Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, D-N.Y., on Friday downplayed rumors she's eying a challenge to Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., or running for the White House in 2024.
"That's a lot to put on one person," the legislator told Business Insider in an interview, adding she's putting her energy toward increasing the federal minimum wage, moving forward with Medicare for All, and trying to pass the Green New Deal.
Ocasio-Cortez added her supporters should stop looking for the "one" and focus on building a movement.
"This isn't about saviorism politics," she said.
The congresswoman said later, "We can't just pull a lever and say, 'Why isn't anything changing?' Democracy takes more than that. Everybody needs to step it up — everybody."
Ocasio-Cortez also called on people across the country to put "pressure on the Senate," and take advantage of Democrats' control over Congress, and the White House.
"Right now we need millions of people in the streets," she said. "We need mass labor organizing. We need pressure on the Senate. We have to make these windows happen."
She added to Insider, "You don't elect four people and think this country changes like that. It takes that, and it takes a whole new generation of people up and down the ballot."
Ocasio-Cortez said in December that "we need new leadership in the Democratic Party. I think one of the things that I have struggled with, I think that a lot of people struggle with, is the internal dynamics of the House has made it such that there [are] very little options for succession."
Insider notes that while Ocasio-Cortez has raised a substantial amount of campaign money, about $4.3 million as of the end of last year, Schumer has moved to defend himself from a challenge from the left. He held a joint press conference with Ocasio-Cortez last September when he signaled some support for ending the Senate filibuster, and expanding the Supreme Court.
"Once we win the majority, God willing, everything is on the table," he said at the time.
Schumer’s former legislative director Jim Kessler, who worked for the senator from 1993 to 2001 and went on to co-found the left-leaning think tank Third Way, told Insider that he didn’t think Ocasio-Cortez or other notable progressives had influenced Schumer to move to the left.
"During that period, he always had an excellent relationship with the progressives in the Democratic Party in New York, and the centrists in the Democratic Party in New York. That was always a hallmark of him in the House and also when he ran," Kessler said. "Schumer has said on several occasions, 'The world has changed. I've changed too.' And he has always been a politician who is keenly attuned to what is happening in America and his state and adjusts accordingly, not just for political reasons, but intellectual reasons."
He added Schumer is just as close to moderate Sen. Joe Manchin, D-W.Va., as he is to socialist Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., saying, "and then he's close with the other 47. That's someone who is open and is listening and is strategic."
Democratic strategist Jim Manley added, "Sen. Schumer continues to travel all around the state, to the farthest corners, and I really doubt he's going to be caught napping asleep at the wheel.”
Theodore Bunker ✉
Theodore Bunker, a Newsmax writer, has more than a decade covering news, media, and politics.
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