Scherie Murray, a Jamaican businesswoman who migrated to New York when she was 9, is running to unseat Democratic Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, who represents NY-District 14, and who Murray calls a “crisis” for Queens.
In a video announcing her candidacy, Murray said, “I’ve been building bridges and crossing them my whole life. I’ve built bridges between constituents in our community and the elected officials who represent them, between different nationalities and races, and between political parties.”
Murray also criticized Ocasio-Cortez for choosing “self-promotion over service, conflict over constituents, resistance over assistance. Queens and the Bronx need someone who create jobs, instead of turning them away,” she said, referencing Ocasio-Cortez’s opposition to Amazon building a major campus in Queens, because the corporation would have sought “$3 billion in tax breaks and incentives that she said should have been spent elsewhere,” the New York Times reports.
USA Today reports that “Murray made an unsuccessful run in a special election for a New York Assembly seat in 2015, losing by more than 85 percentage points. She lost by a similar margin in a 2013 bid for New York City Council.”
Scherie Murray is the fourth Republican to file for a run against Ocasio-Cortez, in a district that Ocasio-Cortez easily won in 2018 with 78% of the vote.