Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez gained national and international fame in 2018 when, relatively unexpectedly, she managed to obtain a seat in the American House of Representatives. At that time, she is the youngest elected female member of Congress ever. The popularity of ‘AOC’ is great. She is a democrat and takes very progressive positions. She joined the election campaign of presidential candidate Bernie Sanders in both 2016 and 2020. What is the story behind this political talent Ocasio-Cortez? How did she end up in Congress and what exactly are her progressive positions?
Contents
- Youth and study
- In contact with politics
- AOC towards Congress
- An unexpected victory
- Political views of AOC
- US elections 2020
Youth and study
Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez was born on October 13, 1989 in the Bronx, a borough of New York. She comes from a Puerto Rican family. Her father Sergio Ocasio-Roman was also born in the Bronx, but mother Blanca Ocasio-Cortez was born in Puerto Rico. Alexandria has a younger brother named Gabriel. It has been clear from an early age that ambition is not a foreign word to Alexandria. She finished high school in 2007. She manages to secure a scholarship, namely the John F. Lopez Fellowship, which is awarded to students with high achievements. Ocasio-Cortez will study International Relations and Economics at Boston University.
In 2008, however, a personal drama unfolds within the Ocasio family when father Sergio dies of lung cancer. There is no will and mother Blanca and brother Gabriel are in danger of losing their house. Alexandria and her family become embroiled in a legal battle over Sergio Ocasio’s estate. In 2011, Alexandria graduated cum laude from Boston University. During her studies, she interned at Senator Ted Kennedy’s immigration office and spent a semester in the African country of Niger. Due to her family’s circumstances, Alexandria decides to move back to the Bronx where she became a bartender to keep her mother out of financial trouble and to ensure that she could keep her home.
In contact with politics
When the American presidential elections are held again in 2016, Ocasio-Cortez will join the campaign of progressive Democratic presidential candidate Bernie Sanders. This fuels her political ambitions and even after the presidential elections, which were won by Republican Donald Trump, she remains committed to social issues and her own Spanish community. After this period she is approached by Brand New Congress. This is an American political action committee that was looking for progressive candidates to compete for representation for the 14th New York district in Congress. Elections for this would take place again in 2018. Her brother Gabriel turned out to have nominated her after the 2016 elections and her involvement in politics after all her efforts. While Alexandria still tends the bar and works as a waitress in the Bronx, her campaign will kick off in May 2017.
AOC towards Congress
Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, also known as AOC, is the first candidate since 2004 to challenge Joe Crowley. Crowley has served in the House of Representatives as a Democrat representing New York’s 14th congressional district since 1999. Ocasio-Cortez’s campaign does not have a large financial budget and therefore consists largely of house visits and taking to the streets, as shown in the Netflix documentary Knock Down The House. This documentary follows four women in the run-up to the 2018 congressional elections. One of these four women is Alexandria. In February 2018, she resigned from the bar where she still worked in order to fully focus on her campaign. When a few small-budget socialist filmmakers make an ad for her, portraying her as a hard-working, working-class underdog, the donations start pouring in.
Ocasio-Cortez and Crowley have only come face to face once during their campaign. They gave a joint interview on the local political talk show Inside City Hall, which was later characterized as a debate. Later in June 2018, the two were scheduled to debate again in the Bronx, but Joe Crowley sent someone else in his place. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez’s campaign was supported by actress and activist Cynthia Nixon. Nixon also put himself forward as a candidate, but lost out to Governor Andrew Cuomo. However, Ocasio-Cortez was also supported by several well-known civil rights organizations such as MoveOn, Black Lives Matter and Democracy For America.
An unexpected victory
On June 26, 2018, it appears that Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez has defeated ten-term incumbent Joe Crowley with 57 percent of the votes. This immediately garners Ocasio-Cortez national attention, because the victory comes as a shock to some. National media also pay attention to the unexpected victory of the young politician, such as The New York Times and The Guardian. Crowley admits his loss that same evening, but does not congratulate Alexandria on her victory.
This will be followed by the general election, where Ocasio-Cortez will face Republican Anthony Pappas. Pappas did not campaign, as he felt he had no chance as a Republican. On November 6, 2018, it turned out that Ocasio-Cortez had won her place in the House of Representatives with no less than 78 percent of the votes. In 2018, she was the youngest elected female member of Congress ever. On January 3, 2019, the 116th Congress convened for the first time. Ocasio-Cortez thus steps into the spotlight both nationally and internationally and is seen as a progressive political talent in the United States.
Alexandria is very popular in America , especially among young people. On the social medium Twitter, AOC has no fewer than 6.1 million followers in January 2020. In May 2017, this was less than three hundred. According to Ocasio-Cortez, she owes a lot to the use of social media. She uses it to build a relationship and communicate directly with her supporters, to reinforce her message and to maintain control over her narrative in the media.
Political views of AOC
Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez is a very progressive democratic socialist politician with a lot of charisma. For example, she is a strong supporter of measures against climate change and she therefore supports the Green New Deal legislative package. The Green New Deal aims, among other things, to ensure that fossil fuels are no longer used within the next ten years. She also has her own view on reforms in the tax system. Tax rates of 70 percent should be imposed on top incomes of $10 million and higher. The proceeds from this system can be used to finance, among other things, the Green New Deal. Ocasio-Cortez also takes his own position on immigration. She has expressed her support for abolishing US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), which is America’s federal immigration police. Ocasio-Cortez visited several detention centers at the border and compared the situation to concentration camps. Something for which she received support, but also criticism.
Alexandria, like many other Democrats, also supports the Medicare For All proposal, which would ensure that all Americans have health insurance. Something that is still not the case in the country in 2020, millions of Americans are uninsured. She also advocates the abolition of tuition fees. Ocasio-Cortez also advocates equality and acceptance of the LGBTQ community. She has received comments on her plans from both Republicans and Democrats. One wonders how she intends to finance these proposals.
Alexandria supports the impeachment proceedings of President Donald Trump that were initiated in 2019. In the summer of 2019, Trump announced via Twitter that he believed four young female members of Congress should return to the country they came from. This group is also called The Squad. One of them was New York-born Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, the other three congressmen are Ilhan Omar, Ayanna Pressley and Rashida Tlaib.
US elections 2020
Presidential elections will take place in America again on November 3, 2020. Through primaries, a Democratic presidential candidate will be elected who will take on the incumbent Republican President Donald Trump in November. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez has joined Bernie Sanders’ election campaign, just as she did in 2016. Sanders has again put himself forward as a candidate in the previous elections and appears to be a strong contender to be nominated as a Democratic presidential candidate.
The progressive Bernie Sanders has always been a great source of inspiration for Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez. Young Alexandria’s support came at an opportune time for Bernie. The presidential candidate was admitted to hospital in early October 2019 with heart complaints, which raised questions about his age and health, or his suitability as a presidential candidate. Sanders seemed to stagnate in the so-called polls. Bernie Sanders has already stated that if he were to become president, he would like to have Ocasio-Cortez in his government. Although the race for the presidential nomination starts hopefully for Bernie Sanders, a series of primaries follows after ‘Super Tuesday’, which he loses to Joe Biden. In April 2020, Sanders threw in the towel and ended his election campaign. However, this does not mean that Ocasio-Cortez’s role in the presidential elections has been played out. In August 2020, she was given a role by the Biden campaign team at the Democratic convention, in an effort to unite the Democratic voter as much as possible.