After The Hill reported that some of Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez’s (D-N.Y.) fellow House Democrats were already working to recruit a primary challenger to her 2020 campaign—just four weeks into her first term—the congresswoman sought to find out whether her supporters planned to back her in the next election. They responded with a clear “yes.”
Just four days after the plan was reported, Ocasio-Cortez’s re-election campaign had raised more than $105,000 after a brief fundraising effort, to be added to the $400,000 she had on hand after the 2018 election.
“It was a good opportunity for us to see what the base was willing to do and if they were going to stand by her in the event of a primary challenge,” Corbin Trent, Ocasio-Cortez’s communications director, told the Huffington Post. “It was a resounding: ‘Yes, they will.'”
The congresswoman, who does not accept corporate donations and raised $1.2 million in small individual contributions in 2018, posted ads on Instagram and Facebook this week telling her supporters that some Democrats “don’t like that we’re shaking things up in D.C.”
The anonymous Democrat who spoke to The Hill suggested that Ocasio-Cortez should step aside and allow “numerous council people and state legislators who’ve been waiting 20 years” to serve in Congress to take her seat, which she won after her surprise primary victory against 10-term Congressman Joe Crowley.
As Common Dreams reported, Ocasio-Cortez blamed a “broken mentality, that public office is something you wait in line for” for the comments, but said she would welcome a challenge in November 2020.
“In the meantime, we’re going to be doing our dead-level best to make sure we are representing the needs and the will of our constituents,” Trent told The Hill.
Angry, shocked, overwhelmed? Take action: Support independent media.
We’ve borne witness to a chaotic first few months in Trump’s presidency.
Over the last months, each executive order has delivered shock and bewilderment — a core part of a strategy to make the right-wing turn feel inevitable and overwhelming. But, as organizer Sandra Avalos implored us to remember in Truthout last November, “Together, we are more powerful than Trump.”
Indeed, the Trump administration is pushing through executive orders, but — as we’ve reported at Truthout — many are in legal limbo and face court challenges from unions and civil rights groups. Efforts to quash anti-racist teaching and DEI programs are stalled by education faculty, staff, and students refusing to comply. And communities across the country are coming together to raise the alarm on ICE raids, inform neighbors of their civil rights, and protect each other in moving shows of solidarity.
It will be a long fight ahead. And as nonprofit movement media, Truthout plans to be there documenting and uplifting resistance.
As we undertake this life-sustaining work, we appeal for your support. We have 24 hours left in our fundraiser: Please, if you find value in what we do, join our community of sustainers by making a monthly or one-time gift.