NO PAIN, NO CHANGE
Rep. defends in-your-face style Says conflict can spur progress
Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez is no snowflake.
The rookie New York congresswoman — who has made plenty of enemies on both sides of the aisle with her bold progressive agenda — dared moderate Democrats to get on her level Wednesday, saying she always feels “uncomfortable” but that the uneasiness is worth it.
“Change always requires a certain degree of discomfort,” Ocasio-Cortez told the Daily News in an exclusive interview at her district office in Jackson Heights, Queens. “Speaking of these issues does make you a target.”
“I’m uncomfortable all the time,” she added with a laugh.
Spending her first 200 days in office advocating for ambitious policy blueprints like a Green New Deal and Medicare for All — which critics say are fiscally impossible — OcasioCortez has positioned herself as a left-wing firebrand who never backs down from a fight.
As one of the most outspoken progressives in the House, she has been no stranger to criticizing moderates in her party since she was elected last year.
Recently, she blasted House Speaker Nancy Pelosi — the top Democrat in Congress — as “outright disrespectful” for “singling out” her and other progressive “women of color” for criticism.
“While I try to be kind, I also stand up for myself and other colleagues,” Ocasio-Cortez told The News.
By the same token, OcasioCortez’s ex-chief of staff has accused some centrists of acting like racist Dixiecrats for voting in favor of border funding approved by President Trump. Meanwhile, the Justice Democrats — a political action committee closely aligned with the congresswoman — is launching and threatening primary challenges against middle-of-the-road Democrats, including longtime Queens Rep. Gregory Meeks, prompting criticism that Ocasio-Cortez’s flank is fracturing the party.
But the Bronx-born, 29year-old wishes her fellow Dems would grow thicker skin.
“One of the things that is hard is that sometimes folks take things very personally, almost too personally,” she said. “I have no intent to personally criticize my colleagues. I think sometimes people are trying to read too deeply.”
Rather, Ocasio-Cortez said, there’s no room for safe spaces. She thinks it’s healthy for Democrats to occasionally take aim at each other.
“It does create some of that discomfort,” the millennial congresswoman said. “But if
we don’t actively try to be better, then we’re only going to have one option and that’s not going to be the best one.”
Among the proposals Ocasio-Cortez is currently pushing is the Fair Chance at Housing Act, a bill she hashed out with California Sen. Kamala Harris that would squash rules preventing some people with criminal records from being eligible for federal housing assistance.
Under current rules, residents could be booted from housing complexes like the ones operated by NYCHA for being convicted of a single drug offense.
Ocasio-Cortez said her Queens-Bronx district in particular suffers from such rules.
“For a very long time, it has felt like our communities’ needs were the ones that were always negotiated off first. We’re a bargaining chip,” she said.
The housing bill is one of 10 Ocasio-Cortez has sponsored since she took office in January. She has co-sponsored 256 pieces of legislation in all.
Ocasio-Cortez touted that she also serves as a federal liaison for her district, opening 363 constituent services cases and closing 218 of them. A majority of the cases, she said, had to do with immigration issues.
She said the Trump administration’s immigration crackdown has rocked her district, which has one of the nation’s largest immigrant populations. And it’s not only affecting undocumented immigrants.
“Even though they say, ‘You’re fine if you come in legally, you’re fine if you come in the right way,’ they’re making the right way virtually impossible. They are putting people into an undocumented status,” Ocasio-Cortez said, referring to Trump’s rollbacks of the Obama-era Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals and Temporary Protected Status programs.
Ocasio-Cortez tied Trump’s hard-line immigration agenda to her vision that Democrats can’t be bothered with playing nice.
“Trump is so far gone that if you think that having a mild critique about how we can do something better as Democrats is going to drive people to vote for Trump, then those folks were probably likely to vote Trump at any point,” she said.
Instead of fretting about whether some centrists may be rubbed the wrong way, OcasioCortez said, the Democratic Party needs to present an “ambitious and inspirational” alternative to Trump.
She said she’s not actively rooting out moderates from the party, but if some are lost in the shuffle, so be it.
“I’m not trying to drive my colleagues out. I’m trying to challenge voters,” she said. “I’m trying to challenge folks who cast votes to think, ‘Maybe we can go further.’ ”