On the heels of losing her bid for a top House committee post, Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.) said Friday that she doesn’t feel rejected by Democrats, because she doesn’t work for them.
“I don’t really feel abandoned by the Democratic Party, because my primary relationship that I care about the most is mass movements and mass-movement politics,” she said on an episode of “The Majority Report,” a radio show hosted by political commentator Sam Seder.
“I don’t feel abandoned, because my job is not to try to gain personal acceptance,” she continued. “My job is to try to build power for the working class.”
On Tuesday, Ocasio-Cortez, 35, lost a Democratic caucus vote to name the top-ranking party member on the House Oversight Committee in the upcoming Congress ― a position tasked with highlighting potential abuses by the incoming Trump administration. Instead, her colleagues went with Rep. Gerry Connolly (D-Va.), a 74-year-old, eight-term congressman.
Ocasio-Cortez, a progressive who runs with the Working Families Party, noted that the 131-84 vote was closer than people expected, making her optimistic about the party’s direction.
“I don’t think anybody in the party thought that it would be this close at the start,” she told Seder. “The fact that it was this close, the fact that some of the most established and powerful elements of the party had to mobilize to make this result happen ― you know, people were hot on their heels ― I think is a very good sign for us.”
She also said there’s a problem with long-serving Democrats holding on to outdated communication styles.
“There’s this idea… I think among more of the old guard, that having that kind of resonance and responsiveness is gauche and lowbrow and unsophisticated, and it’s attention-seeking,” she said. “Like the fact that a person has attention means that they are attention-seeking, as opposed to the fact that they are talking to people.”
Republicans, Ocasio-Cortez continued, “don’t have a seniority system” the way Democrats do.
Connolly’s supporters for the committee job largely cited his tenure on the panel when explaining why they backed him over Ocasio-Cortez.
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“Gerry’s been on the committee for a long time. We watched him in the first [Trump] term. He’s a tenacious bulldog,” Rep. Ami Bera (D-Calif.) told HuffPost this week. “And I’m glad that AOC ran as well. I think she presents a vision of the future, so kudos to her.”
“Gerry’s just been there and really devoted to that committee, and I think over time that really pays off,” Rep. Dan Kildee (D-Mich.) told HuffPost. “[Ocasio-Cortez is] great, though. I mean, not taking anything away. She’s a talent. Got to figure out a way to make sure that we use her skills.”