The outspoken, progressive freshman has recently found herself immersed in the world of primary challenges, considering she’s facing one of her own and has thrown her support behind the challenger of a Democratic incumbent.
And the New York lawmaker—who was elected to Congress as the youngest woman at 29 years old last year after winning her primary against longtime incumbent and political heavyweight Joe Crowley—has no quarrels about backing someone who seeks to unseat a colleague, denying that her efforts could be construed as working against House Democrats’ mission to operate with “party unity.”
“I think that who we are as a party in safe blue seats, in deep blue seats, need to embody our stances,” she told Newsweek on Wednesday. “And so, I don’t think it’s disrupting or a threat to party unity to ask us to uphold our values, what’s in our charter, what’s in our platform.”
The response was aimed at House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer (D-MD), who was questioned earlier in the day on the possibility of Ocasio-Cortez creating a strife within the caucus in her recent endorsement of Democratic candidate Marie Newman, the primary challenger to the moderate Rep. Dan Lipinski (D-IL).
“We work on part unity and will continue to work on party unity. We want to see the party as unified as possible. We think it’s very important to keep the majority, obviously,” Hoyer told reporters in his office. “Not just because we want to be in the majority but because the values the parties’ reflect is very, very disparate, as disparate as I’ve seen in my entire career.”
Lipinski is one of the more conservative House Democrats, having voted against Obama’s Affordable Care Act and is against abortions. Still, Hoyer said there was “absolutely” room in the Democratic Party for members with stances such as Lipinski’s.
“[Abortion] is an issue of conscience that people have to answer for themselves. That doesn’t mean we’re not a pro-choice party. We are. We believe women ought to have [the right to choose]. We’ve said that in our platform,” Hoyer said. “But that doesn’t mean that we—either [Speaker Nancy Pelosi], or I—believe that we ought to exclude people who have a different view.”
Ocasio-Cortez, who was once rumored to be considering the idea of finding a primary challenger for Democratic Caucus Chair Hakeem Jeffries, the No. 5 Democrat in the House who’s also from New York, said primary challengers should not automatically be dismissed. Rather, she said primary opponents should be evaluated on a “case-by-case basis.”
The Washington-newcomer also ridiculed the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee for their shift to protect incumbents in primaries and “blacklist anyone that helps a challenger.” The House Democrats’ campaign arm said earlier this year it would not grant contracts to any pollsters, strategists or others who help 2020 candidates in their bids to unseat incumbents.
“I think the position of the party and leadership is known and I think that’s totally fine and makes sense about that position,” Ocasio-Cortez said. “But I respectfully disagree.”
The New York progressive also has a new primary challenger of her own: Badrun Khan, a local Queens activist whose website labels her as someone who’s “spent her entire life fighting for justice, equality and fairness in her community,” and who is fighting for “REAL Results… Not Empty Promises.”
Khan first filed with the Federal Elections Commission July 25, but news of the primary challenger to Ocasio-Cortez was first brought to light Wednesday. Khan stops short of backing some of Ocasio-Cortez’s more progressive visions, such as Medicare for All.
“I never tell anyone not to run. I think it’s part of a functioning democracy, and I work really hard to make sure that we continue to fight as hard as possible and to show, not just tell about what we’re doing for our district, but to really show it,” Ocasio-Cortez said of her primary opponent. “I would never begrudge anyone for trying to participate in our democracy.”
