he sounded more like a Republican, but Dolan insisted on making his case to Democrats.

When he first announced his run for Congress last fall (see: https://thehudsonindependent.com/irvingtons-marty-dolan-launches-challenge-to-jamaal-bowman-in-ny-16/), his target was AOC’s fellow Squad member Jamaal Bowman, representing the 16^th District, which is where Marty Dolan actually lives. (In New York, candidates for Congress need not necessarily live in the district they are running in, so long as they live in the state.) But the entry of County Executive George Latimer into that race, backed by the deep pockets of AIPAC, pulled the rug out from any chance he might have had of prevailing there.

As things turned out, he didn’t do much better in CD-14. “Seventeen percent is better than zero,” he contends. Besides, he says, his campaign compelled AOC to spend $8 million against his challenge—all to win 20,000 votes. “That’s $400-a-vote,” chirps Dolan, who says he took no PAC money in his campaign.

AOC even took out an ad late in the campaign. “Together we’ve built a movement fighting for transformative change—from Medicare for All to democratizing fundraising power in politics,” her ad read. “Now an ex-Wall Street millionaire is trying to buy our seat.”

For the moment, Marty Dolan, 66, is content to enjoy not campaigning, but will he try this again, now that he’s been tested in battle? “I’ll do something again,” he allows. Whether that means running for Congress or another elected office will depend on time and circumstance. In the meantime, “My next step may be to write a book.”

That’s just one of the things politicians do.

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