How Did AOC Go from Disillusioned To Determined Democratic Powerhouse?
Share
She’s perhaps the most powerful woman in Washington, certainly of her generation. Yet less than five years ago no one had heard of her. New York Magazine reveals the secret origin of Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez.
This article was featured in One Great Story, New York’s reading recommendation newsletter. Sign up here to get it nightly.
Above: October 19, 2017 Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez attending to patrons during the afternoon rush at the Union Square restaurant Flats Fix.
The main points:
Even her haters call her a “generational talent,” a disparagement candy-wrapped as a compliment, the implication being that the astonishing rise of Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez was somehow encoded in her DNA.
View this post on Instagram
2. The transformation of Ocasio-Cortez from lost millennial into the incarnation of every American hope and fear has been dizzying. But it was really the election of Donald Trump that galvanized her. Obama and the other grown-ups in charge deserved to be in charge, even if they sometimes misstepped or misspoke. But now the system had betrayed them, and a generation was ready to rise up. “We are not,” Ocasio-Cortez later said, “goi ng back to brunch.”
3. A live stream of The protests at Standing Rock.
4. For Ocasio-Cortez, the notion of running for Congress was beyond far-fetched. It was insane. She was a bartender with little savings and few powerful social connections. But Brand New Congress, which had formed a new group called Justice Democrats, thought Ocasio-Cortez’s lack of conventional status and support made her appealing to the grassroots left, which was growing in confidence and ambition. Justice Democrats’ mission was to launch hundreds of candidates in the 2018 cycle to replace every corporate-backed Democratic politician in Congress. Bernie’s platform would be their policy template, and they would provide media training, back-end fund-raising, and messaging support. Boiled down, Justice Democrats’ big idea was to replicate the unprecedented success of the Bernie Sanders candidacy — but at scale.
5. [She] a quick study, a great talker. She cared about justice in an authentic way. “She’s not good at being full of shit,” Trent observes. Also — and this was not incidental — “she’s just really pretty,” says Trent. “That’s like 30, 50 percent of being on TV.”
6. On the first weekend of April 2017, Ocasio-Cortez joined Justice Democrats for a political boot camp down in Frankfort, Kentucky. She was 27 years old and still working in the bar. The weekend was designed to help the dozen or so inexperienced candidates get up to speed in advance of the 2018 midterm cycle, and it started with a recorded talk from Marshall Ganz, the Harvard public-policy lecturer and former organizer for United Farm Workers who had helped Barack Obama build his grassroots campaign. He impressed upon them the importance of telling an authentic, believable personal story, which he called the “story of self.” There was media training, kind of like speed dating, where the prospective candidates had to answer questions from mock Fox and MSNBC interviewers. (“They kind of put us through the ringer,” Ocasio-Cortez said.)
That same month, she made her official announcement with an Instagram post. It was a quiet salvo. No pundits opined, and no reporters showed up at her door. The post showed a photo of Ocasio-Cortez standing on a green lawn holding her “first campaign baby,” who was mushing a dandelion into her face. Like a game aunt, Ocasio-Cortez is both grimacing and smiling. “In case you haven’t heard, I’ve been nominated to run for office! U.S. Congress to be specific,” she wrote. The post promised “a wild ride to come.”
View this post on Instagram
