THE PEOPLE BEHIND THE CAMPAIGN SIGNS: This is part of a special series taking a closer look at some of the new and lesser-known faces seeking public office on Staten Island in November.
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STATEN ISLAND, N.Y. — Alexis Rodriguez has spent more than a decade helping young students in the classroom.
Now, the Midland Beach educator says she is ready to take on a new class: the New York state Legislature.
Rodriguez, who moved to Staten Island from Brooklyn at the age of 4, is a Democrat challenging incumbent Republican state Sen. Andrew Lanza in the 24th District.
“This is where the teaching comes in. Wrangling 8-year-olds, you learn to negotiate and compromise, but also love, and I think that’s the most important,” Rodriguez, 38, said in an interview with the Advance/SILive.com. “I have a lot of experience in bringing people together.”
It could seem intimidating to challenge for a seat that has been under Republican control for decades, but after years in the classroom and an ancestry of loss and strength, Rodriguez doesn’t flinch.
Cuban refugees
Rodriguez’s American story started out thousands of miles from Staten Island.
“My grandmother liked to say that she discovered America in 1967, and she did, and she came here alone with her two children,” Rodriguez said.
Rodriguez’s grandmother was one of the 270,000 Cuban refugees on the Freedom Flights, the largest and longest refugee resettlement effort in U.S. history.
The historic flights, which followed the Bay of Pigs invasion in April 1961 and the Cuban Missile Crisis of October 1962, began on Dec. 1, 1965, and lasted eight years, bringing families with children from Varadero, Cuba, to Miami.
Rodriguez’s grandmother, traveling with her two young children, arrived in 1967 and was relocated to a refugee camp in New Orleans, leaving her husband and the children’s father, who was unable to secure a seat on the flight, back in Cuba.
“She was the pioneer, and she’s an incredible human being… she ironed clothes for the first year until my grandfather was able to join,” she said. “Then they both relocated to Brooklyn, where they built their lives together, and I heard about it all the time… what they had, then what they lost, and then how hard it is and you have to work for opportunity, and education is the conduit for that opportunity.”
Alexis Rodriguez pulls up at the Advance/SILive.com’s Bloomfield offices in a custom-designed truck. (Advance/SILive.com|Jan Somma-Hammel)Career path
That work ethic and confidence carried through to Rodriguez, leading her to pursue a bachelor’s degree in economics at St. John’s University and working for Standard & Poor’s, a leading financial services company.
“Working on Wall Street taught me how money moves, and one of our clients was the teachers’ retirement system, among many, many others,” she said. “I have a very deep understanding of how pensions are built and how they stay afloat, but I also see how families are directly impacted when money works for them and when money doesn’t work for them.”
Rodriguez was happy and thriving.
Everything changed, however, when a childhood friend died at the age of 22, due to Staten Island’s opioid epidemic, which was at its peak.
“I realized that we are not invincible, and had a new outlook on life. And what I was doing in a cubicle for 50 weeks a year wasn’t what I wanted to stay doing, so I left,” she said.
Rodriguez pivoted to education, with the goal of making a difference in her students’ lives. She started her new career path at Brooklyn College, where she earned a master’s degree in childhood mathematics, before switching to English as a second language studies.
“I thought I would teach math because my background was economics, but upon starting in the school system, I was exposed to the ESL teaching and students,” she explained. “So then I went back to school and got a scholarship with St. John’s again… and I received a postgraduate degree for teaching English to students of other languages.”
Rodriguez speaks three languages — English, Spanish and Italian, which have been valuable resources in her profession and led her to a position at PS 13 in Rosebank in 2017.
These days, Rodriguez works to inspire her “munchkins” to work hard and stay determined, a lesson she learned from her family.
“My dad used to say in school, ‘Work hard now so that you don’t have to work hard later,’ and I share that with my students all the time,” she said.
Entry into politics
After years in the Department of Education, Rodriguez became increasingly interested in political issues, utilizing her economics background to fuel her understanding of this new world. One of the things she consistently noticed was how Albany politics were impacting her co-workers, young students and their families.
She was at a holiday party when her true inspiration — time — hit her in the face.
“There were two older gentlemen in front of me, and one of them turned to the other and said, ‘I almost ran for office.’ And then the other gentleman said to him, ‘You know me too, but we don’t have energy for that anymore,’” she said. “… I thought about that word ‘almost,’ like they almost ran for office… it made me realize again that time doesn’t last forever. So I have the energy now. I have the time now, and I don’t want my students to have almost what they need.”
She reached out to Richmond County Democratic Party leadership and began pursuing a campaign for the state Senate’s 24th District. She said her interest in the Senate comes from how the body impacts the state budget, and therefore community resources.
Rodriguez hasn’t, however, allowed this focus to deter her from learning everything she can about the district and collecting a wide range of connections.
“We have said from the beginning that this will be a campaign of yes, and if anyone invites me anywhere, the answer is yes,” Rodriguez said. “But it’s given me a wonderful opportunity to just meet so many different types of Staten Islanders.”
Through this campaigning style, which has led her to attend multicultural festivals, NYPD awards, political rallies, charity fundraisers and motorcycle club meetups, Rodriguez has built her platform on unity and understanding.
“It doesn’t matter if you’re red, white, blue, or purple. You still drive on the same streets, you’re still sitting in the same traffic, so there’s a lot of daily living experiences that can be improved upon,” she explained. “The people come first. That’s the number one priority, people through unions, strength, intentions…. then costs, and then the basics: schools, safety, and small businesses.”