Firebrand Dem’s aide has local past

WASHINGTON — As U.S. Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-cortez navigates her first year in Congress, she is helped by a former Columbus resident whose politics were shaped by his hardworking single mom and stints at the Vinton County prosecutor’s office and an organization backing the legalization of marijuana.

Dan Riffle, 37, the senior counsel and policy adviser for Ocasio-cortez, a 29-year-old Democratic newcomer from the Bronx who is beloved by the left and lambasted by the right, maintains a Twitter account whose handle is “Every Billionaire is a Policy Failure.”

Riffle believes that ardently. “Nobody should have a billion dollars,” he said. “There’s nothing in life that you can’t do with $50 million, and if you multiply that times 10, you’re still only halfway to a billion dollars.”

That’s a view influenced by his childhood experience of dealing with the impact of income inequality.

Riffle was raised by a single mother, Judy Riffle, who had him at age 19 and then spent the next few decades working endlessly to make life easier for her son.

“My whole worldview was shaped by watching her work her (butt) off and still not be able to provide for us,” he said.

Riffle spent his early years in Johnson City, Tennessee, but he and his mother moved to Columbus when he was 13 to be closer to her parents.

To make ends meet, Judy Riffle worked at Red Lobster and had a second job at Consolidated Warehouse, the Big Lots supplier. But even two jobs weren’t enough, and the social safety net, including the free lunch program at her son’s school, were key to the family’s survival.

“Just watching her work and work and work, and still for us not to be able to ever get ahead, just felt unfair to me,” he said. “It shouldn’t be that way. It doesn’t comport with the idea of America that I hear politicians tell me all the time on TV.”

Even as she worked, Judy Riffle focused on her boy. Riffle recalls her coming home from Red Lobster and doing multiplication flashcards and spelling flashcards.

“Everything was me,” he said. “That was her whole life.”

Riffle, driven by his mother’s hard work, his intelligence and his determination to have an easier life than his mother had, took advanced-placement classes in high school, studied hard and then headed to Ohio State University and the Capital University Law School, aided by federal, need-based Pell Grants and considerable college debt.

He graduated from Capital around the time of the financial meltdown a decade ago, and he and his fellow newly minted lawyers found themselves in one of the worst environments in which to find a new job.

Then he got an offer from the Vinton County prosecutor’s office in southern Ohio. He took it, finding himself working in one of the few multi-story buildings in the county seat, Mcarthur.

That experience shaped him politically as well. He couldn’t understand why he had to prosecute so many low-level drug cases when there were violent crimes and other threats to public safety that required attention.

“It was just like, you know— this is not a threat to public safety here,” he said. “I’m spending hours in municipal court pleading out small-time marijuana cases when I have real files in common pleas court with, you know, real victims and real threats to public safety. I’d rather be focused on that.”

He left for a job with the Marijuana Policy Project, a D.c.-based organization that aims to change federal law to allow states to determine their marijuana policies.

He broke with the organization after six years in part over the 2015 Ohio initiative shepherded by former teen pop star Nick Lachey that would’ve legalized marijuana in the state but restricted most large-scale marijuana cultivation to a select few farms.

Riffle went on to work for then-rep. John Conyers, D-mich., who assigned him to learn about health care, and before long, Riffle was learning about "Medicare for all." Once again, he was at the forefront of a policy that would be embraced by the progressive wing of his party.

After a stint with Rep. Keith Ellison, D-minn., he landed with Ocasio-cortez. The experience has been freeing, he said, in part because Ocasio-cortez and his colleagues bring a fresh-eyed optimism, imagination and audacity to the job.

While many on the Hill have become used to the way things are, he said, the Ocasio-cortez office — less jaded, less cynical— is willing to shake things up.

One example: Ocasiocortez floating the idea of a 70 percent top marginal tax rate within days of being sworn in.

To Republicans, such an idea is heresy.

To Riffle, it makes sense. “The times in this country where we had prescriptive tax rates past — you know, absurd levels of wealth — were the times that we did best as a country,” he said. “You know, when we had tax rates of 90 percent in the Eisenhower era or 70 percent during the New Deal or during the '50s and '60s, and those were real good years for the country.”

And then there’s the Green New Deal, a climate-change proposal that has spurred ridicule from Republicans, who say it would effectively eliminate airplane travel and cow flatulence. Riffle said the proposal has been wildly exaggerated.

“I think there’s this misperception out there that the Green New Deal is this, like, tree-hugging, hippie, climate-justice thing, and it’s not,” he said. “It’s not. It’s a worker’s-rights issue. It’s re-envisioning the economy and investing in the American economy, and it’s more of an infrastructure bill than what I would call an environment or a climate bill.”

To many, the ideas are outrageous or audacious. They’ve made Ocasio-cortez either a folk hero or a villain, depending on the perspective.

But such audacity, said Riffle, is rewarding. She wants to shake things up, embrace big ideas.

He wants to help.

“We just don’t think big the way we used to,” he said.