Upstart Democrat Congressional candidate Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez has clapped back at critics who questioned her working class roots as 'a girl from the Bronx', following the revelation she moved to wealthy Westchester County at age five.

Ocasio-Cortez, 28, explained in a statement to DailyMail.com on Sunday that her family scraped together money for a small home in Yorktown Heights, New York so she could go to public school there, but that her father and other family remained in the Bronx.

'A major part of my story, and what I've shared with my neighbors throughout this campaign, is that I grew up between two worlds,' said Ocasio-Cortez, who defeated 10-term US House incumbent Joe Crowley in the Democratic primary on Tuesday night.

'At a young age, my entire extended family (aunts, grandparents, etc) chipped in on a down payment for a small home in Yorktown so I could go to public school there. My mom was as a house cleaner for other people in the town so we could get by,' she said.

Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez has clapped back at critics who questioned her Bronx roots following the revelation she grew up partly in Westchester County

Ocasio-Cortez and her mother moved to this home in Yorktown Heights, New York when she was five for access to the public schools in Westchester County

Ocasio-Cortez made her hardscrabble roots a prominent feature of her campaign, and bragged to late-night host Stephen Colbert that President Donald Trump wouldn't know how to handle a 'girl from the Bronx' such as herself.

Critics bore down hard after the New York Times revealed on Wednesday that she had moved to the home in Westchester at age five - a fact obscured in her official campaign biography.

'Identity politics duped the left. They got a Westchester girl that campaigned as the Bronx,' Katrina Pierson, a senior advisor to Trump's reelection campaign, wrote on Sunday in a tweet, citing a DailyMail.com report on the controversy.

Now Ocasio-Cortez explains that her father, an architect who ran a business focused on remodeling and renovation, did not make the move with her and her mother, leaving her caught between the city and the suburbs.

'My dad had a small family business in the Bronx, and the rest of my whole family stayed there. So I grew up between two worlds, shuttling between the Bronx and Yorktown most of my life,' she said.

'It was that experience that allowed me to internalize at an early age that the zip code a child in born in determines much of their opportunity; and that was an early motivating factor for me to work for community change,' she continued.

'As soon as I graduated college and had a choice of my own, I moved back home to the Bronx to work in the community and be with my family to help raise the little ones in my family.'

Ocasio-Cortez says she was upfront with voters about growing up 'between two worlds'

The candidate's official bio (above) does not directly address her time living in Westchester. She tells DailyMail.com that she will review the bio to see if it needs clarification

Ocasio-Cortez told DailyMail.com that she would review her campaign biography to see if it needs clarification.

Of the time she spent in Yorktown Heights, it merely says: 'She ended up attending public school 40 minutes north in Yorktown, and much of her life was defined by the 40 minute commute between school and her family in the Bronx.'

Little-known before her shock defeat of Crowley, Ocasio-Cortez has featured her own hard-luck biography as a key selling point in her insurgent campaign.

With New York's 14th district, encompassing parts of the Bronx and Queens, leaning heavily Democrat, she is believed to be a shoo-in for the House in the November general election.

Ocasio-Cortez was born in 1989 to parents Sergio Ocasio-Roman, who was born in New York City, and mother Blanca Ocasio-Cortez, a native of Puerto Rico.

Her father, who tragically died from lung cancer in 2008, was an architect and the CEO of Kirschenbaum & Ocasio-Roman Architects, PC, which focused on remodeling and renovations.

Ocasio-Cortez is seen as an infant with her father Sergio Ocasio-Roman, an architect and the CEO of his own company. He died of lung cancer in 2008 aged just 48

The young family initially lived in Parkchester, a planned community of 171 mid-rise brick buildings in the Bronx (above)

Ocasio-Cortez is seen as a young girl with her father. The family moved to Westchester County when she was five, and she went on to attend Yorktown High School

Initially, the young family lived in Parkchester, a planned community of 171 mid-rise brick buildings in the Bronx.

When she was about five, Ocasio-Cortez and her mother moved to the house in Westchester County.

The home, a single-story with a finished basement, most recently sold for $355,000 in 2016. The median annual income in the area is $116,741, compared to the median annual income of $48,315 in Parkchester's zip code, according to the latest Census data.

While attending Yorktown High School in Westchester, she entered the Intel International Science and Engineering Fair where she won second place for her microbiology project.

MIT's Lincoln Laboratory named an asteroid after her, 23238 Ocasio-Cortez, as a prize.

Ocasio-Cortez with her mother Blanca, brother Gabriel, and her grandmother in 2015

Ocasio-Cortez was a freshman at Boston University, studying economics and international relations, when she received the devastating news of her father's death of lung cancer at age 48.

Her father's death came amid the financial crisis and he left no will, putting their home on the brink of foreclosure, she has said.

The house was sold and Ocasio-Cortez now lives in the same Bronx apartment where she lived until age five.

'My mother cleaned homes and drove school buses, and when my family was on the brink of foreclosure, I started bartending and waitressing,' she told MSNBC's Morning Joe in an interview on Wednesday.

Ocasio-Cortez has said that during college she volunteered for Senator Ted Kennedy, where she fell in love with doing community work, serving as an immigration case worker and handling foreign affairs.

After graduating, she returned to the Bronx where she founded Brook Avenue Press - a publishing house which seeks designer, artists, and writers from urban areas to help paint the Bronx in a positive light in children's stories.

Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez had worked as a bartender at FlatsFix Mexican restaurant to make ends meet, before toppling Democratic incumbent Joe Crawley during the New York Primaries

Her biggest political involvement until the primary election was with Bernie Sanders' failed bid for the 2016 nomination - but it was not the only one.

That same year she participated in protests against the Dakota Access Pipeline in Standing Rock, and visited Flint, Michigan, an epicenter for left-wing outrage over its poisoned public water supply.

Last year, she participated in vigils for Hurricane Maria - which she has said took the life of her grandfather in Puerto Rico.

She returned to bar-tending at FlatsFix, a trendy Mexican restaurant in Manhattan's Union Square.

It was while she working was there that she got a call from other veterans of the Sanders campaign asking her if she wanted to run for Congress in the 14th District.

Most recently, Ocasio-Cortez visited Tornillo, Texas, to protest against U.S. border policy

Ocasio-Cortez is seen as she celebrates her landslide primary win on Tuesday night

She has never held elected office, she had no funds to conduct polling on the race and Crowley was one of New York's most powerful Democrats, a man on the way to possibly succeeding Nancy Pelosi as leader of the party's Congressional caucus, and conceivably becoming speaker.

But Ocasio-Cortez managed to defeat Crowley with a modest campaign that she says she started 'out of a paper bag' while passing out flyers between her restaurant shifts just 10 months ago.

Her family helped film her campaign ads, and she said she would not take 'corporate cash' - painting Crowley as the creature of the establishment and making his 18 times larger budget less of an advantage.

The race, not closely watched by the New York media, stunned political observers when Crowley was knocked out by a veritable landslide.

Ocasio-Cortez is a member of the Democratic Socialists of America and was endorsed by the group.

Her platform includes abolishing ICE, an 'assault weapons' ban, universal guaranteed employment and a $15 minimum wage, and Medicare for all.